Browsing by Subject "opettajankoulutus"

Aims. This study focuses on graduated class teachers’ experiences on their teacher education’s last teaching practice. The final teaching practice is mandatory and a part of the advanced studies in the class teacher education. It is recommended to do right before graduating because then it will best prepare students for the working life. Previous studies have shown that teaching practices are usually respected among teacher students and they seem to stick in one’s mind as meaningful experiences. The purpose of this study is to find out graduated class teachers’ experiences on their final teaching practice’s aims and guidance and also how they were able to connect theory and practice. The purpose is to give a retrospective analyse on what kind of meanings the teachers give to their final teacher practice experiences. Methods. The research data was collected by interviewing seven class teachers who had graduated from University of Helsinki during years 2017-2019. They had done their final teaching practice under the same degree recruitments. The research data consisted of individual interviews and the analysis was based on content analysis. Results and conclusions. This study showed that teachers value their final teaching practice. One of the main reasons was because it is arranged in a normal comprehensive school instead of training school. The more practical aims were more likely to be fulfilled during the practice. Practical guidance was highly appreciated. Teachers felt that connecting practice and theory was done during the final practice, but it depended a lot more on themselves than the practice’s basis. Teaching is still found as a practice-based profession and the final teaching practice will prepare students for that. Connecting practice and theory and its importance is acknowledged among the teachers. However, the methods trying to achieve it during teaching practices vary.

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää, miten rasismista keskustellaan ja miten sitä käsitellään suomalaisessa korkeakoulukontekstissa ja erityisesti opettajankoulu-tuksessa aiemman tutkimuksen perusteella. Korkeakoulukontekstilla tutkimukses-sa perehdyttiin yleisesti suomalaiseen yliopistoinstituutioon ja kasvatustieteelli-seen tiedekuntaan. Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin miten rasismia oli tutkittu ja käsitel-ty, miten rasismia tunnistettiin ja millaisin käsittein rasismista puhuttiin sekä minkä-laista koulutusta rasismiin liittyen oli annettu korkeakoulutuksen kentällä. Kasva-tustieteen parissa rasismia on tutkittu paljon alemmilla koulutustasoilla, kuten pe-ruskoulussa kun taas rasismin tutkimus korkeakoulutuksessa on jäänyt vähäisem-mälle huomiolle. Viime vuosina opiskelijat ja media ovat nostaneet esille kasvavis-sa määrissä esiin yliopiston toimintaympäristössä esiintyvää rasismia ja syrjiviä käytänteitä, joiden käsittely on ollut puutteellista. Rasismiin liittyvät kannanotot se-kä samalla tutkimusten vähäisyys kertovat aiheen ajankohtaisuudesta ja tärkey-destä. Tutkimuksessa tuodaan esiin korkeakoulutuksen parissa vallitsevia arkisia ja tieteellisiä käytänteitä, joita kasvatusalan ammattilaiset välittävät tulevan ammat-tinsa työympäristöihin. Tutkimus toteutettiin kuvailevana kirjallisuuskatsauksena ja tutkimusmetodiltaan katsaus on integroiva. Aineistoa tarkasteltiin sisällönanalyysin menetelmällä. Tut-kimuksella rakennettiin kattavaa kokonaiskuvaa siitä, millä tavoin rasismista puhu-taan korkeakoulutuksessa ja erityisesti opettajankoulutuksessa sekä kasvatustie-teellisellä tutkimuskentällä. Kirjallisuus keskittyi teemoiltaan rasismiin ja sen eri muotoihin, korkeakoulutukseen, opettajankoulutukseen, kolonialismin perintöön koulutusinstituutioissa, monikulttuurisuuteen ja antirasistisiin koulutuksiin. Tarkas-teltaviksi aineistoiksi tutkimusta varten valikoitui tutkimuskirjallisuutta, julkisia kan-nanottoja, ajankohtaisia kyselyitä sekä uutisia. Pääosin tutkimusaineistoina toimi-vat suomalaiseen kontekstiin sijoittuvat tutkimukset. Tulokset osoittivat, että rasismin ilmiötä tarkastelevissa tutkimuksissa nousi esiin pääteemoja, jotka toistuivat useissa aineistoissa. Rasismiin liittyvien tutkimusten määrä oli noussut kasvavissa määrin viime vuosikymmeninä. Tutkimusten määrän nousu liitettiin rasismin ilmiön uutuuteen, joka tuli esille rasismin ilmiön tutkimuk-sissa osana maahanmuuttajien määrän lisääntymisenä Suomessa. Kirjallisuudes-sa huomio rasismin suhteen kohdistettiin myös vähemmistöryhmien kokemiin so-siaaliseen syrjintään. Suomalaisessa yhteiskunnassa yleisissä keskusteluissa, tie-teenkentällä ja korkeakoulutuksen toiminnassa huomio rasismin ilmiön suhteen tuotiin useimmiten esiin rasismia ja syrjintää eri muodoissa kokeneiden vähemmis-tönedustajien toimesta. Aineistojen perusteella yliopisto puuttui rasismiin liittyviin ongelmiin vasta kun ne oli tuotu esiin muiden toimijoiden toimesta. Yliopistojen ta-pa myös reagoida rasismin ilmenemiseen korkeakoulukontekstissa esittäytyi läh-tökohtaisesti ongelmallisena. Tulosten perusteella suomalaisessa opettajankoulutuksessa rasismia on käsitelty pääosin antirasistisen pedagogiikan, erilaisten antirasististen ja kulttuurienvälisten koulutusten, kulttuuritietoisuuden ja monikulttuurisuuden käsittelyn myötä tutki-muksissa. Tutkimuksissa ja erilaisissa koulutuksissa rasismista puhuttiin useimmi-ten vastaavilla korvaavilla termeillä kuten monikulttuurisuuden tai antirasismin kä-sitteiden kautta. Helsingin yliopiston kasvatustieteellisessä opiskelevat toivat esiin vuoden 2019 kyselyssä, että opettajankoulutuksessa käsitellään rasismia vähäi-sesti ja sitä tunnistetaan heikosti yliopiston toimesta. Kyselyssä tuli myös esille, että tiedekunnan kouluttajien puhetavoissa oli havaittavissa rasistisia piirteitä eikä yli-opistokoulutus antanut opettajille konkreettisia työkaluja rasismin käsittelemiseen opettajan ammatissa käytännöntasolla. Kasvatustieteellisessä tiedekunnassa oli herätty rasismin ilmiön käsittelyn suhteen kuitenkin jollain tasolla, koska kyselyn jälkeen tiedekuntaan oli palkattu tasa-arvo ja yhdenvertaisuuden asiantuntija sekä tiedekunnassa teetettiin taskuopas tasa-arvosta ja yhdenvertaisuudesta. Rasismin tunnistamiseen ja käsittelyyn liittyvät koulutukset eivät myöskään taanneet syrjivien käytänteiden muuttumista. Todelliseen muutokseen rasismin käsittelyn suhteen edellytettiin konkreettisia toimintatapoja niitä käsittelevissä ympäristöissä. Tärkeää on, että rasismin ilmiön tarkastelun tutkimusta kehitetään ja laajennetaan korkeakoulutuksessa sekä erityisesti kasvatustieteellisen tiedekunnan tiedeympä-ristössä. Tulevaisuuden kasvatusalan ammattilaiset sisäistävät koulutuksestaan normeja ja käytäntöjä, kuinka rasismia ymmärretään ja käsitellään arkisissa ympä-ristöissä, edes vieden nämä opitut normit koulumaailmaan ja esimerkillisesti lasten keskuuteen.

