Biography
While growing up in Ekenäs, a small town in Finland, I focused my efforts equally between sports and music. At the age of 16 I moved to Helsinki to study in a music high-school for 3 years, after which I enrolled in the Finnish army for my compulsory service. Once my service was complete I began my university studies at Åbo Akademi University, convinced from the start that I was to become a mathematics teacher.
As a new teacher I asked myself, what are students supposed to learn? Mathematics obviously, but is that enough? What businessmen and scientists have to know is how to investigate and how to research; otherwise they will never come up with new ideas or solve more complex problems. Traditional teaching does not support this kind of development among students. A teacher standing by the background and students taking notes is not the way to go if we want to inspire creativity.
I got in contact with Dr. Stål and he introduced me to enquiry based teaching. He tought me that there is an approach to teaching that lets students be active and be responsible for their own learning. This supported my idea that the only way to learn something is not by being told how things work, but to find it out yourself.
Co-operation, discussions and research automatically creates interest among students and it did not take me long to realize that this way of positive activity made my students results improve. However, one key factor for this to work is students having a strong knowledge in arithmetic and algebra. The curriculum used must ensure that students lay a solid foundation in algebra so that students are able to read and understand mathematics from many sources. Only then will they be able to do research and discuss in a scientific mathematical way.
Awards
- 2018
- Teknologiateollisuuden 100-vuotiassäätiö “Teacher price”
- I received this price for developing new teaching methods that creates an interest in mathematics for the students.
Article from Västra Nyland
Article from EU-etelä
Article from Svenska Yle
- 2016
- Svenska tekniska vetenskapsakademin “Teacher of the year”
- Together with Sebastian Laxell, I received this price for having created the student centered math book Matematik.fi / Ma.fi
- https://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2016/04/06/vastnylanningar-belonas-digital-matematikbok
Education
- 2005-2011
- Åbo Akademi University
Major: Mathematics
Minor: Computer science, Pedagogy
Master’s Degree in Mathematics with a Teaching Examination
- 2001-2004
- Tölö Gymnasium
Standard Finnish high-school but with extra courses in music.
Studies included languages such as English, Swedish and Finnish
Experience
- 2017 Ongoing
- Karis svenska högstadium
Teacher in Mathematics and IT
- 2012-2017
- Hangö högstadium
Teacher in Mathematics and IT - During this time I co-founded “Ma.fi”; a student centered digital math book for junior-high. My part in this project was to design The Interdisciplinary Mathematics curriculum: the humanistic approach.
- 2011-2012
- Höjdens skola
Teacher in Mathematics and IT
- 2009-2010
- Åbo Akademi University
Course assistent during my final studies; Tutoring students in classes such as analysis and matrices.