Browsing by Subject "education"

Children have an intrinsic motivation to play, and play is an essential part of the versatile development of a child. A child learns, for example, social, emotional, motoric, and cognitive skills through play. The same skills are taught in Finnish schools. It is justifiable that play is a visible part of the Finnish elementary school curriculum, in which play is encouraged to be used as one of the methods in teaching. The significance of play decreases in the curriculum for the 3-6th graders even though that age of students are still children who play. The aim of this research was to study how play appears in 4-6th graders’ actions and speech in the school context, to give a voice to the school children. In addition, the aim was to study how play appears in learning and motivation, and how it appears in the building of the sense of community in a new group. This master’s thesis is qualitative research, and it is conducted through an ethnographic method. The data was collected from a class of 25 students in grades 4-6th in a Finnish ele-mentary school in August and September of 2021. The collected data had field notes, video material, photos, and interviews. The data was analyzed by coding it in themes to answer the research questions. The concluded themes discussed how play appeared in the school con-text and what kind of role play had in the building of the sense of community. The research results indicate that the students experienced play to be an inspiring and moti-vating way to learn. The students felt that play was a refreshing break from the ordinary book-oriented studying even though they were also studying while playing. The results also show that the teacher had a significant role in building both the sense of community and the learn-ing of the students. With the teacher’s support, the students learned while playing and had the courage to play with the classmates who they did not know before.

The scholarship allotment problem describes the goal of strategically offering scholarships to prospective students of a university in a way that optimises the expected return for that investment. The goal of this thesis is to formulate the scholarship allotment problem in multiple variations of increasing complexity while also introducing algorithms to solve those variations optimally as efficiently as possible. The thesis also offers some insight into the way more complex variations and generalisations heighten the difficulty of finding an optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time. The main focus and the main tool used to tackle these problems is the classic knapsack algorithm and different variations of it, like multiple-choice knapsack and multidimensional knapsack. In addition to the theoretical side, the thesis contains an empirical study into the performance and feasibility of the algorithms introduced. Concrete implementations of the algorithms discussed are all available on a public GitHub repository online: https://github.com/SirVeggie/scholarship-allotment.

Positive psychology in education is an ideological umbrella term for an educational approach that has an emphasis on the well-being and happiness of the individual. There are many schools that had elements from positive psychology before its creation but the first school to adopt a school wide Positive psychology in education approach in 2007 was Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia. This study is a holistic approach with the attempt to understand how the teachers at Geelong Grammar School look at education and the students from a positive psychology perspective. A qualitative phenomenological hermeneutic research design was applied so that the focus could be put on the ten teachers lived experience in the school environment. Semi-structured interviews were used as a method to gather the needed data, which was thematically analysed. The results demonstrate how the teachers are impacted by the environment; the way in which the teachers deal with and view a very diverse group of students reflect the positive psychological perspectives. The teachers report clear benefits both in their class environment and also offers distinct tools in how they approach the students. Most of the teachers reported an individual benefit from a self-growth perspective. Geelong Grammar school does not demand a certain level of positive psychology, that choice is up to the teachers. This choice is reflected in the research results and shows how it impacts them personally in a positive way, and how they think it impacts the students. The results show both common universal challenges, typical for a school, but there are also challenges unique to the positive psychology environment they live in. This study facilitates the understanding of adopting positive psychology in education seen from the teachers perspective. This study also highlights some of the broader challenges in our culture and life dictated by the consequential demands of economics.

Objectives. The research task of this study is to describe, analyse and interpret the use of “migrant student” and similar terms in two documents of an international intervention project, which aims to make assessment more equitable for “migrant students”. More specifically, this study aimed to answer the research question “In what manners is the migrant student positioned?”. Positioning involves the assignment of attributes to people, either to another individual/group or the utterer/their ingroup (Davies & Harré 1990). On top of assignment of attributes, naming and agentivising of “the migrant student” were considered to contribute to positioning, and were thus investigated as well. Methods. The material consisted of two documents, a grant proposal and an informational document for stakeholders, written by multiple authors, who are researchers. Documents were analysed with quantitative and qualitative means, namely frequency analysis of agent-verb-object combinations and discourse analysis. Both analyses drew from semiotics, semantics, and enunciative pragmatics. Results and conclusions. It was found that “migrant students” are consistently othered (Jensen 2011) - positioned as disadvantaged, incompetent and challenging. It was argued that the unfavourable positioning of the “migrant student” could serve to convince funders and stakeholders of the necessity and the success of the project, which is essential for securing academic funding. The implications of conducting educational initiatives that claim to advance equity for students, but simultaneously other them, were considered. It is suggested that academic othering may be necessitated by the structures that impact the agency of researchers. It is also recommended that future research not only explores academic othering in other academic genres, but also involves those in powerful positions in structures like universities.