According to the recent draft of the renewed Finnish national core curriculum, the basic concepts of grammar are to be learned already in the primary school when they are taught by a classroom teacher. As the basis of metalinguistic awareness, the grammatical concepts are complex and abstract, and a body of research evidence has raised public worry about the teachers' insufficient pedagogical content knowledge in this area; some authorities have even suggested replacing the classroom teachers, who receive very little grammar instruction during their training, with subject teachers of Finnish as the mother tongue in the fifth and sixth grades of basic education. This study aims at understanding student teachers' grammatical thinking from the point of view of the sentence elements subject and object, both usually taught during the fifth grade. I research the students' capability of identifying and defining the sentence elements and the minitheories they used in this cognitive process. I also study the relation between each minitheory and success in the grammar test. The study is part of a project that evaluates the student teachers' grammatical content knowledge, for which the data was collected in 2011. The students (N = 128) took a grammar test in which they identified the sentence elements, explained the strategies they used in the task, and also marked a fifth-grader's grammar test. I studied the minitheories using content analysis of the open-ended questions and examined their effectiveness with quantitative methods. I also considered the students' earlier performance in the national matriculation exam in relation to the level of grammatical content knowledge pictured by the test. The students were familiar with the concepts of subject and object as well as their semantic definitions but only 9.4 % of the participants managed to identify all the five subjects, and 21 % of them all the four objects. The separate and content-based analysis of the minitheories of subject and object showed that the students searched for both of them by using the same minitheories that I call semantic, syntactic, interrogative, and morphological. The morphological minitheory appeared effective in both cases, the syntactic minitheory in the subject tasks, and a combination of many minitheories in the object tasks. Therefore, the teacher education needs to put emphasis on the students' content knowledge in order to ensure that they have the profound grammatical understanding required by the curriculum.

