CASE STUDY ON TEACHERS’ IN-SERVICE TRAINING NEEDS RELATED TO ACTIVITY-BASED LEARNING IN DISTANCE TEACHING

Abstract

In this study, I investigated what kind of in-service training needs teachers have related to activity-based learning in distance teaching; and what distance teaching experts and commencing distance teachers view being important in activity-based learning in distance teaching. Distance teaching is an important way to provide equal educational opportunities in the sparsely populated are-as. Activity-based learning is frequently mentioned in the latest Finnish Na-tional Core Curriculum 2014, and thus its combability to distance teaching must be researched.

This research has been executed as a case study and the data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Most of the data are related to a workshop that was held at the teacher training school of the University of Lapland on 25th April 2019. I do not study the workshop per se, but it works as a dividing point for my data. The data set includes meeting memos, e-mail chains, Power Point presentation, comments about the themes that were covered in the workshop, e-mail interviews and phone interviews.

One notable result of this study was how much distance teaching experts’ and commencing distance teachers’ views differ on certain topics of activity-based distance teaching. Secondly, relying solely on workshops is not a sufficient way for in-service training related to activity-based learning in distance teach-ing. Tutoring could be implemented in teachers’ in-service training, since it would support shared knowledge between teachers and other experts on the field.