Browsing by Subject "Opettaja"

The use of smartphones in a school context involves two intertwined social realities, official and unofficial, that are often at odds with each other. In a formal context, school is about taking care of social educational responsibilities related to education and upbringing. On the other hand, school is also an important social world between young people, largely consisting of informal activities. Teachers best see the struggle between these opposing social realities and the importance of students' smartphones as part of it. The purpose of this Master's thesis is to describe, analyse and interpret teachers' experiences of smartphones and their different uses in the classroom environment. The study examines teachers' experiences of the formal and informal use of smartphones and the way schools approach the use of phones. In addition, teachers' different attitudes towards smartphone use will be examined. The thesis is qualitative in nature and its research material consists of interviews with six secondary school teachers. The study utilises phenomenographic research orientation, which makes it possible to study variation in teachers' perceptions. As a key result of the study, four types of attitudes were found in teacher interviews that reflect their different attitudes towards smartphones in the classroom. The types of attitudes were smartphone favourable, -unfavourable, -indifferent and -uncertain. Different attitudes were found towards the official and unofficial use of smartphones, the monitoring of smartphones and the future vision of smartphones. In addition, the material revealed different ways in which teachers relate to the general guidelines concerning smartphones in schools.

Tutkimuksen tavoite on selvittää, minkälaisia keinoja opettajalla on tukea luokassaan olevaa ADHD-oireista oppilasta. ADHD on oireyhtymä, joka liittyy aivojen tarkkaavuutta ja vireystilaa säätelevien hermoverkkojen häiriintyneeseen kehitykseen. ADHD:sta löytyy lukuisia aikaisempia tutkimuksia, mutta suomalaiseen tavalliseen luokkahuoneeseen liittyvää aikaisempaa tutkimusta ei kovin paljoa ole tehty. Aihe on hyvin ajankohtainen, sillä monet ADHD-oireiset oppilaat opiskelevat tänä päivänä isossa luokassa ja pienluokkaopetusta on vähemmän kuin aikaisemmin. Tässä tutkimuksessa selvitän, minkälaisia keinoja luokanopettajalla on ADHD-oireisen oppilaan tukemiseen luokkahuoneessa. Tämä tutkimus on tehty kirjallisuuskatsauksena. Analyysimenetelmäksi valittiin narratiivinen kirjallisuuskatsaus, joka antaa avaimet aiheen laajempaan käsittelyyn. Tähän kirjallisuuskatsaukseen sisällytetyissä tutkimuksissa on käytetty sekä kvalitatiivisia että kvantitatiivisia menetelmiä. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että keinoja tukea ADHD-oireista oppilasta on lukuisia. Monet keinoista myös ovat hyvin helposti käyttöönotettavissa arkeen, ja ADHD-oireisten oppilaiden lisäksi todennäköisesti tukevat myös muita oppilaita. Ohjeistuksen selkeys ja selvät rutiinit nähtiin useissa tutkimuksissa tärkeiksi. Kodin ja koulun yhteistyöllä nähtiin myös suuria vaikutuksia. Koulunkäyntiavustajan tai muun lisäaikuisen tuki on myös arvokasta ADHD-oireisten oppilaiden toiminnanohjauksen haasteiden tukemisessa.

Aims. The aim of this study was to find out what kind of social reality is produced about teachers’ occupational well-being in Finnish newspapers’ opinion section in the time of the pandemic. This was seen to include the question of who talk about the subject and how, what kind of subject positions are given to teachers and what kind of power-relations are included in the conversation. The news about teachers wanting to change fields and recent studies of teachers’ decreased well-being (including the research produced by The Trade Union of Education in Finland) justify the currentness of this study. The pandemic made significant changes to the everyday life which also raised the question about teachers’ occupational well-being and working conditions. In this study the occupational well-being of teachers is seen through the occupational well-being theory of Rauramo (2012), Self Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and Job Demands – Resources –model (Demerouti et. al., 2001). Methods. The epistemological and ontological backround was based on social constructionism and the method of analysis was critical discourse analysis (CDA). The research data included 29 writings which were from three Finnish newspapers. Four of the writings were from Aamulehti, four from Turun Sanomat and 21 from Helsingin Sanomat. The data was gathered in November 2021 and the writings were published from March 2020 to October 2021. The participants of the conversation were teachers, other professionals of the field of education, politicians, and external participants of the field of education. The participants were categorised into groups by writer status and the voice of the writing, and the categories were teacher, neutral and defender of teachers. Results and conclusions. There were four discourses constructed from the data. The discourses were The concern about teachers, Teachers in distress, Satisfied teacher and The change of society. Teachers were given different subject positions in each discourse and they were The help needer, Exhausted teacher, Capable worker and satisfied teacher and The executor of the impossible task. The subject of teachers’ occupational well-being was mostly seen as a problem that needed a solution. Teachers held the decision makers accountable, whereas the other participants argued that the teachers were responsible for their own well-being. The discussion about the subject had an emphasis on negation as well as the most recent studies on teachers’ occupational well-being. The negativity of discussion can decrease the attractiveness of the education industry which is already reflected from recent studies.