Aims. Previous studies have shown that student assessment is a significant part of a primary teacher’s work, and it may take as much as half of a primary teacher’s working hours. Despite all that primary teachers’ perceptions of assessment literacy have hardly been studied neither in Finland nor abroad. Instead, primary teachers’ assessment literacy has been examined through different competencies. In the context of this thesis, I will construct my theoretical framework around Atjonens (2017) definition of assessment literacy and also around outlines of competencies of assessment literate teacher presented by Atjonen (2017) and Bookhart (2011). I will also be examining the classroom assessment training in teacher education both in Finland (Atjonen, 2017) and the United States of America (Stiggins, 1999). The aim of this Master’s thesis was to examine perceptions of assessment literacy of primary teachers teaching in grades 1–6. This study, therefore, aims to construct an overall picture of the perceptions of assessment literacy of primary teachers through the following research questions: 1) What kind of perceptions of assessment literacy do primary teachers teaching in grades 1 to 6 have? What kind of competencies do primary teachers attach to the concept of assessment literacy? 2) Do teachers' personal perceptions of assessment literacy and competencies attached to it match the ones presented in research literacy (Atjonen, 2017; Bookhart, 2011)? Methods. This thesis was carried out as a systematic literature review because the personal perceptions of assessment literacy of primary teachers have hardly been studied. The literature review consisted of a total of 18 research articles conducted around the world. The articles mainly covered the primary teachers' perceptions of student assessment. The data included eight qualitative, five quantitative, and five mixed-method research articles. The data were collected in one week in October 2020. In support of the data collection, precise entry and exclusion criteria were defined. Also, a critical assessment was carried out for each original research article to ensure the high quality of the material. A databased narrative synthesis was used in the analysis of the data. Results and conclusions. The review data showed that primary teachers' perceptions of assessment literacy are based on five main themes: the nature of the student assessment, primary teacher's assessment literacy as competencies, contextual factors, an understanding of personal assessment literacy, and developmental needs. Also, the perceptions of primary teachers were found to be limited and fragmented, and the level of assessment literacy was poor. Based on the results of this thesis, it appears that the primary teachers' perceptions of assessment literacy are in some way linked to the level of their assessment literacy. Limited and fragmented perceptions and a poor level of assessment literacy are probably partly the result of assessment teaching received during teacher training. In other words, assessment teaching in teachers' education does not seem to provide future classroom teachers with the necessary skills to carry out high-quality student assessments.

Media literacy is an important skill in today’s world, enabling active citizenship. As Finnish teenagers consume English-speaking media and studies have shown that teaching media literacy in EFL enhances language learning, it should be an essential part of EFL teaching. Multiliteracy, a concept including media literacy, is an essential part of the current curriculum in Finland, and requires media literacy to be taught in EFL on all levels. The aim of this study is to find out to what extent this is reality, reporting how two policy makers involved in writing the national curriculum see the current state of media literacy in EFL teaching. In addition, the study sheds light on how student teachers and teacher trainers perceive the situation. The results indicate that both pre-service and in-service teacher training on the topic is needed and that further cooperation between policy makers and teacher trainers would be highly beneficial. While all respondents agreed on the substantial benefits of teaching media literacy, it is not systematically taught in the training schools covered in this study nor do student teachers feel they receive the necessary instruction to do so in their future careers. The biggest obstacle for including media literacy in English lessons seems to be the lack of sufficient resources, time being the most prominent one. Lack of training, heterogeneous student groups and stress over student competence were also mentioned. The sample size of this study was small, and further research is needed, especially regarding the thoughts of teachers working in the field.

Goals. After the National Core Curriculum update, crafts arts’ teachers’ tasks at work were surrounded by uncertainty. Do they need to know something new? A need to learn more about their competence rose. Hypothesis was that teachers’ will experience their knowledge of hard material technics insufficient. Methods. Four craft arts’ teachers took part of the research. Research material was collected by theme interviewing the teachers individually in Zoom and recording the interviews. Recordings were litterated and material was analyzed to see the results. Results and conclusions. Craft arts’ teachers felt that substance knowledge was very good in textile arts, but with hard material technichs poor. They also felt that their pedagogical skills like motivating were poor. According to earlier researches, personal competence developes through experience and it includes skills to motivate pupils. The amount of technics of hard materials in craft arts’ teachers education was too small at the time these craft arts’ teachers studied and graduated.

