Browsing by Subject "interaction"

Goals. This master's thesis research was aiming at discovering from interaction between the employee and supervisor, the kind of information that will increase the use of protective equipment (PPE) and improve safety in the construction site. The study examined the meanings that the supervisors associate with PPE, as well as situations in which a manager should point out the employee to use protective equipment. Methods. This qualitative research belongs to socio-cultural communication research tradition. This speech communication study was carried out from the perspective of ethnography of communication. The study included five semi-structured interviews, 8 video recordings from construction sites, an online discussion, observation notes from 16 different construction work situations, as well as 10 journal articles, including photographs. The method of analysis was the cultural discourse analysis (CUDA). It was used to study how managers produce meanings related to the use of protective equipment in interaction. The concept of relational work was used to study the interaction between the supervisor and the employee from the supervisor's point of view. Results and conclusions. The study showed that employee's objections to the use of protective equipment carry a strong cultural message. The study also showed two different cultural ways of speech, "getting involved" and "taking notice". The main differences were with the meanings related to the use of protective equipment and the interaction with employees. "Getting involved": managers linked the PPE with a lot of different meanings, many of which were negative. For example, PPE prevented working or the use of PPE was considered unmanly. They perceived that reminding about the use of PPE was negatively marked, impolite and inappropriate. "Taking notice" managers related the PPE with professionalism and safety. They also perceived that reminding about the use of PPE was unmarked or positively marked, polite and appropriate. The results can be utilized in helping the interaction between the manager and the employee associated with the PPE.

The purpose of the study is to highlight the processes of autism spectrum disorder’s social construction and to construe reality in behalf of more equal and free society. This thesis targets the theoretical framework of social constructionism to specific social contexts that illustrate autism spectrum disorder through real life experience. Material used in this thesis is published by the Finnish Association for Autism as a part of their 100 autisms campaign. Material is interpreted as a political statement by the Finnish Association for Autism that aims to advance positive knowledge of autism spectrum disorder. Analysis of this study is conducted with discourse analysis using Erving Goffman’s sociological perspective to interaction and theory on facework. The theoretical framework of social constructionism showed the social construction of autism spectrum disorder through language based meanings that gave the phenomenon its construed essence. As an element of social interaction autism spectrum disorder was to explain and help, but also something that brought both challenge and joy to other participants of interaction. Autism spectrum disorder was found to be an unnecessary element in certain circumstances.

Knowledge co-production has become more widespread in sustainability research as it possesses the potential as a tool to provide policymakers with usable knowledge in collaboration with researchers to increase the impact of scientific knowledge. This thesis complements the current literature by providing empirical insights of the perception of Finnish national-level policymakers who have participated in Strategic Research Councils (SRC) projects. SRC is a funding instrument with the aim to produce high-quality research with societal impact in collaboration with relevant stakeholders. The perception of Finnish researchers is already somewhat covered in literature and therefore the material for this thesis was collected by interviewing non-researcher participants in SRC projects. The analysis of the material was conducted as a theory-bound qualitative content analysis. The first coding was conducted with a material-based approach to allow the perception of the interviewees to prevail. The final analysis is conducted with three different modes of interaction obtained from the literature: science-push, policy demand, and iterative modes used as main categories. The analysis provides a standpoint on the research question: How do policymakers perceive the interaction in the co-production process? Methods to include policymakers and their participation in national-level co-production processes are versatile in Finland. The knowledge co-production between researchers and national-level policymakers results in usable knowledge and furthers policy uptake especially when collaboration and participation are genuine and profound. This study concludes that the inclusion of policymakers in the early stage of research, two-way communication, iterative interaction, and trust building are factors related to successful interaction, as the policymakers perceive success. The success factors could also help to overcome barriers of co-production presented in earlier literature.

