Learning and digitalisation in home economics education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learning and digitalisation in home economics education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The LEAD-project (Learning and digitalisation in home economics education) united a group of teacher educators and researchers of the home economics area from 4 Nordic-Baltic universities – Tallinn university, University of Helsinki, University of Gothenburg and University of Agder (all together 12 members). It was beneficial to exchange the know-how and experiences in a particular region since the future challenges in terms of content and teaching methods of the subject area are similar.
LEAD-project set home economics education in contemporary schools into the center for integrating students’ previous knowledge and building organized knowledge structures. The target group in this project was comprehensive school students in Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Norway, who were reached by home economics teachers. The LEAD-project had two intertwined intentions. First, to find methods on how to implement ICT purposefully in home economics lessons. The innovation lies in a novel understanding of how to effectively use digital technologies in a given subject to promote students’ learning in a genuine way. Before the LEAD-project there were not many ready-made pedagogical solutions for home economics teachers to apply or these were mostly designed for the introduction/revision of the topic. Therefore, we looked for solutions that would give students help during the learning process when constructing knowledge individually or in the group. Second, we wanted to find innovative ideas for novel student-led learning tasks, which expect students experimenting, knowledge integration and construction. Putting school-learned knowledge into action helps students to understand the task at hand; to deepen their knowledge structures; and see the possibilities to transfer the knowledge also in everyday life situations that is the main goal of home economics education.
Several activities helped to reach the goals of the LEAD-project. Interactive methods, like seminars, face-to-face discussions and group work activities, were used for raising the knowledge of participants as well as for working out innovations. The work was organized mainly through meetings on national level (group work) and internationally through online meetings. Although, common study activity and transnational meetings (as much as was possible with COVID-19) were used to reach shared understanding and make decisions. Much effort was given to co-editing that enabled collaborative content creation and getting feedback on developed materials throughout the developmental phase and thereby, to raise the quality of innovations. Developed materials were partly tested in contemporary schools to get instant feedback. The overall impact of the material was evaluated by teacher students as well as home economics teachers. Data was collected primarily for the purposes of improving the materials and getting feedback for project impact, although it will be used also for scientific purposes after the project period.
The outcome of the LEAD-project is a freely available electronic material that helps teachers to purposefully integrate digital technologies into home economics teaching and thereby to prepare lessons according to the contemporary needs of the subject. In addition to lesson design and learning tasks, it consists of written didactic explanations which open the principles of developed learning materials and offer ideas how to use these most effectively in home economics education. Developed material was adjusted and translated to be suitable in all participating countries. The material was introduced and good practices shared to subject teachers in every participating country, during seminar days. All developments are made available through several online possibilities (e.g. university pages, FB-groups, e-learning material databases).
We believe that home economics teachers who participated in the dissemination event have the knowledge to use designed learning materials. Based on the qualitative feedback, the participants were inspired and excited to use the material in their lessons. Therefore, it is predicted that developed materials will raise the quality of subject teaching by increasing didactic possibilities of using ICT for learning as well as help students to deepen their knowledge structures and promote the acquisition of skills and key competences. The result of the project was especially needed and relevant due to COVID-19 crises as teachers were forced to switch on online learning and needed good ideas on how to use ICT tools in home economics lessons. The COVID-19 crisis has also influenced the long-term benefit of this project. The need to use digital tools in all school subjects has increased remarkably and therefore the didactical knowledge and lesson materials developed during LEAD-project will be added to the teacher training courses in universities. Therefore, all partners will use LEAD-project materials also in their in-service teacher training.

Project Website

https://www.tlu.ee/en/LEAD

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 85923 Eur

Project Coordinator

TALLINN UNIVERSITY & Country: EE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITETET I AGDER
• GOETEBORGS UNIVERSITET
• HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO