Her professional life is coming to an end, and she is still a passionate teacher

Hlín Helga Pálsdóttir, Primary-school teacher

Abstract

Many primary school teachers have been powerful in teaching and led changes in teaching methods. One of them is Hlín Helga Pálsdóttir, who taught at both Iceland University of Education and Æfingskólinn (later named Háteigsskóli). The article reports on a study of her work during her last year as a teacher. The data collection and analysis methods are described at the beginning of the article. The following study is an account of Hlín‘s education and the theories on which she bases her teaching, where she reflects on how her experiences have helped her achieve her goals as a teacher. Finally, an example from a lesson with Hlín is given, which exemplifies how she worked with the children.

A narrative inquiry is used to document the findings of this study. The article is based on data from interviews with Hlín, field notes and her writings about her studies and work. Data was gathered through field notes, photographs, and short recordings of discussions between Hlín and her students during the classroom observations. The field observations took place in eight double lessons for a total of 16 lessons. In each lesson, Hlín worked with 8–12 students. Four approximately 30-minute interviews were also conducted with Hlín, and one longer interview at the end of the study.

During Hlín‘s studies in Denmark, she learned Kolb’s experiential learning theories. The teacher was not supposed to preach and tell the facts while the students were silent receivers. The students needed to be mentally and physically active. Hlín placed special emphasis on team teaching, outdoor education and diverse approaches to teaching reading. She planned projects where her students could choose between tasks, develop their own learning styles and attempt to meet the diverse needs of students. Science teaching was close to her heart. She emphasised the students’ activity and participation in their own learning. Hlín’s stories from her teaching show how she managed to create conditions for her students to study their environment, formulate hypotheses and conduct experiments to test their validity. She then encouraged them to discuss their findings and reflect on their learning.

During the field observation, Hlín was working on a science project that she called falling objects. She had carefully prepared the practical observations with the children, and all material needed for the children’s experiments was at hand. The lesson started with a conversation in the home corner, where nine students participated. Hlín showed the children a stone she had in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. She asked them what they thought would happen if she let both the stone and the paper fall simultaneously. She allowed every child to express their own ideas about what would happen and then participate in a discussion about their prediction. The children then got access to material to make their own parachutes. They were motivated to try out their own predictions by putting weight in the parachutes and examining if and how different weights affect the flight and direction of the parachute.

The narrative from this lesson gives an insight into how Hlín uses what she has learned and bases her teaching on knowledge and experience. She understands the importance of students being able to express themselves about the project and encourages them to talk and participate in conversations. It was interesting and instructive to follow Hlín in her last year of teaching and to get to know her focus and how she worked with her students. Here, the focus was mainly on practical science teaching, which has interested both of us for years. It was particularly interesting to see how she connected the work with the children to Kolb’s learning cycle and academics’ ideas about children’s learning. You couldn’t feel that this was her last year of teaching; the enthusiasm was still there, and you couldn’t tell that she was a teacher teaching her last year. During her teaching career, Hlín influenced school development and left an important mark as a teacher and a person respected by her students and colleagues.