‘It sounded like fun, that we would get to go to the university.’ Pupils teaching ICT to peers: a case study of Finnish Media Agents

Abstract

This study reports a practical experiment involving young pupils, their teachers and university students, named the Media Agent project. The purpose of the project was for the university students to teach the schoolchildren new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills, which they then would teach to other pupils and teachers at their own schools. The theoretical framework consists of students’ pedagogical thinking and the concept of agency within the new Finnish Basic Education Curriculum (2014). By interviewing 18 pupils, the authors aimed to find out what their experiences of this project had been. In this qualitative study they used thematic analysis. The main themes that emerged from the data were (1) Media Agent; (2) the teaching event; and (3) impact. The results were very positive, although we also need to be somewhat critical towards them.