Browsing by Subject "phenomenography"
Now showing items 1-10 of 10
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(2023)The research assignment of the study is based on the research literature of body image, according to which children's body concerns are significant in nature and often begin early before school age. The purpose of the study was to clarify the perceptions of primary school teachers about the importance of the teacher in the phenomenon of the formation of body image in children. The study seeks answers to teachers' views on the question of the formation of children's body concerns and their prevention. The data was collected using an online questionnaire employing a narrative completion method. The data consists of the reports (n=34) of primary school teachers (n=17), which were analysed with a qualitative phenomenographic research approach. From the reports of primary school teachers on the formation of pupil body concerns and their prevention, four types of different perceptions emerged, which constitute the main result of phenomenographic analysis. The teachers understood the formation of the student's body concerns and their prevention from the perspectives of equality, positivity-negativity, neutrality and pedagogy. Teachers' perceptions of the formation and prevention of body concerns as a result of teacher activity were mainly consistent with previous research literature. In their reports, teachers also identified causes unrelated to the teacher. The study shows a realistic understanding of teachers in the phenomena of the formation and prevention of children’s body concerns, as well as the ignorance of teachers in the existence of minority phenomena. Based on the research, it would next be essential to examine the study of the status and body image formation of minority children in a Finnish elementary school, research aimed at promoting a positive body image, and the latent need in current teacher education to understand diversity and reflect on the teacher's own bodily position.
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(2023)The research assignment of the study is based on the research literature of body image, according to which children's body concerns are significant in nature and often begin early before school age. The purpose of the study was to clarify the perceptions of primary school teachers about the importance of the teacher in the phenomenon of the formation of body image in children. The study seeks answers to teachers' views on the question of the formation of children's body concerns and their prevention. The data was collected using an online questionnaire employing a narrative completion method. The data consists of the reports (n=34) of primary school teachers (n=17), which were analysed with a qualitative phenomenographic research approach. From the reports of primary school teachers on the formation of pupil body concerns and their prevention, four types of different perceptions emerged, which constitute the main result of phenomenographic analysis. The teachers understood the formation of the student's body concerns and their prevention from the perspectives of equality, positivity-negativity, neutrality and pedagogy. Teachers' perceptions of the formation and prevention of body concerns as a result of teacher activity were mainly consistent with previous research literature. In their reports, teachers also identified causes unrelated to the teacher. The study shows a realistic understanding of teachers in the phenomena of the formation and prevention of children’s body concerns, as well as the ignorance of teachers in the existence of minority phenomena. Based on the research, it would next be essential to examine the study of the status and body image formation of minority children in a Finnish elementary school, research aimed at promoting a positive body image, and the latent need in current teacher education to understand diversity and reflect on the teacher's own bodily position.
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(2015)Ethiopia is Africa's biggest coffee exporter nation with deep history. Coffee discovered in Ethiopia and it continues to be pivotal for the country in many fronts till to date. The coffee linkage with Ethiopia is deep-rooted many historians believe back in 9th century coffee discovered by Kaldi, a goat herder. He discovered it after noticing coffee's energizing effect on his goats. The word coffee itself also derived from place called 'Kaffa' where the trees blossomed. Coffee gradually became a world obsession by spreading from highlands of Ethiopia traveled along spice routes to Yemen, Turkey and Europe. Coffee exporting is a significant portion of Ethiopian economy. It accommodates more than twenty five million peasants which indicate its magnitude for the country. It is one of the leading sources of income for the government and other stakeholders. The establishment of Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) has seen the Ethiopian coffee trade system being transformed. It created a platform of primary, secondary and tertiary market divisions. In a way that the coffee can be traded based on value addition from one division to the other. Unlike the previous centralized warehousing system, it introduced decentralized warehousing and liquoring centers across the country where the coffee quality checked by use of laboratory tasting. It gives a temporary produce storage services until the coffee is sold and ownership of the produce transferred from seller to buyer. The introduction of modernized and transparent system enabled economic gain and helped farmers to enhance their life conditions. The objective of this study was to identify some of the contradictions that are solved in Ethiopian coffee trade activity by the establishment of ECX. In addition, the emerging contradictions and prevailing disturbances at present as well as the overall benefits it brought in relation to farmers' day to day life conditions were analyzed.
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(2022)The purpose of this thesis was to disclose the current views of Finnish and English language use and development in a multiculturalising Finnish service industry company from its personnel and their views of the future changes in the use of working languages. The research is topical as the foreign workforce in the industry keeps growing and the Finnish population is becoming more multilingual. So far there has been little research on the working languages of Finnish companies, as the research has mainly focused on multinational companies. The aim of the thesis is to find prevailing differences of views about the meaning of languages in multilingual working life from a phenomenographic point of view. Views have been outlined to the themes of everyday work, foreign language development and future working language. The language choices in work situations are studied from the perspectives of language skill development and situations of communication. In the study, seven people from four different organizational areas were interviewed: workers, supervisors, manager-level supervisors, and a member of the training team. The interview material was analyzed with phenomenographic methods using the Atlas.ti software. The results of the thesis show that there are regional differences in the importance of languages in everyday work within the service industry company. In work communities, the choice of language was based on the language skills shared by the members of the community. In situations where the employee did not have sufficient skills in the Finnish language, communication was facilitated by common languages of the work community. The respondents felt that the importance of the English language in the company will increase as the share of foreign workforce in the industry increases. The employees saw the importance of English language skills increasing at the supervisor level, but at the same time they also felt that the use of the English language acted as a slowing factor for foreign workers' learning of the Finnish language in everyday work.