Abstract Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences Degree programme: Master’s Programme in Contemporary Societies Study track: Sociology Author: Ona Needelman Title: “So it is… I don’t think that was racism either, but it was just a kind of ignorance.” – Providers’ perceptions on race, racism and addressing racism through School-based mental health support Level: Master’s Degree Month and year: December, 2021 Number of pages: 76 Keywords: Racism, white supremacy, mental health, education, critical race theory, anti-racism, critical discourse analysis Supervisor or supervisors: Elina Paju Where deposited: University of Helsinki Additional information: Abstract: This study explores how mental health providers at schools recognize, conceptualize and address racism and its impact on persons of colour (POC) students’ mental health. The aim was to produce knowledge on what kinds of challenges “white” structures of school-based mental health present for practicing and understanding anti-racism. The main research questions were: 1) How do mental health professionals in schools view the influence racism has on mental health and well-being of POC pupils? 2) How do school mental health professionals make sense of, and deal with, issues of racism faced by POC students and which challenges do they face in doing so? 3) How do school mental health professionals conceptualize anti-racism as part of their professional roles? The main goal for this thesis was to draw attention to and heighten awareness around the new ways in which both organizations and employees must develop and approach anti-racist student welfare services in schools. Knowledge on racism and mental health from Finland produced by POC writers and activists was utilized, as academic research of this topic in Finland is limited. Academic research on racism in Finnish society and schools, and on racism’s impacts on mental health from other countries are introduced in the literature review. The main theory used throughout the research process was critical race theory (CRT), including critical whiteness studies. Eight voluntary in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted, with five school psychologists and four social workers all working in basic education in the metropolitan area. Three main discourses emerged from conducting critical discourse analysis, which I labelled as follows: Equality and tolerance, personal awareness and belonging. Key findings were that colorblind ideology perpetuates white supremacy, anti-racism mainly relies on individuals’ awareness of racism, and reactive strategies surpassed proactive anti-racist practices Based on the findings, colorblind ideology and reliance on individual awakenings make anti-racism targeting both prejudice and structural racism vulnerable. Recognizing racism challenges all adults with power in schools. Anti-racism will require more activism and collective action within organizations to commit professionals practicing in the field to address racism through their work.

SQL kuuluu suositeltujen oppiaineiden joukkoon tietojenkäsittelytieteestä. Se on tehokas tapa varastoida dataa kontekstista riippumatta. SQL on kuitenkin opittavana aiheena opiskelijoilleen vaikea, ja tämän vuoksi SQL-opetuksen rinnalla käytetään opetusohjelmistoja. Opetusohjelmistojen avulla SQL:ää päästään opettelemaan käytännössä, paikataan suurta oppilaiden määrää opettajien määrään nähden, ja kerätään aineistoa opiskelijoiden suoriutumisesta. Oppimisohjelmistojen keräämä aineisto oppilaiden suoriutumisesta tarjoaa mahdollisuuden ennustaa opiskelijoiden suoriutumista kurssilla koneoppimismenetelmin. Tämä tutkielma kouluttaa SQL-opetusohjelmiston aineistoilla hyväksi todettuja koneoppimisalgoritmeja malleiksi, jotka osaavat ennustaa osaako opiskelija seuraavalla yrityksellään SQL-harjoitustehtävän oikein. Kyseessä ei ole tehdä mallia joka osaisi tarkastaa SQL-tehtäviä, vaan tarkoituksena on antaa koneoppimisalgoritmien tarkkailla opiskelijoilta muita kerättyjä tilastoja tehtäväyrityksen oikeellisuuden arvioimiseen ilman itse oppilaan antamaa ratkaisua. Tutkielmassa huomataan useiden koneoppimismallien olevan toimivia tämän tavoitteen saavuttamiseksi. Vastaavia koneoppimismalleja voidaan hyödyntää oppilaiden löytämisessä, joilla on vaikeuksia tehtävien tekemisessä. Tämä tieto on arvokasta esimerkiksi opetusohjelmistoille, jotka pyrkivät antamaan SQL-tehtävien tekijöille vihjeitä hyödylliseen aikaan.

