From the Editors

Abstract

Welcome to the final issue of the first volume of LUMAT. With two regular issues, three special issues, eleven research articles, two perspective articles and thirty general articles published, the first volume of LUMAT has been a success. With three special issues and two regular issues lined up for the second volume, we hope to continue publishing quality articles on research and practice in math, science and technology education.

The purpose of the journal is to share good practices, and present especially Finnish but also international know-how in the field of math, science and technology education. With this purpose in mind, it has been a pleasure to publish several manuscripts from our colleagues around the globe. Also this final issue of the first volume includes articles from Finnish as well as international educational researchers.

The first article, by Jeronen, Karjalainen, Kuoppala, Sääskilahti and Tirri discusses the new student admission process of subject teacher education. Their topic is especially interesting, as the coming years are about to bring changes to student admission processes of Finnish universities.

The second article is a product of an international collaboration with Finnish and North American researchers. The study by Tolppanen, Rantaniitty, McDermott, Aksela and Hand investigates how Finnish comprehensive school students received a multimodal writing lesson. They conclude that general writing skills benefit students in production of multimodal writing during science lessons.

The last study published in this issue discusses the use of classroom response systems (also known as clickers) in physics teacher education. According to the results of the North American researchers Milner-Bolotin, Fisher and MacDonald clicker-enhanced pedagogy is a promising vehicle for developing pedagogical content knowledge of science teachers. The results of this study are interesting also from a Finnish perspective, as also Finnish teacher educators are searching new ways to implement use of modern educational technology to science and mathematics teacher education.