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(2016)Changing work as well as changing expertise requirements are an often discussed topic in our current public discussion. In this study, the main interests were the conceptions of expertise and experiences of changing work and expertise requirements. The participants of the study (n=12) were a group of professionals working in a company providing language services. The aim of the study was to analyse how the participants understand expertise and what kind of changes and new expertise requirements they have experienced at their work. The main analytical concept of the study is expertise, and the theoretical framework consists of research literature on expertise on individual and collective dimensions which were compared to the conceptions of expertise among the sample group. The changes the research subjects have experienced at work were thematically analyzed by mirroring their views against some viewpoints on changing work and the historical work types. The study is based on a qualitative research strategy and the material was analysed by applying phenomenographic content analysis. The material was collected through one-to-one interviews. The work related expertise as described by the participants is presented through examples, whereas the phenomenographic analysis focuses on the participants’ conceptions of expertise and on experiences of changes of work. To conclude, the results of the study were collected to categories of description. The results clearly showed that the contextual dimension of expertise as experience in the professional field was considered as one of the most important element of expertise. In addition to knowledge, skills, self-awareness and education, expertise was also related to learning new things as a prerequisite for expertise development. Also, knowing the customer was seen as expertise. In addition, respect from others was also seen as part of being an expert. In this material, expertise was portrayed more as an individual rather than a collective quality, even though the work was considered a team effort. The changes at work were related to increasing customer demands, changing technology and financial pressures. Despite these changes, the underlying nature of work was seen as unchanged and overall, the changes were not considered to lead to any completely new expertise requirements.
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(2016)Changing work as well as changing expertise requirements are an often discussed topic in our current public discussion. In this study, the main interests were the conceptions of expertise and experiences of changing work and expertise requirements. The participants of the study (n=12) were a group of professionals working in a company providing language services. The aim of the study was to analyse how the participants understand expertise and what kind of changes and new expertise requirements they have experienced at their work. The main analytical concept of the study is expertise, and the theoretical framework consists of research literature on expertise on individual and collective dimensions which were compared to the conceptions of expertise among the sample group. The changes the research subjects have experienced at work were thematically analyzed by mirroring their views against some viewpoints on changing work and the historical work types. The study is based on a qualitative research strategy and the material was analysed by applying phenomenographic content analysis. The material was collected through one-to-one interviews. The work related expertise as described by the participants is presented through examples, whereas the phenomenographic analysis focuses on the participants' conceptions of expertise and on experiences of changes of work. To conclude, the results of the study were collected to categories of description. The results clearly showed that the contextual dimension of expertise as experience in the professional field was considered as one of the most important element of expertise. In addition to knowledge, skills, self-awareness and education, expertise was also related to learning new things as a prerequisite for expertise development. Also, knowing the customer was seen as expertise. In addition, respect from others was also seen as part of being an expert. In this material, expertise was portrayed more as an individual rather than a collective quality, even though the work was considered a team effort. The changes at work were related to increasing customer demands, changing technology and financial pressures. Despite these changes, the underlying nature of work was seen as unchanged and overall, the changes were not considered to lead to any completely new expertise requirements.
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(2022)In the spring of 2020, primary school students were transferred to distance education for health safety reasons. Distance education environments were set up from a wide variety of teachers’ and schools’ starting points at the expense of equality. The need for design-based research on IT-mediated teaching expanded from adult education environments to primary school, where the importance of self-determination was emphasized. The purpose of the study was to form recommendations for the primary school distance education provider by looking at the experiences of the guardians. For the description of distance education arrangements during the 2020 state of emergency this is a case study, and a design research for the development of distance education recommendations. The foundations for the thematic analysis was the theoretical distance education description by Simonson and Seepersaud (2019). The secondary data was received from an extensive national distance education and well-being project. 526 Helsinki-based guardians’ multi-perspective open text form responses were demarcated for examination. In the phenomenographic research method, experiences of the guardians were summarised using quantification. Recommendations for teachers, education organisers and guardians were formed through interpretation of the data. The perspective of guardians was well suited for the educational design research. According to the results, the most challenging situation in distance education was caused by weak selfdeter-mination of primary school aged children, which was best supported with the help of the teacher, if not the pupils’ own parent. Inequality was highlighted both in the quantity and quality of teaching provided by the teacher and in the home's ability to support the child. Surprisingly, the results described the normal conditions of modern school as a scene of noise, fears, bullying, stress and strain. About 10 % of guardians described distance education as a better learning environment for their child compared to normal conditions. As a guideline based on the design research, it is recommended that the primary school teacher provides daily support and assessment for the pupil, instructions available to the pupil, contact at home - but flexibly to case-by-case and depending on the teacher's competence, and continually developing one's own work.
