PEDAGOGY IN FINNISH HIGHER EDUCATION: A CASE EXAMPLE OF HÄME

In the context of pedagogical development in higher education (HE) this research is a case study concerning Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK), in Finland. The focus of the study is to make visible the correspondence between the international and national higher education policy emphasis and an individual higher education institution. Ten thematic approaches in higher education pedagogy were identified in a content analysis of policy documents, and from earlier interviews in Finnish higher education institutes. The data for this study was gathered in subsequent interviews at HAMK and was compared with these ten thematic approaches. The results show how the national and institutional pedagogical emphasis correspond in the case of universities of applied sciences (UAS). The correspondence with the ten pedagogical emphases were classified as (1) strongly consolidated, (2) currently highlighted and (3) less emphasized. The conclusion is that it is challenging and complicated to apply pedagogical goals systematically considering the various attributes from a world in constant change. In-house prioritize needs awareness of strategy, negotiations, and co-operation. The main points for the successful pedagogical development are (1) prioritization of the emphasis, (2) systematic progress and quality assurance and (3) co-operation within the pedagogic actors.


INTRODUCTION
In the last decades, the global world undergoing constant changes has challenged higher education institutes (HEI) to create, to innovate and to build new ways of teaching and learning so that students can learn and develop competences required for the 21st century. Several works have discussed the importance of continuous pedagogical development in HEIs, as well as the need for re-thinking and renewing practices to support students' development and prepare them to face the near future (EGGINS, 2003;SPORN, 2003;TAYLOR, 2003;VIEIRA, SILVA & ALMEIDA, 2009;BIGGS & TANG, 2011;KETTUNEN, 2011;BARNETT, 2013;RYAN & TILBURY, 2013;JONGBLOED & VOSSENSTEIN, 2016;OSMAN & HORNSKY, 2017;PIRES et al., 2018;KUNNARI, 2018A).
In Finland, HEIs are providing new learning practices and several signs of progress in the field have been noticed. For instance, HEIs are defining strategies, including their pedagogical emphasis, according to their own interests and aligned to the Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC) agreement, settled individually with each of the HEIs (NURMI & MAHLAMÄKI-KULTANEN, 2015). Other examples in the Finnish context include the teachers' role as a facilitator instead of a transmitter of information. Also, the HEIs have a renewed curricula focus on competences in close connection with companies, in order to promote learning towards working life, besides other advancements (POSTAREFF et al., 2007;PARPALA & LINDBLOM-YLÄNNE, 2007;KETTUNEN, 2011;KUNNARI, 2018;CARVALHO et al., 2018;FRIMAN et al., 2018;KUNNARI et al., 2018). There is a substantial challenge in prioritizing and resourcing the various demands.
In this context, one Finnish HEI that has been playing an important role in pedagogical development is HAMK. HAMK has established pedagogical targets, provided support for teachers and students, engaged in projects and has developed the ability to face this challenge with other HEIs. The aim of this research was to analyze how HAMK's pedagogical emphasis corresponds with the national targets on the policy level. In order to understand this, the authors interviewed one of HAMK's managers, HAMK's staff connected to important projects and HAMK's experts in the pedagogical field. A semi-structured interview was conducted based on ten thematic key points which came from an earlier study (CARVALHO et al., 2018) in which the authors used two different data sources which they analyzed. First, the policy documents from the European Union (EU), the Finnish Ministry of Education (MoEC) and the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC). Second, from interviews with pedagogic experts from all Finnish universities (14) and UASs (25). The aim of the current study was to analyze the current situation in one UAS, HAMK, and determine what kind of pedagogical emphasis dominates the institute and how HAMK reflects the national key areas.