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract The aim of the study is to find out the ability of teachers to act equally and anti-racist in a group of children. This study examines how much the goals of equality and anti-racism set by the Finnish Assosiation of Teacher Education (Sool ry) for teacher education actually differs from the content of teacher education in the field of early childhood education at the University of Helsinki before year 2020. Equality in the context of early childhood education and training means that every person is equal regardless of any person-related reason such as their ethnic or national origin (Equality Commissioner, 2019). The purpose of anti-racism in the context of education and upbringing is to achieve social justice among children and to prevent the formation of otherness. (Alemanji, 2018, 5). Educational institutions are not areas free of racism. However, it is important to note that it is different to declare racism in a school, for example, than to declare the whole institution racist, as the latter makes it difficult for change to review and recognize its own activities and the racism that affects them (Rastas, 2018, p. 90). The implementation of this study is divided into three parts: descriptions of the research context and descriptions of the methods of data analysis. In these subsections, the context of the research is opened and the qualitative research and the chosen method are briefly described. The study is thus a review of the literature, which is qualitative research. The review examined the Finnish Association of Students 'Teachers' document “Objectives for Teacher Education” and compared it with the contents of the curriculum for students studying to become early childhood teachers in Helsinki. Content analysis and, more precisely, thematic designing have been used as the method of analysis of the study, which has been used to find key topics in the material used. All in all, thematic design is about sharing and grouping material according to different topics (Tuomi et al., 2013, 93). This research set-up thus compared the objectives of teacher education and the actual course contents of early childhood teacher education in relation to the themes of equality, anti-racism and social justice. This literature review showed how significant the themes related to equality and social justice are in the field of education. The work of a teacher is guided by several laws and documents that bind and guide their daily activities. One important goal for teacher education is the teacher’s readiness to be able to teach different contents of social action, such as equality (SOOL, 2019). This includes equality education, cultural diversity, democracy education and social justice. Although equality and non-discrimination are key themes in almost every document guiding education and training, these are mentioned quite sparingly in the objectives of compulsory courses in the field of early childhood education. However, this is partly due to the fact that universities are independent units, which is why they can decide on their own curricula and the implementation of their goals (Karjalainen et al. 2007; Vitikka et al. 2014, 42). However, when looking at the content of the compulsory courses, multiculturalism was directly mentioned in the objectives of the two courses and other themes related to the sub-chapter on equality in this context were not directly mentioned. However, pre-primary education has a role to play in education as well as in promoting equality, which is why teachers should have sufficient capacity to guarantee equal education.

Objectives. The aim of this study is to describe, what kind of understanding students have about gender and its diversity. I am interested in how student teachers talk about gender. In addition, I examine what student teachers think about how well student education has prepared them for facing gender diversity in school. Previous studies have shown that heteronormativity and gendered practices are common in school. This leads to discrimination of gender minorities. According to the research, the situation for gender minorities would improve if teachers had more information about gender diversity. However, teacher education hardly includes any gender issues in their curriculums. Methods. This study is a qualitative study with a dialogical approach. The data was collected mainly using focus groups. There were two groups and in total four student teachers. Both groups had an hour to discuss about gender issues. The data was transcribed and it was analyzed by content analysis and dialogical analysis of multivoicedness. Questionnaire was used as an additional data. It was sent to all student teachers in the University of Helsinki. 29 replies were received to the questionnaire. Results and conclusions. Three main understandings emerged from discussions: Gender is a complex phenomenon, school is a gendered environment in which gender roles and expectations are common, Finland is lagging behind in gender related issues. Gendered practices were recognized by students. In conceptions that emerged from the survey data, gender was seen also as two-parted. Most of the students felt like gender diversity is not being discussed enough in teacher education. Gender related content is discussed only in a few courses. Students also felt that dealing with gender related issues is up to the students themselves.

International research on student teachers' induction into the working life has showed that work exhaustion and feelings of confusion are common amongst the young professionals, who have been working in the field for five years or less. In Finland, there has been a lack of qualified Kindergarten teachers for a long time. This study aimed to find out what appeals Kindergarten teacher students to work in the profession and what makes students hesitate working in the profession. There were three research problems: (1) Which factors are linked with students' desire to work as a Kindergarten teacher? (2) Which factors are linked with students' hesitation to work as a Kindergarten teacher? (3) How do the students describe the socialisation into the profession and how is that affected to the work engagement? This study was conducted as a qualitative survey. The data used in this study was part of University of Helsinki study Koulutuksesta valmistuminen ja työssä pysyminen lastentarhanopettajan työuralla. The data included four open-ended questions (n = 350), which were answered by 166 third year students from the University of Helsinki Kindergarten Teacher Education. The data was analyzed using Content Analysis. The results of the study brought out that the students' desire to work as kindergarten teachers is mainly linked with love for children and early childhood education. The motivation to develop as a professional seemed to link with the desire to continue to the profession as well. The help of senior teachers and well adopted teaching practices seemed to strengthen the socialisation into the profession. Students' feeling that the society doesn't appreciate the profession was strongly linked with feelings of hesitation, as well as the weak resources in the Daycare Centres. The students also felt that by clarifying the job descriptions between the Kindergarten teachers and the practical nurses, the profession would seem more appealing. The results of this study can be used to promote the Kindergarten teachers induction into the working life.