Tämän tutkielman tavoitteena oli selvittää, millaista on digitaalisissa peleissä tapahtuva vuoro-vaikutus, digitaalisiin peleihin liittyvä vuorovaikutus pelien ulkopuolella sekä miten tätä vuoro-vaikutusta voidaan tukea pelikasvatuksen keinoin. Aikaisempi tutkimus on sivunnut vuorovai-kutusta digitaalisissa peleissä, mutta suoraa tutkimusta vuorovaikutuksesta digitaalisissa peleissä tapahtuvasta vuorovaikutuksesta ja sen tukemisesta pelikasvatuksella on yleisesti vähän var-sinkin Suomessa. Tämän tutkielman tavoitteena on täyttää tämä aukko tutkimuskentässä tarkastelemalla digitaalisissa peleissä tapahtuvaa vuorovaikutusta ja sen tukemista pelikasvatuksen keinoin. Toteutin tutkielman kuvailevana kirjallisuuskatsauksena kirjallisuudesta, joka käsitteli digitaalista pelaamista, vuorovaikutusta ja pelikasvatusta. Hyödynsin tutkielmassa kotimaisia sekä ulkomaisia lähteitä, jotta tutkielman tulos olisi mahdollisimman monipuolinen ja kuvaileva. Käytin tutkielmassa pääosin viimeisen kolmen vuosikymmenen aikana julkaistua materiaalia tutkittavan ilmiön, eli digitaalisten pelien uutuuden vuoksi. Tutkimuksen tuloksena oli, että digitaalisissa peleissä tapahtuva vuorovaikutus on moninainen kokonaisuus, jota tapahtuu monessa eri muodossa, joka on joko peliin liittyvää tai täysin liittymätöntä sekä sisältää positiivisia sekä negatiivisia näkökulmia. Digitaalisissa peleissä tapahtuvan vuorovaikutuksen tukeminen pelikasvatuksen keinoilla on mahdollista opettamalla digitaalisia pelejä pelaaville pelisivistystä, johon kuuluu hyvien käytöstapojen noudattaminen muita pelaajia kohtaan. Johtopäätöksinä näistä asioista voidaan pitää sitä, että pelikasvatusta tarvitaan, jotta kaikki voivat nauttia digitaalisten pelien pelaamisesta ilman negatiivisia vuorovaikutustilanteita digitaalisia pelejä pelatessa sekä tutkimusta vuorovaikutuksesta digitaalisissa peleissä tarvitaan lisää Suomessa.

Objective of the study. Previous studies have concluded that applying collaborative learning methods in university courses, such as a small group work, enhances profound understanding of a learning issue and students’ thinking processes. In a group, students bring up new ideas and process, justify them from different perspectives, evaluate explanations and try to form a shared understanding of the theme to be studied. Questions have been found to be effective for improving students’ deep and collaborative knowledge elaboration, but the interrelationship between these two has not been investigated extensively, thus, only in the context of medical education. The objective of this study was to analyse how questions are used in a small group discussion for enhancing undergraduate students’ collaborative elaboration of knowledge in the context of biosciences. Methods. In this study, the video data collected from a small group discussion in a field course in biology were analysed. The focus of the analysis were the utterances in the group discussion of eight first-year bioscience students and their teacher. The aim of the group work and the discussion was to find out the students’ prior knowledge and elaborate ideas for defining a research problem. Theory-based content analysis was used to classify different question types and the quality of elaboration in answers that the students expressed. Finally, different question types were compared in relation to the quality of subsequent answers. Results and conclusions. In line with previous studies, the students elicited factual and declarative questions checking prior knowledge and the accuracy of their ideas. The teacher presented explanative and meaningful questions when asking the students to interpret and meta questions when encouraging other students to join a discussion. The students rarely elaborated and explained learning issues collaboratively. When answering, the students accepted different ideas without explaining or elaborating them further. When the teacher was involved in a discussion, the teacher explained and clarified issues on behalf of the students. The results emphasised the interpretation that students are used to express simple questions that do not challenge their thinking but that teachers can use explanative and meaningful questions to support students to elaborate their ideas thoroughly. The results show that applying collaborative learning methods requires that students are taught to ask meaningful questions and that pedagogical programs aiming at learning question strategies enhancing collaborative learning are developed and made available for teachers.

