Access to Equal Opportunities: building of a virtual classroom within two ‘conventional’ schools

ABSTRACT

The development of information and communication technologies has made it possible to establish inter‐institutional electronic networks to enhance the quality of education in small schools in sparsely populated countries like Finland. Along with this development, new kinds of virtual classrooms have emerged in symbiosis with conventional schools. A virtual classroom in a school context is a new, mostly uninvestigated, phenomenon. This article reports results of a Finnish project which linked two lower secondary classrooms to one virtual classroom. The article presents five practical settings in which the virtual classroom took place: Classroom ‐, school ‐, local ‐, regional ‐, and state contexts

The rapid development of pragmatism, together with intellectual and social partnership were considered as major pedagogical advantages of the virtual classroom. Two major disadvantages are also analyzed: First, pupils inability to tolerate the electronic lack of intimacy, and second, the difficulties some pupils had with self‐discipline and self‐monitoring in the face of learning tasks in the virtual classroom

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Notes on contributors

Jukka Husu

JUKKA HUSU is a researcher at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. His special interests are research on teachers’ practical knowledge and issues of the virtual classroom. He had published several articles in international journals and he is co‐writer of the book Teachers’ Pedagogical Thinking: Theoretical Landscapes, Practical Challenges(New York, Peter Lang)