Hallå STEAM! Final report

Summary of the Hallå STEAM! achievements

Our team toured Finnish-speaking schools across the country, combining mathematics with Swedish language practice for one theme day.

Professor Osmo Pekonen and Associate Professor Johan Stén represented mathematics, while didactic expertise was provided by Kristóf Fenyvesi, a doctor of philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä. Pekonen and Stén gave presentations in Swedish on the subject, but in a couple of schools they also used multilingual drama pedagogy to revive significant scientific, artistic and cultural characters from the Swedish-Finnish history.

Kristóf Fenyvesi used innovative educational games that develop mathematical perception, in the hands-on STEAM (integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) workshops implemented after the presentations. Nóra Somlyódy was responsible for coordinating the project. Her contribution included organizing the school events and popularization events, creating and updating the website, caring for popularization materials and reporting.

Additionally the Hallå STEAM team was joined an advisory board of innovative educators active in Sweden: Charlotte Graham (Headmaster at Söderparkskolan in Hässleholm, Sweden), Philippe Longchamps (Teacher and Head of Department at Bilingual Montessori School of Lund, Sweden and Overseas Director of ISAS, International Society for the Advancement of STEAM, teacher of the year in Sweden, 2020) and Mariana Back (Experienced Curator with a demonstrated history of working in Science Centres, Museums and Planetariums). Charlotte and Philippe have also contributed to creating the Hallå STEAM contents.

During its three years of operation, Hallå STEAM organised many events in Jyväskylä, but also in Helsinki, Kemi, Kokkola, Kouvola, Mänttä, Rovaniemi, Savonlinna, Tornio and Ulvila.

26 school events

3 popularization events

1475 participants at school events

5 scientific articles

17 learning materials

The age groups ranged from Swedish beginners to upper secondary school students. For some of the participants, this was the first time they had been exposed to Swedish other than in their own lessons. After a little initial excitement, all were immersed in the multilingual, multicultural and multidisciplinary STEAM activities with many connections to the Swedish-Finnish history and focused on collaborative problem solving.

The working method was small groups, for which Kristof Fenyvesi has developed a wide range of materials. It proved that it is possible, rewarding and even fun to integrate the teaching of a little bit of mathematical and scientific curiosities in Swedish, in an experience-oriented way.

During the pandemic, our team has produced online material available for anyone to use in education. The collection consists of a series of lectures in Swedish on the national poet J.L. Runeberg. The results of the project include scientific publications in English in the field of didactics, and learning materials which are available as free downloads from the project’s website. The experiences of students and teachers with Hallå STEAM were documented through questionnaires.

Beyond the wide domestic recognition hallmarked e.g. with getting featured in Suomi Areena in 2019, we could present our project results several times on high visibility international forums. Our project-related publication got mentioned and summarised in the Guardian newspaper and our project’s scientific summary has been invited to the world’s largest mathematics and arts conference, the Bridges.

Working group members: Osmo Pekonen PhD, YTT, Johan Sten PhD, Kristof Fenyvesi PhD, techn.dr., Nora Somlyody (project coordination)

 

To our deepest regret, our colleague and friend, Professor Osmo Pekonen has suddenly passed away not long after the project was finalised. He was the main engine behind Hallå STEAM; his last contribution was publishing in the Dimensio lehti a summarising article as a cornerstone of our project activities.

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