Craft education in Finland

Finnish craft education is an institutional example of how traditions are kept alive.

Craft has a long tradition in education in Finland. Craft has been taught in basic education since its origins in the 19th century (Marjanen & Metsärinne 2019). Uno Cygnaeus was a developer of the Finnish education system in the 1860s and saw the developmental aspect of craft on people (Pöllänen & Kröger 2000; Marjanen 2012;

Pöllänen & Urdziņa-Deruma 2017). Nowadays, in Finnish basic education, craft is taught from the age of seven to sixteen. In basic education, craft is compulsory in grades 1–7 and optional in grades 8–9 (Finnish National Board of Education, FNBE, 2014; Porko-Hudd et al. 2018). The competence to teach craft in formal education is achieved by completing craft studies as a major or minor subject. Thus, craft may be taught by class teachers, particularly in the primary schools (Pöllänen & Urdziņa-Deruma 2017).

Craft education after basic education prepares students for an occupation. This second-level education normally last for 2–3 years, depending on whether the student has graduated from upper secondary school. Graduate students are qualified artisans.

The next level of education is higher education at college level and is a qualification for a designer of interior design and furniture, textile design, industrial design or ceramics and glass design. There are also four universities in Finland that offer a master’s degree as well as doctoral-level education in craft (Porko-Hudd et al. 2018).

These are the University of Eastern Finland, University of Helsinki, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University. If art and design studies are included, there are more institutions that provide formal education (Studentum Oy 2015). Alongside formal education, there are after-school activities or extracurricular art education for children and young people. This education is arranged by local community colleges or craft organisations, for example (e.g. The Finnish Crafts Organization Taito 2016).

Additionally, museums act as another sector by preserving the tangible cultural

heritage of craft and may serve as a formal or informal learning environments (e.g.

Marsio 2017; see also Vartiainen 2014).

Historically, craft education has experienced periods of different emphasis on education. Marjanen and Metsärinne (2019, 49) classified these periods as craft for home well-being (1866–1911), craft for civic society (1912–1945), craft for independent hard-working citizens (1946–1969), toward equality craft (1970–1993) and unlimited craft (1994–2014). Thus, the purpose of craft education has changed to reflect the needs of society and the development of its citizens. Today, the purpose of basic craft education is to develop the skills of students so that their self-esteem increases and they feel contentment and satisfaction in their work. Craft can enhance self-esteem through the satisfying experience of craft making, thereby enhancing well-being. The purpose of craft education is to develop motoric skills, creativity and design know-how.

Craft education directs students towards an intentional, long-term and independent work mentality, develops their creativity, aesthetic, technical and psycho-motoric skills, problem-solving skills and their understanding of technology as an everyday phenomenon (FNBE 2014).

The significance of craft practice is in the long-term commitment and innovative, holistic working processes (Pöllänen 2019). The educational content is on innovation, design, experiments, documentation and evaluation, as well as in practice, work safety, entrepreneurial learning, with acknowledgement and participation. The education is based on a student-centred approach of learning through collaborative action. The knowledge of the material world is rooted in sustainable lifestyle and development.

Students are also directed to familiarise themselves with the craft heritage of Finland and other cultures (FNBE 2014.) The curriculum accommodates the framework of 21^st century competencies⁷ of the Knowledge Age. However, Kojonkoski-Rännäli (2010) highlights the autonomy of Finnish teachers. Even though the education is included in the national curriculum or education plan, teachers are able to teach the subject from their own perspectives. The teacher’s task is not easy and requires knowledge of the subject. Teachers with strong subject management are able to teach the subject contents in correspondence with their students’ needs.

From gendered craft to multi-materialism

Finland has a historical foundation of gender-based education in crafts (Kokko 2007;

Lepistö & Lindfors 2015; Niiranen 2016; Marjanen & Metsärinne 2019). Marjanen (2012) and Lepistö and Lindfors (2015) explain that craft education in Finland has a long tradition, and because of this history, craft has been gendered to men and women (1886) and boys and girls (1912). The researchers claim (ibid.) that craft education changed in 1970 when the national core curriculum was introduced to the Finnish education system. Craft became technical and textile handicraft continued to be technical and textile work from 1985. In 1994, the two subjects/contents were combined

7 The competencies (in Europe) or skills (in North America) of the 21st century are described as social (collaboration, communication, digital literacy, citizenship) and individual (problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, productivity) (Voogt et al. 2013). Trilling and Fadel (2009) sort the skills thematically into three core skills: 1) Life and career skills, 2) Learning and innovation skills, and 3) Information, media, and technology skills. Binkley et al. (2012) recognize ten core skills that are categorised into four groups:

Ways of thinking (creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making, learning to learn, metacognition), Ways of working (communication, collaboration), Tools for working (information literary, ICT literacy), and Living in the world (citizenship – local and global, life and career, personal and social responsibility – including cultural awareness and competence).

as crafts and remained like this in the 2004 curriculum. In the 2014 curriculum, craft was presented as multi-material (FNBE 2014).

