Papers by Tellervo Härkki
Education in the North, 2023
This research examines student craft teachers' learning in the context of two yarn-craft courses ... more This research examines student craft teachers' learning in the context of two yarn-craft courses utilising flipped learning to provide inclusive and encouraging learning experiences for all students, despite their significantly differing skill levels. A similar challenge of identifying and implementing pedagogical approaches that account for students' differing entry-level skills exists for several higher education programmes, especially in domains with indirect continuation of compulsory high school courses. Experiencing courses as too easy or too demanding has a negative impact on student achievement. Therefore, this research asks how students participating in these courses described their learning and whether novices and advanced yarn-crafters were content with the flipped-learning implementations. From the two yarn-technique flipped-learning courses, 51 student craft teachers participated in this study. Students were instructed to set their own learning goals and conduct self-assessments. All student-provided materials were collected as research data and analysed using thematical qualitative analyses. The results show that the possibility of tailoring their learning directed students' learning in personally meaningful directions. However, the need for teacher support was not determined by yarncraft skills alone, but also by students' regulation of their own learning. For teachers, flipped learning provides an impressive window into students' diverse learning needs.
Routledge eBooks, Oct 25, 2022
ISLS International Society of the Learning Sciences, Jun 1, 2020
Early Career WorkshopNon peer reviewe
Techne serien - Forskning i slöjdpedagogik och slöjdvetenskap
We studied student craft teachers’ garment-fitting activity as a demanding learning task that is ... more We studied student craft teachers’ garment-fitting activity as a demanding learning task that is indicative of students’ understanding of garment fit. Studying fit is essential in garment making. Simultaneously, fit is a complicated issue. As part of this clothing course, the students were given a form that listed areas to examine (bust, seams, darts etc.). They were instructed to think aloud, mark problematic areas and the placement of darts on a picture, and make written notes. While appreciating the potentially challenging social character of this peer-evaluation situation, this research aimed to understand how student craft teachers assess garment fit on a master’s-level clothing course. Two research questions were set: 1) What roles did the students take on during the fitting sessions? 2) How did the students assess garment fit? Eleven students provided their informed consent to participate and their video recordings of their fitting sessions. The study results are based on a q...
Design and Technology Education, 2021
Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 2016
The purpose of the present article was to analyse textile teacher students' collaborative designi... more The purpose of the present article was to analyse textile teacher students' collaborative designing of a functional 3D textile puzzle for visually impaired children. The data collection took place across three sessions of collaborative designing: defining design constraints, visualisation and building a mock-up. Twelve first-year university-level students training to become textile teachers participated in the study, and they worked in four teams with three students in each team. We were interested in the nature of their design process and how kernel design ideas were created and transformed during the collaborative design process. The analysis focused on the teams' design activities and content logs of the video data. The video-recorded data were segmented in 2-minute intervals using INTERACT video analysis program. Each segments were classified according to 7 observable design activities. This provided a macro level analysis for all design activities during each design session and data for further analysis of different orientations of teams. The results indicated that all teams engaged in progressive design processes and were able to create unique and practical design solutions. The design processes turned out to be a problem driven in nature for two teams whereas the others engaged in a solution-driven design process.
Techne serien - Forskning i slöjdpedagogik och slöjdvetenskap
This research explores the use of a non-linear maker pedagogy for implementing a major change in ... more This research explores the use of a non-linear maker pedagogy for implementing a major change in the Finnish national core curriculum. The latest curriculum change (2014) introduced so-called transversal competences, but also a major change for the subject of crafts: ‘multi-material’ crafts that involve former separately taught textile and technical crafts both now introduced to all pupils. These changes set the stage for in-service teacher training, as well as for pedagogical solutions, such as a non-linear maker pedagogy and closer collaboration between technical and textile craft teachers. A non-linear maker pedagogy refers to an approach combining several features: a shift from individual learning and solo teaching to collaborative knowledge-creating learning, opportunities for collective invention and improvisation, pupil-centred situated inquiry and the creation of artefacts that combine material and digital realms. In this collective case study, we interviewed six teachers wh...
LearnxDesign 2021: Engaging with challenges in design education, 2021
This exploratory case study aims to shed light on how end users were considered in students' desi... more This exploratory case study aims to shed light on how end users were considered in students' design processes and final design products. A three-month participatory design project for students (ages 14-15) was created with the following brief: "co-design and make an e-textile product for kindergarteners according to their wishes and needs". We analysed 72 transcribed end-users-related design episodes and the final products from two student teams. The findings indicate that students' end-users-related design discussions concerned various functional, technical, and visual/aesthetic features, as well as aspects beyond functional, such as students' memories and experiences. Additionally, many concrete and abstract features and solutions of the final products were traced back to end users. This study suggests new possibilities for engaging students in empathic and reflective (digital) design and making, targeting design-literate citizens in the 21st century.