Work related exhaustion is widely known phenomenon in the field of teaching. It is stated to be negatively correlated with teachers work results, the well-being of the work community and the quality of ones personal well-being and private life. Previous study indicates sicnifigant amount of teachers to be exhausted due to the factors in work. This exhaustion leads to absence and even to change of career. The goal of this research is to study the amount and quality of experienced exhaustion in terms of teachers’ age and work experience. The data was gathered from 163 teachers from six different schools from the Helsinki metropolitan area between March 2019 and February 2020. The group of respondents consisted of subject-, primary- and class teachers working primary schools. The data was collected with a survey which included an open ended question: ”What are the factors in your work that make you exhausted?” In addition teachers’ age and the amount of years in duty were sorted out. The quality and quantity of workload were measured with data-driven content analysis, theme design and scoring. For the analysis respondents were divided into three different groups based on their age and to five different groups based on their work experience. The quality and the quantity of work related stress in terms of teachers’ age and work experience were analysed reviewing correlations, running regression- and variance analysis and finally with crosstabulation. Age and work experience were noted to measure the same thing and therefore the analysis concentrated on age as a factor. The results show that age and the amount of experienced exhaustion are correlating negatively. In other words generally younger teachers were more exhausted whereas older teachers were not as exhausted. In addition the differences between age groups were significant in terms of the amount of exhaustion From the exhaustion themes ”students”, work-enviroment”, ”uncontrollability” and co-operation with parents” correlated negatively with teachers’ age. The age groups differed in terms of the quality of the workload, with younger teachers perceiving students, the amount of workload, resources, uncontrollability, the work environment and co-operation with parents as the most burdensome issues in their work. Middle-aged teachers found the lack of time and co-operation with professionals the most stressful factors in their work. The oldest teachers found additional non-core tasks/issues and poor management to be the most burdensome factors in their work. The results were largely in line with the previous study. Lack of time was the biggest exhaustion theme experienced regardless of the group. It is possible that the research results were partly explained by the demands placed on teachers by the change in society, the disregard for the needs of the individual in education policy, the harmful structures of the school for an individual and the individual's lack of influential opportunities. In further research, it would be important to consider the cause-and-effect relation-ships of different work load themes more profoundly and to include a broader and thus more generalized sample of respondents in the research. The research can be utilized in the development of teachers' well-being at work and as a tool in further research.

The deteriorating occupational well-being of teachers is an internationally recognized phenomenon and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on teachers’ work further increased its media coverage. In Finland, the promotion of teachers’ occupational well-being is one of the objectives of OAJ, The Trade Union of Education. It publishes the magazine Opettaja 22 times a year and claims all teachers, supervisors and decisionmakers in the field of education as the magazine’s target group. Due to the organization’s role, the magazine’s writings can influence the readers’ perceptions of the organization as the protector of their interests and of the situation in the education sector, as well as on the education policy. In my research I aimed to find out how the teachers’ occupational well-being is being talked about in the editorials of Opettaja magazine. In the study, the teachers’ occupational well-being was examined by utilizing the Job Demands-Resources Model and specifying the most typical demands and resources in teachers’ work environment. The research is qualitative and is based on the social constructionist understanding of knowledge as being constructed in the interaction between people. The material consisted of 47 editorials of Opettaja magazine, which dealt with teachers’ occupational well-being. The basis of limiting the data was the arrival of the coronavirus in Finland, so the studied material was gathered from magazines between a period from January 2020 to August 2022, when the analysis was started. Discourse analysis was used as a method to identify different ways of speaking of teachers’ occupational wellbeing in the editorials. As a result of the research, three discourses were identified, the ill-being discourse, the responsibility discourse, and the meaningful work discourse. In the ill-being discourse teachers’ occupational well-being was portrayed as weak and their working conditions challenging in many ways. In the responsibility discourse the occupational well-being was discussed in a solution-oriented manner, and the main focus was on obliging various parties to take care of it. In the meaningful work discourse the occupational well-being was described as something teachers earn for their important work and as a prerequisite for Finland’s success now and in the future. Based on this study, information obtained from well-being research is widely utilized in the occupational well-being speech of Opettaja magazine’s editorials, which most likely promotes the union’s image as an expert on the subject. Efforts to influence the readers can also be distinguished from the speech. Each discourse can be interpreted as having its own function in the speech of the trade union from the point of view of both groups of readers. By taking their potential effects into account, it is possible to better understand and anticipate, for example, solutions that teachers make regarding working in their profession.