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(2022)In the spring of 2020, primary school students were transferred to distance education for health safety reasons. Distance education environments were set up from a wide variety of teachers’ and schools’ starting points at the expense of equality. The need for design-based research on IT-mediated teaching expanded from adult education environments to primary school, where the importance of self-determination was emphasized. The purpose of the study was to form recommendations for the primary school distance education provider by looking at the experiences of the guardians. For the description of distance education arrangements during the 2020 state of emergency this is a case study, and a design research for the development of distance education recommendations. The foundations for the thematic analysis was the theoretical distance education description by Simonson and Seepersaud (2019). The secondary data was received from an extensive national distance education and well-being project. 526 Helsinki-based guardians’ multi-perspective open text form responses were demarcated for examination. In the phenomenographic research method, experiences of the guardians were summarised using quantification. Recommendations for teachers, education organisers and guardians were formed through interpretation of the data. The perspective of guardians was well suited for the educational design research. According to the results, the most challenging situation in distance education was caused by weak selfdeter-mination of primary school aged children, which was best supported with the help of the teacher, if not the pupils’ own parent. Inequality was highlighted both in the quantity and quality of teaching provided by the teacher and in the home's ability to support the child. Surprisingly, the results described the normal conditions of modern school as a scene of noise, fears, bullying, stress and strain. About 10 % of guardians described distance education as a better learning environment for their child compared to normal conditions. As a guideline based on the design research, it is recommended that the primary school teacher provides daily support and assessment for the pupil, instructions available to the pupil, contact at home - but flexibly to case-by-case and depending on the teacher's competence, and continually developing one's own work.
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(2018)Objectives. The purpose of this study is to describe, analyze and interpret the way novice class teachers see school bullying. The secondary purpose is to describe how peer harassment affects the novice teachers’ job. In 2010-centery studies, school bullying has been seen as a form of negative social behavior between pupils (Repo, 2015; Herkama, 2012). Teachers have to focus more and more on teaching social skills to pupils rather than the actual teaching. This has been associated with younger teachers’ increased stress levels at work and even plans on switching ca-reers (Aho, 2011). This study examines the education side of teacher job at the context of school bullying. Methods. This study is a qualitative research from the point of view of phenomenography. The material has been produced in a group chat between three novice teachers and the interviewer. All teachers have graduated during the last year and worked their first year as teachers. Besides of novice teachers I will also call them young teachers at this study, since all of them were under thirty years old. Results and conclusion. The peer harassment has changed because of new technology and smart phones. The term ‘school bullying’ has become an inadequate way in describing the reality of the bullying experiences that pupils have to deal with. From novice teachers’ perspective, it seemed that low social skills of pupils were the main reason why there are so much conflicts be-tween pupils in everyday life. The actual school bullying was rare, but the preventative jobs, such as conflict solving, took lots of time from teaching and learning in the class. Decision mak-ing, insecurity regarding the effectivity of one’s own practices as well as co-operation with the parents were experienced as a burden with negative effects on teaching. In conclusion, bullying and the bullying-preventive work increases the overall workload of teachers and takes up time and resources from the actual teaching.
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(2009)The starting point for this study was university teaching and teachers and specifically their changing role when confronting the Finnish University Reform and the student-focused theories of learning. Teachers' pedagogical thinking and pedagogical content knowledge were also part of the theoretical framework. In the research of conceptions of and approaches to learning and teaching, the qualitative classifications of Säljö and Marton (1976; 1997), Ramsden (1992), Kember (1997) and Trigwell and Prosser (1999) were utilised. Two study questions were raised (1) What kind of conceptions of and approaches to learning do engineering science teachers have? and (2) What kind of conceptions of and approaches to teaching do engineering science teachers have? The relationship between teachers' conceptions and teaching was also examined. The research material was collected in autumn 2008 by interviewing teachers and by observing teaching in the Department of Energy Technology at Helsinki University of Technology. Altogether two tutorials and ten lectures were observed. Each teacher of the observed lectures was interviewed once. The interviews were carried out as semi-structured theme interviews. In the analysis of the research material phenomenographical approach was adapted. The study revealed many kinds of conceptions of and approaches to learning and teaching in the teachers' speech. On the basis of the research material, the conceptions and approaches that the teachers declare do not always reflect their actions in the teaching situation. The surface approaches to learning and teacher-focused approaches to teaching and conceptions of receiving and transmission of knowledge were parallel. Instead the teachers' declarations of the deep approaches to learning and student-focused approaches to teaching were partly in conflict with how the teacher taught. When striving towards student-centered teaching culture attention should be paid to the development of teachers' pedagogical thinking and pedagogical content knowledge. The culture and the structures of the educational institution should also be considered.
Now showing items 1-10 of 10