Techne serien - Forskning i slöjdpedagogik och slöjdvetenskap
In this design and development research, we revisit the term affordance and explore its contribut... more In this design and development research, we revisit the term affordance and explore its contribution to understanding and facilitating collaborative designing in educational settings. Collaborative designing requires students to frame the design task and generate their design ideas by constructing the problem and solution together. We focused on various design challenges – that is to say, creativity constraints – during collaborative designing. Our research entailed three design studios focusing on authentic design tasks with supplied resources. The design tasks were a part of the compulsory first-year courses in Craft Studies at a university. The first design studio consisted of workshops in which student teams constructed toys based on children’s drawings. In the second design studio, the teams designed functional three-dimensional textile puzzles for visually impaired children, and in the third design studio, they produced wearable sea creatures for groups visiting the SEA LIFE a...
Peruskoulun käsityö on monimateriaalinen oppiaine, jonka sisältöjä ja toimintaa tukevat sekä tekn... more Peruskoulun käsityö on monimateriaalinen oppiaine, jonka sisältöjä ja toimintaa tukevat sekä teknisen työn että tekstiilityön työtavat. Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteiden mukaan käsityön tehtävänä on ohjata oppilaita kokonaisen käsityöprosessin hallintaan. Kokonaista käsityöprosessia ja monimateriaalisuutta toteuttava käsityö on kuitenkin koettu epäselväksi ja vaikeaksi toteuttaa. Ongelmalliseksi on koettu resurssien rajallisuus sekä se, että teknisen työn ja tekstiilityön työtapojen oppimisympäristöt sijaitsevat usein erillään toisistaan. Lisäksi käsityötä opettavien koulutustausta ja perehtyneisyys eri käsityön työtapoihin on vaihteleva riippuen opintojen sisällöistä ja harrastuneisuudesta. Tämän kuvailevan kirjallisuuskatsauksen tavoitteena on konkretisoida esimerkein pedagogisia lähtökohtia käsityön monimateriaalisuuteen. Näiden lähtökohtien taustoittamiseksi kuvataan myös käsityöoppiaineen opetuksen organisoinnissa tapahtuneita muutoksia ja avataan monimateriaalisuuden käsitettä sekä siihen liittyviä reunaehtoja. Monimateriaalisuutta kuvaavissa pedagogisissa esimerkeissä on nostettu esiin, miten monimateriaalisuus näyttäytyy opiskeltavana sisältönä ja miten se välittyy oppilaille yksin tai yhdessä työskenneltäessä.
My research takes three embodied perspectives on collaborative design. In this research, collabor... more My research takes three embodied perspectives on collaborative design. In this research, collaborative design represents a specific type of knowledge creation oriented toward artefact creation, and a context for pedagogical practices in higher education. The three perspectives grew out of a continuum of research on the features and challenges of learning collaborative design in higher education, a multidisciplinary research project on forms of embodiment in design, and four identified gaps in the research literature. The first of the three perspectives is sketching, an acknowledged discipline-specific practice in design. The second perspective is gesturing. Gesturing is frequently characterised as spontaneous communicative behaviour, as opposed to practice. The third perspective entails a practice not always included in design discourses: material explorations that bridge designing and making. Despite their obvious differences, not to mention different treatments that these perspect...
J. of Design Research, 2018
This study explored the remaining potential of gestures as creative tools for collaborative desig... more This study explored the remaining potential of gestures as creative tools for collaborative designing. We compared novice designers' use of sketching against gesturing in early ideation and rough visualisation. To preserve the kinesic character of gestures, we developed a detailed video analysis method, which revealed that majority of sketching and gesturing were complementary to speech. Sketching was important for defining complicated structures, while gesturing was frequently used for all aspects of designing. Moreover, we identified that the level of collaboration-the level and immediacy of sharing one's ideas for others-is an important factor. As an underrepresented phenomenon in the design literature, the meaning of collaboration unearthed here leads to unmistakable conclusions regarding the nature of gesturing, to the process of learning design, and to the use of design tools. Most notably, gesturing offers a complementary creative dimension-kinaesthetic thinking-which invites us to communicate and share instantaneously.
Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, 2016
In the design studio, within educational contexts, sketching, model-making and prototyping of tan... more In the design studio, within educational contexts, sketching, model-making and prototyping of tangible objects are parts of the design process that support students in achieving final design solutions. This paper presents research in which three design experiments involving design studio settings, using a Learning by Collaborative Designing model for supporting knowledge-creating learning for university-level craft teacher education, were undertaken. The design studios aimed at guiding first-year students to appropriate professional processes and practices of design. The Pedagogical Infrastructure Framework was applied to analyse the social, epistemic, cognitive and material-technical aspects of three design-studio settings. Through meta-analysis of the three experiments we asked: What can we learn from these design studio experiments about the pedagogical infrastructure that supports creative design practices of working with design knowledge, tools and technologies in a real learning setting? As a result of the experiments we discuss the limitations and opportunities of these pedagogical settings, as well as considerations for future development of studio-based settings as pedagogic innovations emerging for integrating material-technical and socio-digital technologies, practices and spaces for learning.
FORMakademisk - forskningstidsskrift for design og designdidaktikk, 2016
This article is based on a study of novice designers’ knowledge of materials in a challenging col... more This article is based on a study of novice designers’ knowledge of materials in a challenging collaborative assignment. We approached material knowledge from two complementary viewpoints: the dimensions of knowledge shared during designing, and how student teams built new knowledge during making. We found that both modalities studied—namely, words and gestures—contributed to advancement in designing. The modalities became specialised: While words served mainly to identify materials and to describe visual qualities, gestures conveyed information about size, shape, location and dynamic dimensions, such as movement and change over time, as well as signature qualities based on embodied experience. During making, ambitious teams took material decisions and the challenge of authenticity seriously, but the tight timeframe and budget compelled them to favour pragmatic choices.
FORMakademisk - forskningstidsskrift for design og designdidaktikk, 2016
This issue of FORMakademisk features selected articles developed from papers presented at the sym... more This issue of FORMakademisk features selected articles developed from papers presented at the symposium Embodied Making and Design Learning at the DRS/CUMULUS-conference LearnXDesign in Chicago, Illinois, June 28–30, 2015. This special issue was developed as an initiative by the symposium conveners. The symposium was developed by researchers from research groups in Norway, Finland and Canada to explore various aspects of embodied making in relation to design learning. The symposium was a full-day event with four sessions, seven paper presentations, a roundtable discussion, a plenary discussion and a workshop. The symposium received positive feedback, attracting many participants and stimulating engaged discussions throughout the conference. This indicates a growing awareness of the topic of embodied making and design learning. This special issue features five articles that together highlight a variety of approaches and examples of current research endeavours in relation to the theme.
International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 2016
While sketching has an established role in professional design, its benefits and role in design e... more While sketching has an established role in professional design, its benefits and role in design education are subjects that invite research and opinions. We investigated how undergraduates studying to become design educators and textile teachers used sketching to generate and develop design solutions in a collaborative setting. The students were given an authentic design assignment involving three detailed tasks, one of which was 2D visualisation by sketching. Adopting a micro-analytical approach, we analysed the video-recorded visualisation session to understand how teams used sketching to collaborate and to generate and develop design solutions. To that end, we set three research questions: (1) What ways of collaborative working are reflected in actions of sketching? (2) In what ways do sequences of collaborative sketching contribute to designing? (3) What kinds of collaborative sequences of sketching advance designing? Our analysis identified three collaborative ways of sketching (co-ordinated, collective and disclosed) and confirmed that sketching is an important facilitator of mutual appropriation, adaption and adoption. Next, we identified three ways of contributing to designing, as well as three functions and six capacities for advancing designing. Our analysis shows that sketching can lead to invaluable advances in designing, although each team had its own way of using and benefiting from sketching. We further consider that the teams' diverse sketching processes and rich content owed, at least in part, to the task structure and imposed constraints. We continue to see sketching as an important design tool, one among many.
International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 2022
The demand for teaching and learning collaborative design is probably greater than ever thanks to... more The demand for teaching and learning collaborative design is probably greater than ever thanks to many influential parties highlighting creativity, collaboration and designing as necessary future skills. However, ‘good’ collaborative design necessitates a clear understanding of what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘collaboration’, and of how an individual’s activities contribute to a team achieving a satisfactory design solution. This research aimed to develop a methodological approach to facilitate the analysis of collaborative interaction and design as equally meaningful and closely linked components, and to equally account for verbal and sketching activities. The developed extended linkography accounts for verbal and sketched design moves and utilises mobile gaze-tracker data to confirm visual attention and linkages between sketches. The method has potential importance for research on design cognition and collaboration, but also for analysing collaborative problem solving in other context...
Teaching and Teacher Education
Uploads
Papers by Tellervo Härkki