Areas of expertise
Biography
I have been working as a university lecturer in geography since 2006.
I finished my Amazon research related PhD work in 2003 and since that I have been mainly teaching and developing education. I have worked in a number of administrative bodies and working grpups in different levels of university administration (university library and language centre, university education council, faculty board, teacher degree development groups, preparation group for pedagogic studies, faculty education development group) and in departmental administration (education development group, department board, student admission).
I have also participated education development in national level in the Finnish National Agency for Education (EDUFI) (National Core Curricula for basic education and for upper secondary education), in the Matriculation Examination Board (Digitalization of the exam) and in number of development projects (e.g. LUMA-SUOMI STEM Education programme and PaikkaOppi learning environment development)
I have been active in the Geographical Society of Finland (president of the society 2012-2014) and The Geographical Society of Turku.
Developing geograhy education and increasing geographical understanding in the society are the most important topics for me!
Teaching
I teach mostly topics such as regional adn development geography adn school geography. I'm also in charge of the bachelor thesis prosess (scientific writing and presentation skills, seminar work and thesis supervision) and study and career councelling at the bachelor level and partly master's level (personal study and career planning, learning skill, general (transferable) skills, Internship, projects and participation to geographical events).
I coordinate teacher education in geography and the collaboration in teacher degree (teacher's pedagogical training, school collaboration).
In master's level my main responsibility is teacher training supervision of education-related master's thesis work
I also participate in planning and implementation of courses for all the teacher students of our Faculty of Science and Engineering (Digital tools in learning and assessment, Phenomenon and modeling, Sustainable developmen tin school education, STEM education research seminar)
Research
I'm most interested in geography teaching and learning and different learning environments.