Meet the Mentors

Professor Päivi Atjonen

What is your area of expertise?
Assessment and evaluation of learning at different school levels from the developmental perspective.

What are the most interesting or central research topic within this research area at the moment?
Formative, supportive and strength-based assessment of learning. Evaluation and assessment of higher education students.

Are you currently running your own research projects? What kind of?
The National Network for Developing Assessment Literacy (KAARO) also includes a research element. In the group of KAARO Eastern Finland, three people are doing research related to the assessment and evaluation, and during the next academic year, I will also myself be involved in research. I am a member of the Finland Flipped Learning research group at the University of Eastern Finland. Its research is focused on the effects of flipping method on assessment or on the power of assessment to support flipped learning. Karvi’s (The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre) evaluation project (ended in April 2019) still has some uncharted material available.

In which area do you want to provide mentoring to doctoral researchers?
I know the research on assessment and evaluation best.

What was the topic of your own doctoral dissertation? What method did you use in it?
I defended my doctoral thesis in education in 1993 at the University of Oulu, Kajaani Department of Teacher Education. The topic was The local curriculum as an object and instrument in the administrative and pedagogical development of the school system. In a way typical of that time, the approach was quantitative and data collection was based on questionnaires.