Multi-material craft does not dichotomise between soft and hard materials or technological and textile work; it is craft, despite its materials or methods (Lepistö and Lindfors 2015; also Pöllänen & Pöllänen 2019; Pöllänen 2019). The purpose of multi-material craft is to develop the students’ skills holistically in order to give them a deeper understanding and knowledge of the processes and phenomena at hand, while also increasing their innovativeness and creativity (Kojonkoski-Rännäli 1995; Pöllänen 2009; Lepistö & Lindfors 2015). Multi-material learning in doing creates opportunity to understand sustainable development through maker-material interactions (Pöllänen 2019). The present study supports this view and makes no distinction between the materials or methods being used.

Metsärinne and Kallio (2014) explain the students’ growing interest in technical craft and decreased interest in textile craft by the changes in technological appliances.

Niiranen (2016) discovered that girls are more interested in environmental aspects in relation to craft education, as well as useful and decorative artefacts, whereas boys are more interested in electronic devices. There is also evidence that when the materials and methods are combined, boys are also interested in textiles; this supports computational thinking (Fernaeus et al. 2014; Pöllänen & Pöllänen 2019). However, this does not explain the lack of interest in textile craft in education. There are various reasons that could the affect lack of interest. It is evident that the world has changed with fast fashion and clothing production (Fletcher 2008) and this affects consumer goods and behaviour on a global scale (Niinimäki 2011), as well as the need to make clothes themselves. On an individual level, the motivations to learn craft can vary.

For example, Hilmola and Lindfors (2017) grouped students as positive achievers, positive underachievers and negative achievers and found correlations between gender, attitudes, knowledge and skills in managing the holistic craft process.

Facilitating learning

The Finnish National Curriculum of Education (FNBE 2014) requires craft to be taught holistically. This means that craft is idealised, designed, produced and evaluated by the students individually or collectively (see also Pöllänen and Kröger 2004;

Kojonkoski-Rännäli 1995). The teacher is the facilitator and instructor in the learning process (Lepistö & Lindfors 2015). Metsärinne and Kallio (2014) argue that craft education should be student-centred and be close to students’ real-life experiences in order to sustain their interest in craft both intrinsically (after school, hobbies) and extrinsically (school, learning outcomes). Rönkkö (2011) lists five important meanings for craft education: developing craft skills, the holistic craft process, making a craft product, developing craft expression and paying attention to the diverse contents of craft education.

Rönkkö (2011) suggests that student craft teachers have different meanings to craft according to their viewpoints, product, skills, tradition and expression. The product-oriented students pay attention and start designing a product initially, the skill-oriented students focus on developing their skills, craft tradition-skill-oriented students are inspired by traditions, and the craft-expression-oriented students are concerned about the psychological aspects of craft making, the emotions, experiences, memories, etc. Kröger (2016) concludes that the different viewpoints of student craft teachers are actually transferred from their own time at school and in higher education,

these distinctions need to be modified to accepting other possibilities. Thus, it is not insignificant how craft is taught.

Making a decision yourself, self-determination, is directly connected to intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (Deci & Ryan 2000; Ryan & Deci 2000; cf. Hilmola & Lindfors 2017). Autonomy, competence and relatedness are core factors that direct human motivation and behaviour, not only in a school environment (Ryan & Deci 2000;

Määttä & Palmu 2018; see also Jaatinen, Ketamo & Lindfors 2017). Another driver for motivation is flow, the ability to focus on a task and be carried away without the sense of time (Csikszentmihalyi 2014). Furthermore, flow is associated with craft making and well-being (see Pöllänen 2013; Huotilainen et al. 2018). In a craft context, motivation and the meaningfulness of tasks support the engagement in design and crafting processes (Porko-Hudd et al. 2018). Even the youngest students in pre-school environments enjoy craft making, once they have the ability to make decisions according to design and procedure (Yliverronen & Seitamaa-Hakkarainen 2016).

To facilitate learning, different learning strategies and didactical tools have been introduced in relation to craft education. Collaborative learning and design may increase active learning of open-ended problems and requires problem-solving skills that can be enhanced during a holistic design process (Kangas, Seitamaa-Hakkarainen

& Hakkarainen 2013). Design-oriented pedagogy is based on participatory learning, the internet as a technological platform and co-development (Vartiainen, Liljeström

& Enkenberg 2012, 2100). Co-teaching and co-creation with open themes in interdisciplinary projects are requisites of the curriculum (Porko-Hudd et al. 2018).

Another aspect and possibility to apply crafts is a practical approach to STE(A)M in education. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, the additional A meaning Arts (see also Kangas 2014, 71). In craft education, the students will have the opportunity to learn and apply hands-on the mathematical equations, chemistry and physics learned in the other STEAM lessons (Vähävihu 2006;

Kokko, Eronen & Sormunen 2015; cf. Nimkulrat and Matthews 2017). Biedenweg, Monroe, and Oxarart (2013) argue that in education for sustainable development (ESD), particularly in STEM education, there are benefits in practical examples of applying ethical principles to action. This will increase the understanding of ethical issues relating to sustainability more holistically. Future craft teachers feel they have a responsibility to educate students in sustainability (Vartiainen & Kaipainen 2012).

But how will they do this, if we do not know what sustainable craft is? However, craft education is danger of extinction, if it is on the savings list of policymakers, is increasingly less valued and not defended (see Dillon & Kokko 2017; Kojonkoski-Rännäli 22.10.2018; cf. Tekstiiliopettajaliitto TOL Ry/Association of Craft teachers 2019).