THE UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES CONTEXT
The establishment of the UASs in Finland and the influence of the European Union (EU) are important to understand the Finnish UASs and their pedagogy. UASs were established at the beginning of 1990s in Finland. The basic idea was to construct a so-called dual model in the Finnish higher education sector, in which 14 traditional universities already operated. In a merging process earlier colleges were put together mostly regionally. In two cases, the bases for integration were content based (deaconess education and humanitarian education). The MoEC and correspondingly the UASs profiled themselves as work-related, regional institutions, representing the integration of theory and practice. In the 1990s the ideas of so-called mode 2 knowledge production, in which multidisciplinary teams are brought together for short periods to solve specific problems (GIBBONS, 1994) gained significant interest and was applied in the ideas and practices in UASs. The regional emphasis was due to the fact that their institutional history often involved local or regional ownership or national regional policy which pushed HEIs to cover the whole country (SALMINEN, 2001). The fundamental difference between traditional universities was the more practical than research-based orientation. The character of the research activities in UASs is applied, which means close relations with customers in companies and users in society. Typically UASs are multidisciplinary. Degree programs in technology, health care and business are run in almost every UAS in . Beside this, degree programs in culture, the bioeconomy and human sciences exist in some UASs.
According to MoEC (2018) and Act 932/2015, the role of the UAS are to offer bachelor's and master's studies, to provide lifelong learning that responds to the needs of working life, to carry out applied research, to develop innovation activities that serve education at other UAS and to support regional development. This role shows how practice-oriented the UAS's strategy should be and, consequently, their approach to pedagogy. Also, aligned to the Act 932/2015, Kettunen (2011) affirm that the UAS is part of a wider community in their socio-cultural setting showing that their start point of the pedagogical development arises from the cultural theory and the constructivist view of learning (VYGOTSKY,1978;PIAGET, 2001). Other processes that had an important influence on the UAS's pedagogy approach was the Bologna declaration in 1999. To become part of the EU higher education area (EHEA) the Finnish UASs had to adapt some points. From 2004 to 2006 Finland has participated in a project called "Participation of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences in the European Higher Education Area" which aimed to support the Finnish UAS in a transition to student-centered learning and competence-based curricula (RAMAN, 2007;PIRES et al., 2018).
Since the foundation of UASs, networking and collaboration on a national level has been a characteristic means of development. For instance student dropouts and counseling, RDI facilitation

METHODOLOGY
This research is a single case study, based on the work by Yin (2014), in which HAMK represents a typical example of Finnish UAS (www.hamk.fi). It is multidisciplinary, regional and operates in six campuses in the Häme region. It is also the only HEI in the area. HAMK operates one of the five teacher education colleges in Finland.
The topic of the study is HAMK's pedagogical development, and the data for the study was gathered in semi-structured interviews with one vice rector from HAMK, two heads from the HAMK100 team (a program running at HAMK to improve teacher competence), one head from the LeaD Team (a project responsible for developing educational technology at HAMK) and eight of HAMK's experts. The interviews were conducted from June 2018 to June 2019 on HAMK's Visamäki campus situated in Hämeenlinna, in Finland. The interviews were conducted face-to-face and were recorded. The lengths of the interviews were from one to two hours. The authors have used a qualitative theory-based content analysis to understand the answers and to reflect on HAMK's pedagogical development (PATTON, 2002).
The basis for the interview was a study conducted by Carvalho et al. (2018) that identified ten pedagogical emphases in Finnish HE. These ten emphases were identified based on a document analysis with source documents from the EU, the MoEC and FINEEC and verified in practice with interviews conducted in 39 Finnish HEIs (https://blogi.oamk.fi/2017/11/30/2903/). According to study, ten emphases are highlighted in Finnish HEI. They are: a student-centered approach; digitalization; a working life orientation; a competence-based curriculum; the learning environment; internationalization; and methods. These themes were elaborated on in a questionnaire composed of 38 questions aligned to these ten key points to evaluate HAMK's pedagogy, Figure 1.