This Master’s Thesis discusses the politicization of social movements through the case study of the Chilean university student movement between the years 2011 and 2017. The main objective of this research is to identify the effects of the politicization of the national university movement on the educational reforms carried by the government from 2014 onwards. The term politicization shall be related to the movement’s levels of embedded autonomy across time and is assumed to be essential to the changes taking place at the political dimension. The research was carried through an extensive analysis of both primary and secondary data, including more than 170 news articles; books written by two former student leaders; organizational and governmental reports; public and private statistics; and six reform bills. The collected data was examined through a diachronic incorporated comparison and a temporal qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). This Master’s Thesis main theoretical framework is aligned with Markus Kröger’s Theory of Contentious Agency and his notion of embedded autonomy within the state. Through a temporal qualitative analysis of five contentious mechanisms that define the level of embeddedness of social movements, it was possible to analyze the strategies used by the Chilean university student movement on a yearly basis, since 2011, and relate it to their overall influence on the national educational agenda. The findings presented point out to the embeddedness of the university student movement within the State – and therefore its politicization - from 2014 onwards, mainly as a result of the mobilization space and efforts from the previous years. I assume that the effects of the politicization of the Chilean university student movement, in line with its embedded autonomy post-2014, can be verified through the approval of four educational reform laws that addressed some of the students’ main demands, including: increasing public spending on higher education and strengthening public universities; implementing new criteria for access to public universities; gradual universal gratuity in higher education; criminalization of profit in the education system; recognition of education as a right; and progressive advancements on students’ participatory rights in state-controlled universities.

The returns to human capital has been in the core of research in labor economics. Education and particularly years of schooling as a measurement of human capital has gained established status among researchers. Cognitive skills as a measurement of human capital is a rather rare variable in research. The absence of relevant, valid and comparable data concerning skills and cognitive proficiency has reduced the amount of research concerning the relationship between earnings and cognitive proficiency. Thanks to the OECD, a new survey of adults’ skills, PIAAC, is publicly available and includes data on surveyed individuals’ cognitive skills, education and earnings among other things in more than 40 countries representing the whole population of the countries. This enables extensive analysis on the relationship between earnings and cognitive skills. In this thesis the relationship between cognitive skills and earnings inequality is analyzed using a decomposition method on the dataset of PIAAC. The implementation of this thesis is sort of a replication of a study by Blau and Kahn (2005). The core of their study was to investigate if cognitive skills explain the higher wage inequality in the US compared to other countries. This thesis studies the relationship between earnings and skills inequality and analyzes if cognitive skills explain higher wage inequality in the UK compared to other countries. Due to country specific restrictions in the earning variables, some of the countries could not be included into my sample, for instance the US is missing. The UK is thus set as the base country in the country-specific comparisons of differences in wage inequality. The model used for these comparisons is a full distributional accounting method, also known as a decomposition method, which was originally created by Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1993). The advantage of the decomposition method is that it enables the differences in wage inequality to be decomposed into different components at any desired point of the wage distribution. Under examination in this thesis are the 90-10, 90-50 and 50-10 wage gaps across countries by gender. The final sample comprises 21 countries and includes part- and full-time workers aged 16 to 65. The main question in this thesis is partly to replicate the study of Blau and Kahn (2005) and to see if the results on returns to skills and the decomposition model are similar to the results of Blau and Kahn (2005). Based on the results, some of the findings are surprisingly close to the findings of Blau and Kahn and some of the results quite different. The regression results prove a remarkable heterogeneity in estimated returns to skills and estimated returns to education across countries. A one standard deviation increase in numeracy test scores is associated with approximately a 4.8 to 15.3 percent wage rise for men across countries when education is controlled in the regression, while the corresponding associated return for women is approximately a 4.9 to 13.8 percent wage rise across countries. The estimated return to skills for men is surprisingly close to results of Blau and Kahn (2005), as they found the corresponding associated wage rise to vary from 5.3 to 15.9 percent, using a different dataset, IALS, which is a previous version of PIAAC. Estimated returns to education are remarkably high compared to estimated returns to numeracy test scores. Across countries, a one standard deviation increase in years of schooling is associated approximately with a 8.7 to 25.0 percent increase in wages for men, while for women the associated returns are between an 11.7 and 34.7 percent increase in wages. The corresponding findings of Blau and Kahn (2005) are a 4.8 to 16.8 percent wage rise for men and a 6.8 to 26.6 percent wage rise for women. Opposite to the results found in this thesis, Blau and Kahn found almost similar associated returns on wages for both education and IALS test scores, however this was only for men. For women, they found that the difference between the returns to education and returns to IALS test scores is notable. Based on the results in this thesis, there is a striking difference between the returns to education and the returns to skills, for both women and men. There is also a notable difference between women and men in returns to education. Education plays a more important role in explaining wages compared to cognitive skills, and women have even higher returns to education than men have. Based on the results of the decomposition model, in most occasions the unobservable characteristics and prices i.e. the residual inequality, explains most of the higher wage inequality between the UK and the other countries (or the lower inequality between the UK and the other country). This finding is partly in line with the findings of Blau and Kahn (2005), as they concluded that along with prices of characteristics i.e. returns to skills and education, the residual inequality weighs more in explaining the higher wage inequality in the US compared to other countries. Opposite to the findings of Blau and Kahn (2005), my results point out that the differences in observed prices of characteristics i.e. returns to observed skills and education does not play that big of a role in explaining the differences in wage inequality between the UK and other countries. Instead of prices, the second largest factor explaining wage inequality is the observed characteristics. Based on the decomposition results, distribution of skills does matter more than the prices of skills. Obviously Blau and Kahn (2005) did not have the same collection of countries in their dataset and the US was their base country, not the UK, hence the comparison must be done with caution. Nevertheless, based on the decomposition results in this thesis, the distribution of skills and residual inequality matters more than the prices of skills and education in explaining the higher inequality in the UK (or the lower inequality of the UK in some cases), though residual inequality plays the most important role in explaining the differences in wage inequality.

