Doctoral researcher Julia Jaakkola and professor Jan Löfström attended the Annual Symposium of Subject Didactics organized by The Finnish Association for Subject Didactic Research on Friday 14th of February, 2025. The topic of Julia’s presentation was about her doctoral research with the title “Deliberative democratic education in Finnish schools: Teachers’ conceptions and experiences”. Professor Jan Löfström, who leads the Turku subproject, also gave a presentation at the seminar discussing middle school history teaching.
Julia’s doctoral research focuses on Finnish teachers’ conceptions of deliberative practices in the classroom and school community, how teachers implement them in everyday school life and how teachers’ background factors and their societal values and attitudes may influence their teaching practices. The aim is also to create a relevant way of measuring deliberative practices quantitatively in a survey form as this has not been done before in the Finnish context.
Participants of the Symposium consisted of researchers and teachers in subject didactics and educational sciences. Julia’s and Jan’s presentations were part of the theme group on history and social science didactics. Seminar participants and audience offered valuable comments and discussion on deliberative education from the point of view of history and social sciences teaching.
