Key words: principles, pedagogical principles, young learners, language teaching, teachers, pupils Annatatsiya

¹²Although content knowledge is important for successful teaching, it is pedagogicalcontent knowledge and pedagogical knowledge that exert a stronger influence onoverall teaching performance, emphasized by Darling-Hammond (2000). Therefore,we are mainly interested in the pedagogical knowledge which emerges from teachers’pedagogical principles of which nature and complexity were discussed in the previoussections. Pedagogical principles act as filters through which teachers interpret andascribe meaning to their experiences as they interact with pupils and subject matter.Principles can be clarified also by means of experienced obstacles that hinder ‘goodpractice.’ In this respect, the empirical investigation reported in the following sectionsbelongs to the broad tradition of teachers’ pedagogical thinking.Based on the theoretical considerations described above, this article discussesFinnish teachers’ pedagogical principles, which they recalled and distilled from theirteaching experiences as the most important and expressed them in writing. Althoughthe relationship between ideals and actions may be indirect, the underlying assump-tion is that what the teachers wrote here also has significance for their pedagogicalperformance in the classrooms. The descriptions may reflect aims and objectives, aswell as contextual preferences, teaching methods and strategies, even their personalphilosophy toward teaching.The main research questions were formulated as follows:
- What are the main pedagogical principles of teachers in comprehensive schools?
- What are the main obstacles to the implementation of these main pedagogicalprinciples?
- How are the main principles related to the successfully experienced teaching-learning events?
- Are there differences in the main pedagogical principles, their obstacles, andsuccessfully experienced teaching-learning events, as analyzed according togender, class size, school level, and school subject?
¹³Pedagogical principlesThe teachers’ descriptions of the important pedagogical principles reflected both aims(values) and teaching strategies, both ‘reasons for’ and ‘maxims for action’. Principles were coded intofive main categories, presented in Table 1.Teaching-learning arrangements and methods, teachers emphasizedthe importance of paying attention to pupils’ individual needs and talents andpreferred learning-by-doing and active, cooperative learning. Preference for learningwas obvious. Teachers saw their efforts to be pupil-cenetred, which enriched pupil–teacher interaction, and took care of the pupils’ moti-vation and excitement which can be called ‘maxims’. Many of them simply said thattheir important principle is to use versatile teaching-learning methods. Teachers wrote: I aim at genuine and honest interaction through all means I can, so that space also foremotions could be left … for myself as a teacher and for my pupils.I teach my subject in the way that all pupils can understand it, i.e., I try to differentiatemy teaching so that all pupils are able to follow.I use versatile teaching methods so that pupils who have different learning styles couldget used to teaching as best as possible.From the background variables, only school level and school subject indicated somedifferences. For the first mentioned principle, primary school teachers paidmore attention to pedagogical arrangements than secondary school teachers. Artsteachers preferred active learning methods, both language teachers and science teach-ers appreciated pedagogical interaction, and language teachers emphasized individu-alized instruction more than other groups of subject teachers.Relationship to pupils and learning environment (649 utterances), it was important forthe teachers to treat pupils fairly, just and equally and to create a pleasant, joyful, openand peaceful learning environment. These are good examples of general pedagogicalknowledge and refer to the defi-nition of a principle as a ‘fundamental assumption’ or ‘basis for conduct’. Femaleteachers appreciated relationship with pupils and pupil groups more than males in Some teachers focused also on expected skills and attitudes (433 utterances), sayingthat they want pupils to become conscientious, to learn to work hard in order toacquire life skills, to develop practical skills, and to encourage their self-expression.These can be partly called ‘learning-to-learn skills’, and partly skills opposite to thecognitive domain of learning. Teachers seemed to pay less attention to pupils’ skillsand attitudes if they had more than 25 pupils in their group, if it was compared onlyto the group of teachers who taught less than 16 pupils. Obstacles to pedagogical principlesAs mentioned in the theoretical framework, teachers’ efforts to identify pedagogicalproblems, to compare ideals to perceived classroom practises may clarify priorpatterns, strategies, or principles. Therefore, teachers were asked to describe the obsta-cles they had experienced to the principles’ implementation.The teachers’ statements were coded into three main categories, presented inTable 2. It indicates that the number of obstacles-related notions (f = 2608) was lowerthan that of principles (f = 3207).Teachers were not pleased with the various pre-requisites or requirements forlearning or pedagogical work (1357 utterances). They said that ‘there is not enoughtime to support individual growth because of overly big class sizes’ or complainedabout the increasing amount of ‘extra work (e.g., meetings, projects, administrativetasks)’. Inappropriate school routines (e.g., hurry, inflexible timetable, etc.) wereamong the most often mentioned problems. They were worried about the curriculum’soverly extensive requirements (‘It is difficult to achieve objectives because of anincrease in subject matter’), were not satisfied with teaching-learning equipment andfacilities, and they suffered from a lack of learning materials. These obstacles allbelong to so-called framework factors identified in various models of teaching-studying-learning processes (Kansanen, 2002, 2003).The second category, obstacles related to the pupils and groups of pupils (1017utterances), is familiar to all teachers in western countries.