Sanna
Mäki
Areas of expertise
Biography
I have been working as a university lecturer in geography since 2006. Since 2020 I have served as the head of the Division of Geography.
I finished my Amazon research related PhD work in 2003 and since that I have been mainly focusing on teaching and education development. I have worked in a number of administrative bodies and working groups in different levels of university administration and in departmental administration.
I have also participated education development in national level in the Finnish National Agency for Education (EDUFI) (National Core Curricula for basic education and for upper secondary education in geography subject), in the Matriculation Examination Board (Digitalization of the geography exam, developing exams and assessment) and in number of educational development projects (e.g. ERASMUS+ projects, Higher education institutional cooperation with Tanzanian universities, LUMA-SUOMI STEM Education programme and PaikkaOppi learning environment development).
I have been active in the Geographical Society of Finland (president of the society 2012-2014) and the Geographical Society of Turku.
Developing geograhy education and increasing geographical understanding in the society are the most important topics for me!
Teaching
I teach mostly topics such as regional and development geography and school geography. I'm also in charge of the bachelor thesis prosess (teaching scientific writing and presentation skills, coordinating seminar work and thesis supervision) and study and career councelling at the bachelor level and partly master's level (personal study and career planning, learning skill, general (transferable) skills, Internship, projects and participation to geographical events).
I coordinate teacher education in geography and the collaboration in teacher degree programme (teacher's pedagogical training, school collaboration).
In master's level my main responsibility is teacher training and supervision of education-related master's thesis work. I also collaborate with colleagues in our Faculty of Science in teaching and developing three integrating special courses for our teacher students (Digital tools in learning and assessment, Phenomenon and modeling, Sustainable development in school education)
Research
I'm most interested in geography teaching, learning and assessment.