Pedagogy in Small Primary Schools

The main purpose of this research is to produce new knowledge about good teaching practices in multi-grade classes and place-based education. I aim to gain insight into the potential of multi-grade teaching and place-based education as part of formal education. This is done by focusing on pedagogy in small primary schools in Austria and Finland. A small school is usually a village primary school (grades 1-6; in Austrian Volksschule grades 1-4) with fewer than fifty pupils and located in a rural area. Typically there are two or three teachers teaching different grades in the same class; this is called multi-grade or multi-age teaching. Advantages of multi-grade teaching, such as flexible teaching and co-operation between students, have been brought up in research, but more study about multi-grade teaching is needed. So-called place-based education has been a specific feature of small village school pedagogy; the place and its particular characteristics have been incorporated into the curriculum of the school. The concept of place is understood in this research as a concrete and experienced environment intertwining with our identity. A school is not just a building, a mere physical space, but is intertwined with our experiences of growing. Small schools are under the threat of closing, and small villages and traditional close-knit communities are vanishing as people migrate to bigger towns and cities. I argue that the significance and the possibilities of multi- grade teaching and place-based education have been ignored when schools are closed. The main task of this research project is to explore and conceptualise multi-grade teaching and place-based education. By developing a theoretical base for multi-grade teaching and place-based education, the project also aims to develop them at the curriculum level as well as to make suggestions for how to put them into practice. This is studied empirically in the context of school education: by collecting the life stories of small school teachers, by observing teaching, and by interviewing teachers and students in small rural primary schools, where life is still close to nature and the environment but where global and local changes are rapid. Commitment to a narrative approach means an understanding of how we look at the life of the past through the present and the future in our stories, and how by telling we make sense of our experiences. Like ethnographers, I, too must travel to the place, to the school, and stay there, because the stories are told there. I am not only a listener, but also an active partner, and stories are told in a dialogue between the participants. Content analysis and methods of narrative inquiry will be used as the methods of analysis. Peter Petersen`s study of multi-age group processes, and Matti Koskenniemi`s idea of social education, will be revitalised to understand pedagogy in multi-grade teaching and to consider how place is taught within its cultural and social contexts during teaching. The experiences of places will be studied from the point of view of place-based education. The research will open a theoretical base of multi-grade teaching and place-based education and give a scientific basis from which to teach them in teacher education and in school practice. It will prepare the way for pilot projects in multi-grade teaching and place-based education at schools in the future. The knowledge about the advantages of multi-grade teaching and place-based education can be utilised while creating new school practices. Collecting teachers` stories makes it possible to save valuable practical knowledge that has been developed in small schools. The research will yield a multi-voiced knowledge about pedagogy in small schools. This will provide new points of view for policymakers who are responsible for closing small schools or keeping them alive.

The main purpose of this research was to produce new knowledge about good teaching practices in multi-grade classes and place-based education. This was done by focusing on pedagogy in small primary schools in Austria (Volkschule grades 14) and Finland (grades 16) with fewer than fifty pupils and located in rural areas. There were two or three teachers teaching different grades in the same class; this is called multi-grade teaching. So-called place-based education has been a specific feature of small rural school pedagogy; it means that a place and its particular characteristics have been incorporated into the curriculum of a school located in that place. Place was understood in this research as a concrete and experienced environment intertwining with identity. The empirical part of the research was done in the context of three Austrian and two Finnish primary schools that were visited several times for 23 days. The data was collected by observing teaching, interviewing teachers, conducting group interviews with pupils, collecting pupils narratives and drawings of their school, and collecting learning diaries. The methodological approach was narrative-ethnographic research. Content analysis and narrative inquiry were used as the methods of analysis. The results revealed diverse multi-grade teaching practices that teachers used in their classes to address the needs of different learners or grades. Two main strategies can be identified: One strategy is to reduce or overcome the heterogeneity of the students as far as possible by using teaching practices like parallel curriculum or curriculum rotation. A different approach is to use practices that capitalize on the heterogeneity of the students, but also reduce teaching demands, like "spiral curriculum", "peer tutoring" and "personal work plans". For beginner teachers, multi-grade teaching seems to be demanding, especially if they have no earlier practice experience with it there are only a few studies on multi-grade pedagogy in Austrian and Finnish teacher education. The teachers in the study conveyed that they developed their personalized teaching mainly in practical situations in their own classes or with the help of their colleagues. The results are discussed in connection with teacher education with the intention of increasing the awareness of the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multi-grade teaching. Place-based education in the schools was linked to social education. Based on childrens narratives, the small school can be described as the childrens multidimensional meaning center. The childrens narratives denoted physical and social places in which children can be active together and where cooperation between them is emphasized. The narratives revealed an appreciation of the smallness, familiarity, and peacefulness of the small school. The school is also a meeting place for students parents and other villagers and is built in terms of social relationships. The heterogeneous groups in multi-grade classes and outside classrooms and the relatively small number of students and staff in small schools constitute a specific learning society, in which pupils cooperateeven naturallyand develop socially as well. The study also discusses situations in which the smallness of the school may restrict the social learning of its pupils.