The Research Community for Humanities and Social Sciences (HuSoEd) organized a seminar on December 19, 2023 in Helsinki, gathering more than 20 participants. The participants dived into topical subject didactic research themes in worldview studies, geography, foreign languages, social sciences, and the Finnish language and literature education. In addition to 10 presentations, the group discussed the shared activities during the past year, and envisioned activities for the year to follow.
The network Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education (KOSS) brings together three cross-disciplinary educational research groups, rooted in several academic disciplines from Karlstad University, Sweden; University of Helsinki, Finland, and Univeristy College of London, Institute of Education, England. We seek to understand how educators and education systems can ensure that school-based knowledge building reaches its transformative potential. We draw upon the concepts ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘epistemic quality’ to help us understand the qualities that knowledge building has when it is effective and empowering, and to help us understand how educational processes can build and develop these properties.