The thesis is about the relationship between health and wealth. The goal is to show that they are connected to each other, and that improving health can lead to improve of wealth. The first part discusses the effect of health on wealth and vice versa. It shows that better wealth is connected to better health and health increase lead to the wealth increase. Then there is a theoretical model by Grossman (1972) and which was modified by Jacobson (2000). The model shows that the health is seen as a stock and that individual can invest into the health during the lifetime. The model shows also the change, when there is a family without children (partners can invest into each other’s health) and the family with a child (parents invest into child’s health). The wage and education effect is shown and developed by Grossman (1972). The increase in wage leads to increase in health, individual has more money to visit the doctors. The increase in education also leads to increase in health, but in this case individual gets more information on healthy lifestyle and follows it. The literature review shows how education, social status, early childhood, family and nutrition affect the health. Better educated have better health and higher income. An additional year of education increases the life. Lower socioeconomic status increases the probability of consuming unhealthy goods and being less educated. The subjective social status affects the childhood, the mental health and the income. Family plays a crucial role: the mother’s health, parents education, family’s socioeconomic status effect the health of a child and the future income. The low birth weight, mental health problems in childhood and bad nutrition lead to problems in health in the future and lower income. When the connection between health and wealth, and factors affecting the health are known, it is easier to implement policies to increase the total health and wealth. The healthy individual is more productive and it leads to economic growth, what is another topic and also widely discussed.

This study attempts to discover the best predictors of mathematics and language learning outcomes across Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania by analysing World Bank SDI data and using machine learning methods for variable selection purposes. Firstly, I use the SDI data to show the current fragilities in the quality of education service delivery, while also highlighting deficiencies in student learning outcomes. Then, I use CV Lasso, Adaptive Lasso, and Elastic Net regularisation methods to help discover the best predictors of learning outcomes. While the results from the regularisation methods show that private schools, teacher subject knowledge, and teacher pedagogical skills are good predictors of learning outcomes in a sample combining observations from Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania, the results fail to infer causality by not distinguishing if unobservable factors are driving the results. To quantify the relationship of key predictors, and for statistical significance testing purposes, I then conduct subsequent OLS analysis. Despite not expecting the true partial derivative effects to be identical to the OLS coefficients presented in this study, this study highlights deficiencies in education service delivery and applies methods which help select key predictors of learning outcomes across the sampled schools in the SDI data.