Figure 1 -Ten Thematic Interviews Points
The interview themes were formulated in three sections as follows: The first section was constructed using general questions to understand how HAMK has developed its pedagogy and where the ideas behind the pedagogical development came from? The second section was based on the ten thematic key points. The questions were formulated (PATTON, 2002) in order to understand how HAMK has worked with each of the thematic points, in addition to how the university has given teachers and students support so that they can develop the competences necessary to face this new pedagogical challenge, and whether there were any projects running regarding the thematic points. The third section was designed to understand, what the main challenges in pedagogical development are.
The interviews were recorded and transcribed. After the transcription, the document was sent to the interviewees so that they could validate it and also add any missing information. After that, the final document was read, and each theme was analyzed separately. To complete the analysis the interviewees suggested links, materials and documents with the aim to enrich their answers. All the data was analyzed according to the themes and the results were compared to the agreement settled between HAMK and the MoEC. Other documents were also compared such as the HAMK100 program document, HAMK's Strategy 2030, as well as some articles and research by HAMK in order to complete the analysis and avoid overly personal perspectives.  Offering facilities, buildings and laboratories to encourage students to build their own learning.
Flexible curriculum fits the students' interests and allows them to be an entrepreneur on their own path.
Encouragement of students to use and build networks, which will support their studies. Planning and designing learning environments collectively.

Internationalization
Internationalization as a goal.
Enhancing international cooperation.
Degree programs in English.
Offering of International education-training programs.
Degree programs individually.   Figure 5 summarizes HAMK's pedagogical aspects based on the ten thematic approaches. It also shows where the guidelines have come from and the projects related to them. The colors characterize the development level, in which green represents a consolidated status, yellow represents a highlighted point at HAMK connected with strong projects, and red represents an approach which is less emphasized.
Therefore, a student-centered, competence-based curriculum, the learning environment and counseling and guidance are consolidated approaches at HAMK. Digitalization, a working life orientation, internationalization and entrepreneurship are highlighted points and connected with strong projects.
Sustainable development is an approach which few commented on the interviews and is consequently less emphasized, even though HAMK has set an important target with MoEC and committed to it in the HESI (SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE PLATFORM, 2018;FRIMAN et al., 2018) project. Green: Advanced.
Yellow: Developing: Highlights pedagogical points connected with strong projects.
Red: Emerging. Figure 5 shows that HAMK has created an atmosphere and has set team objectives as well as motivated peer development so that teachers can collaborate and develop faster. There are a lot of research projects and activities going on at the university. In that context, during the interview, we came up with a further question: "How can the research and projects' achievements be used or shared so that all the teachers and staff could benefit from them?" We believe that this could be helpful to enhance pedagogical development. Another question was "What kind of impact could pedagogical development achieve on the student, teacher, institutional and regional levels?" This research shows HAMK's stage of pedagogical development through the thematic approach.
The results show that HAMK, nowadays, has a student-centered, competence-based curriculum, in addition to a positive learning environment and counseling and guidance as strong points. Furthermore, HAMK has strong national project connected to developing digitalization, a working life orientation, internationalization, entrepreneurship and teachers' competencies and methods. The research has pointed out sustainable development as a weak point. Indeed, learning about sustainability in the disciplines and degree programs was not yet indicated or connected to society. This is a challenge which HAMK needs to face and has to find ways to put into practice.
However, HAMK does not have a document that defines the pedagogical goals at HAMK, although the university has defined its targets in the HAMK Strategy 2030 with some important points and has used strategy meetings to emphasize and align guidelines. A dialogue and balance between many of the development areas are necessary. One important issue that HAMK's managers should take into account is how to create synergy and connections between divisions and development areas in order to encourage a dialogue and achieve a balance of the thematic approach. HAMK has run a coaching program, the HAMK 100 program, and the LeaD Team project to support teachers' pedagogical development, motivate peer development and set team objectives to enhance development. Individual plans are set between teachers and heads so that teachers can plan their development according to individual needs and interests.
Student feedback is always considered so the UAS can understand what should be improved and focus on the best practices. Pedagogical development should be thought of as a continuing process, and as an issue which must be always updated. Setting pedagogical and managerial targets is a challenging and fundamental issue.
The synergy of an organization supports the valorization and implementation of pedagogic development.
In-house actions prioritize needs awareness, strategy, negotiations, and co-operation. The main points for the successful pedagogical development are (1) prioritization, (2) systematic progress and quality assurance and (3) co-operation between the pedagogic actors.