Objectives. Reciprocal interaction between a parent and a child can face many challenges due to preterm birth. Not only is the preterm infant developmentally immature for social interaction, but also the parent may find it challenging to interact with the preterm child. Even though the preterm child would greatly benefit from parents’ support, it can be difficult for an anxious parent to support a child adequately, further harming the development of the preterm child. The aim of the current study was to examine how maternal anxiety after preterm birth affects later interaction between parents and the preterm child and the development of the preterm child at 2–3 years of age. Also, the associations between interaction and screen time and child’s development were examined. Methods. Participants of the study were 27 preterm children who were born at 30,20 (±2,27) weeks of gestation. Mothers assessed their anxiety after the preterm birth with a STAI -self valuation questionnaire at the time of the gestational age of 35 and 40 weeks. Later at the 2–3 year follow-up mothers, fathers or both parents estimated interaction with a questionnaire that examined the amounts of language and music actions at home and child’s screen time. Also, child’s development was assessed with Bayley-III. The associations were examined with Pearson correlation and Spearman order correlation coefficients. Results and conclusions. The results show that maternal anxiety after preterm birth is acutely very common and half of the mothers were moderately anxious. When anxiety seemed more chronic instead of short-lived, maternal anxiety after preterm birth was associated with less interaction at 2-3 years of age. In homes of less anxious mothers, parents and children’s siblings played more music and premature children spent more time watching television or otherwise spending time with smart devices than in the homes of more anxious mothers. In this study, the higher amount of child’s screen time was associated with poorer socio-emotional development. Screen time’s effect on socio-emotional development can be even more harmful with prematurely born children since they often suffer from developmental deficits and challenges in reciprocal interaction. Even though it seems that less anxious mothers mean well and want to offer more stimuli for their preterm children, they may not help the child by offering him or her more screen time. The results add to previous knowledge about screen time’s associations with poorer socio-emotional development for the first time with preterm children.

The aim of this study was to describe difficulties in kids self-regulation and define multiple things that cause it in day care interaction situations. The research questions are 1. How difficulties in self-regulation appear in interaction, 2. What are the causes that effect to self-regulation, and 3. What pedagogical methods are applied concerning self-regulation in day care groups in this research. Stress is closely related with self-regulation. When faced with a stimulus, people become alerted. That elevates stress level and calls for self regulation. Self-regulation is considered as dependent on circumstances and interaction. Difficulties in self-regulation often coexist with difficulties in peer relations. People have inborn abilities to regulate emotions and behavior, but self-regulation skills are also learned in interaction with others. Human is considered to be pro-social by birth, and to be favoring helping others. Interventions concerning self-regulation has been developed, to enhance pedagogical sensitivity among day care teachers. Pedagogical sensitivity reduces stress and helps children to self-regulate. Two day care groups from Helsinki participated in this research. Research groups had children with special needs integrated. The data was collected by videotaping and observing the interaction in normal daily activities in spring 2015, two days in a row. Interesting clips were chosen from the videotapes to be shown to day care teachers together with the interviews. In interviews, the teachers commented about the situations from the videoclips and answered open questions about self-regulation. Observations from the videotapes and transcribed interviews were analyzed according to methods of qualitative content analysis. According to research findings, difficulties in self-regulation appear in interaction with unique ways. Children seem to have their own individual ways to react in face of a stress and in need of self-regulation. Difficulties in self-regulation appeared in behavior merely described with three concepts: ”fight, flee or freeze”. Difficulties were either active and extraverted, or passive and introverted. The causes that effect self-regulation in this research were distinctive and dependent on the situation. Children had very different abilities to face day care interaction situations. Self-regulation was effected with multiple, also random causes, and because of that self-regulation cannot be seen linear from its causes and effects. Causes were classified as 1. abilities to regulate, 2. causes that strain and challenging interaction situations. These three causes can be found in all research situations that had self-regulation difficulties. Adult support, well-planned, structured day care environment and customs, that have been formed together, were the main causes that supported self-regulation in this research. In research day care groups self-regulation difficulties were prevented in many ways. Teachers had good knowledge and know-how about self-regulation. To support development of self-regulation in wider perspective knowledge should be increased. Children should have opportunities to train their self-regulation skills in their natural interaction situations, for example, with adult supported play, and interventions that enhance emotion-regulation and interaction skills.

