The Finnish National Curriculum includes ICT competence for all school grades, and encourages primary school pupils to document their working processes of crafts classes into electronic portfolios. In her research, Virva Törmälä found out what kinds of challenges the use of craft documentation in the online environment sets to primary school teachers.
During a one-year learning project, third graders made electronic portfolios based on their crafts artefacts. In the learning project, ICT and multiliteracy skills were also practiced.
The study showed that the ICT skills of third graders varied widely, making teaching situations challenging. In addition, the online environment used was too complex for many pupils. Therefore, a lot of time was spent practicing the basic use of computers and tablets, leaving less time to make the actual portfolios.
Producing electronic portfolios of crafts with young pupils, is a field that would require even more research. Testing and mapping of suitable online environments and applications for primary school pupils is needed, so that electronic documentation of crafts can be implemented meaningfully.
The data of the study consisted of field journal notes, teacher interviews and video recordings of lessons.
The article is published in Design and Technology: An International Journal