Students’ performance in ethics assignments in Finnish Matriculation Examination in 2017–2021

Forfattere

Nøgleord:

ethics, philosophy, matriculation examination, core curriculum, Finland, normative ethics, metaethics, average performance, assignment, grading guidelines

Resumé

Finnish students complete their studies in general upper secondary school by taking the Matriculation Examination in at least five subjects. In recent years, a growing number of students has chosen to take an exam in philosophy. However, there is no systematic study on how students perform in the philosophy exam. This study is focused on those assignments within philosophy that concern ethics. The question to be discussed is how students meet the key goals of ethics education that are defined in the Finnish National Core Curriculum 2015. The material of the study consists of the curriculum, ethics assignments, grading guidelines and the performance statistics in 2017–2021. The main observation is that the average performance, according to the statistics, is better in assignments in normative ethics than in metaethics, but in neither area of ethics, an average student typically attains half of the maximum points that is considered a threshold for a satisfactory but not yet good performance. The approach of the study is a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis. Qualitative analysis is conducted to interpret what the quantitative data about an average student’s performance tells about his or her proficiency in ethics assignments.

Forfatterbiografier

Mika Perälä, University of Helsinki

Mika Perälä is Docent in Theoretical Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, History and Arts Studies, University of Helsinki. His current research focuses on the history of philosophy, especially Aristotelian logic, psychology, and ethics, as well as the philosophy of education, and the teaching of ethics.

Eero Salmenkivi, University of Helsinki

Eero Salmenkivi is University Lecturer in Didactics of Philosophy and Culture, Worldview and Ethics, and Docent in Didactics of Philosophy at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. His current research focuses on the philosophy, worldview and human rights education, and the question of powerful knowledge in education.

Downloads

Publiceret

2022-06-28