Purposes. This is an ethnographic case study about elementary school teacher as a listener of a child's voice and about children as ethnographers in the classroom. The current study aims to make visible factors that limit listening child's voice at school and especially in the interaction between the teacher and the student. It also describes children's views and thoughts about school. This study is a part of consortium research "Children tell of their well-being - who listens?" (TelLis, a project number 1134911). Methods. The study was conducted at the school during four weeks at spring 2013. The data was gathered using children as ethnographers -method and consists of 57 classroom diaries written by fifth and sixth grade students and reflected by their four elementary school teachers. In addition, data includes children's drawings, teacher's interviews before the study, two teacher's group interviews and observation notes. In this study I describe teachers as listeners of students' voice during children as ethnographers -period. I ask, what kind of knowledge teachers find in children's classroom diaries. I also ask, how teachers make use of classroom diaries at their work. Analysis is based on qualitative content analysis. Findings and conclusion. Teachers found knowledge of students' culture and knowledge of their action, thoughts and opinions in classroom diaries. In addition, teachers looked for knowledge to evaluate competencies and developmental needs of students' and the class. Teachers used classroom diaries primarily as a tool of evaluating and educating children, but also as a tool for listening children and educating themselves as professionals. According to content analysis, listening to child represented mostly listening based on evaluating and educating children and themselves. There was less listening based on developing the school and the least listening based on encountering a child. Because of teachers' strong aims of evaluating and educating, listening to child was limited. The current study shows, that despite of several factors limiting listening to child's voice in society, school community and class community, teacher with his/her aims, views and actions has an emergent role as a listener of a child's voice. Teachers should create especially those kinds of listening moments that are based on encountering a child naturally and humanely.

The description and analysis of oral language use is a daunting task. In this study, I have attempted to look not only into oral language but also to probe a bit deeper into the interaction taking place between an interviewer (S) and an interviewee (Int) in a typical oral proficiency interview (OPI). An OPI has been described many times, but apparently no description of this particular S/Int interaction has been made. Nevertheless, the practitioners of the art, or skill if you will, of OPI make a variety of claims about the relative effectiveness of various strategies in testing. It would seem that most of these are primarily based on anecdotal evidence. This study may be the beginning of a look at what interaction is occurring, particularly in the Finnish setting. This study presents the analysis of three actual test interviews carried out by trained interviewers working for the National Certificate (NC) of Language Proficiency (of Finland). All three interviews were at the Advanced Level in the NC scaling system. In my study, I concentrated on the testing research of the late 1990s with its eclectic focus. I chose those factors identified in studies as most pertinent to interaction: speech act, discourse analysis, lexicality contra grammaticality, floor, back channelling, overlapping, introspection, repairs and repetitions, accommodation, and negotiation of meaning. In results differing somewhat from certain earlier studies, I identified various forms of the multiplicity of interaction which did occur in these interviews. In fact, it was shown that these OPI proceeded to a great extent under the control, initiation, and interaction of the candidates. The interviewers managed their task well, eliciting a broad and varied language sample from each candidate.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are ligand-gated ion channel receptors which are widely distributed in human brain. nAChRs are often expressed pre-synaptically and they modulate the release of other neurotransmitters. nAChRs consist of five subunits: nine different subunits have been identified so far, forming multiple different nAChR subtypes with different pharmacological properties. nAChRs participate extensively in physiological functions and pathophysiological conditions. nAChRs mediate the effects of endogenous agonist, acetylcholine, as well as commonly used substance of abuse, nicotine. Addictive drugs such as nicotine and opioids cause adaptive changes in central nervous system. In addition to binding site of acetylcholine, various allosteric binding sites have been identified in nAChRs. Allosteric ligands are able to modulate the effect of agonist by binding to allosteric binding site. The aim of the experimental part of the pro gradu was to study in vitro interactions of nicotine and three different opioids, codeine, oxycodone and tramadol in SH-SY5Y cells. SH-SY5Y cells express endogenously α3* and α7-nAChRs. Binding assays were performed with radioactive ligand [3H]-epibatidine. Functional interactions of nicotine and the opioids were studied with 86Rb+- efflux assay. Codeine, oxycodone and tramadol exhibited receptor level interactions with nicotine in SH-SY5Y cells. Observed interactions were mediated by nAChRs. The opioids inhibited nAChR activation caused by nicotine without binding to the [3H]-epibatide binding site. Codeine, oxycodone and tramadol appear to affect as weak non-competitive antagonists of nAChRs. These results give further information of nicotine-opioid interactions at receptor level. There are indications that nicotine and opioids also have interactions in vivo, which may be partly explained with these receptor level interactions.