| A
short history of Storyline in Norway |
|
 The
first connection with Finland was through Dr. Ria Heila-Ylikallio
of the Faculty of Education in the Åbo Akademi in Vasa.
She attended a short Storyline course in Jordanhill Campus around
1995 and became very interested on how the strategy could be adapted
for teaching purposes in Finland. To develop this she arranged
for a series of courses to be run in Vasa in 1996. These were
organised by Ann-Maj Björkell-Holm of the Department of Continuing
Education. In the late 1990s courses extended into Turku and Helsinki
and it is hoped that these courses will continue.
Guðmundur
Kristmundsson and Björg Eiriksdóttir from Iceland
have also presented Storyline course series for the Åbo
Akademi.
Ria used Storyline
as a part of her study for her doctorate which she gained in 1998
and she and Professor Anna-Lena Østern have written two
books, each on a Storyline topic for use by Swedish speaking Finnish
teachers. Because of their work, many students have made study
tours to Scotland and used Storyline as a focus for their final
dissertations. Storyline is now regularly presented to students
and teachers by the tutors already mentioned and also by Ann-Maj
Björkell-Holm.
|
NEWS Articles
- latest at the top
Storyline Study
by Finnish Researcher
Riikka
Pyysalo is a Finnish PhD student in Education at the University of Cambridge,
England. Her background is in educational studies, sociology and learning
psychology and she completed her earlier studies at the University of
Helsinki and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. While she
has mainly pursued the research path she has always been interested
in the practice of teaching, learning and schooling. She taught Finnish
to migrant children in Germany and worked as a substitute teacher in
Finland. She has also worked with distance teachers learning to use
educational technology. In educational research, a great deal of work
is being conducted in the field of learning. However, the students'
voices have often remained unheard. It is these voices that are the
focus of her research work. It was through a combination of contacts
and findings in her earlier work and lucky coincidences that she came
to know Rebecca Plaskitt, a teacher in the Lower School of the American
Community School in Cobham over a year ago. She became very interested
in the innovative Storyline work being practised there and had the opportunity
to visit her classroom last Spring. The idea of collaboration started
emerging and now Riikka is actually collecting data for her PhD in Rebecca's
classroom.
Articlein
Finnish Journal
Ann-Maj
Björkell-Holm, who works for the Inservice department of the Åbo
Akademi in Vasa, Finland, has written an article about the creative
activities involved in working with a Storyline topic. This is published
in the Åbo University's Educational Journal which is interestingly
named 'Hett Stoff' translated as 'Hot Stuff'. The publication is dated
3-4/2002 and is available from randi.weijola-hahn@abo.fi
Previous issues can be reached at the following link
New
Storyline Homepage in Finland
Ann-Maj Björkell, a Storyline tutor who has been involved in organising
and presenting many workshop courses for the Inservice Department of
Åbo Akademi in recent years has contacted me with information
about the creation of a new Storyline Homepage.
New Book from
Finland (in Swedish)
Anna-Lena
Östern, professor of mothertongue didactics in the Faculty of Education
of the Åbo Akademi in Vasa, Finland,has written this new book
on the teaching of mothertongue (Swedish) .It is published by Utbildningsstyrelsen,
the Board of Education. In one of the chapters she describes using storyline
in the teaching of mothertongue, and includes a story about the Vikings
and the topic outline that is made for it.
