Browsing by department "Institutionen för beteendevetenskaper"

The study was carried out in a collaboration with a Finnish business organization which produces social and health services. Every year the organization conducts a personnel survey. Based on the survey the organization follows the development of different kinds of indexes in concern and unit levels. The purpose of this study was to examine connections between a few indexes because the organization analyses mainly just the yearly development of the indexes. The variables of this study were chosen together with the representative of the organization. The independent variable is foreman’s leadership. Commitment to own work and commitment to the organization were chosen as dependent variables. In addition to examining the connections, the purpose of this study was also to examine the formation of the variables critically and develop suggestions to alter the variables. Due to this examination the variable of commitment to own work turned into a variable of work engagement. Foreman’s leadership has been proved to have connection with many things in an organization, also to organizational commitment and work engagement. The study examined how much the foreman’s leadership can explain employees’ organizational commitment and work engagement. The hypothesis was that foreman’s leadership explains a part of the variation of commitment to organization and work engagement. The statistical examination was used to find out how big that part is. The study was carried out with a material which had been collected in the yearly personnel survey of the organization. The personnel survey was performed as an electric survey. All the employees in the concern were allowed to participate. Different kinds of indexes (sum variables) were formed from the claims the survey included. The variables were altered based on theory and examined statistically. All the variables filled the requirements of regression analysis so the foreman’s leadership’s influence on the dependent variables was tested with separate regression analyses. The results were codirectional with organizational commitment and work engagement. The foreman’s leadership had weak positive correlation with the dependent variables. The foreman’s leadership explained a rather small part of the variation of the dependent variables but it could explain some of the variation. In conclusion, the foreman’s leadership is one of many factors which explain organizational commitment and work engagement. More research is needed on both, organizational commitment and work engagement. Improving the variables of the personnel survey to match better with theory is also a result of this study.

Working life has undergone drastic changes faster than ever in the past few decades. Because of these changes organizations and their structures have also changed and been renewed. One of the key areas of change is the increase of remote work that is caused by new flexible ways of work and the breakthrough of technology. The increase of remote work brings new challenges to leadership that need to be studied. The aim of this qualitative study was to describe and analyze remote leaders’ experiences of remote work and remote leadership. By investigating these experiences, I aimed to describe what special characteristics remote work brings to leadership and how should these characteristics be considered in remote leadership. This study highlights key areas of remote work that should be developed in the future regarding the fast-changing working life. The theoretical framework of this study consists of previous research conducted regarding remote work and remote leadership. The data consisted of four semi-structured theme interviews that were analyzed using content analysis. The aim was to find similarities and differences between the data and the theoretical framework. The interviewees were experts in their own field and they all had at least one year of experience as a remote leader. Every interviewee had their own team that consisted of remote and non-remote workers. The interviewees brought up dissimilarities on different areas between remote and non-remote workers. The results of this study were divided in two sections: experiences of remote work and special characteristics of remote leadership. Remote work was seen as a positive and long-awaited change that makes combining work and personal life possible especially to people with families. On the other hand, remote work can dim the boundaries between work and personal life that could cause burnout. Special characteristics of remote leadership were found to be the importance of regular interaction and communication, equal treatment between remote and non-remote workers and the importance of building a trustful relationship between the leader and subordinates. Especially the results indicated that remote leaders had the feeling of inadequacy because of the lack of time that was allocated to leadership. This indicated that remote leaders lacked the support from their supervisor and the organization. None of the interviewees had been trained to remote leadership. In conclusion, this study highlights that managing remote subordinates is a challenging form of leadership and it should be investigated further to provide training and support to remote leaders.

The purpose of this study is to analyse how gender roles are portrayed in popular Finno-Swedish picture books from the 1980s and 2010s. Little research has been conducted to examine how characters are portrayed from a gender perspective in Finno-Swedish children’s litterature. The new regulations in early childhood education emphasise gender equality, which means that pedagogues need to be aware and critical towards children’s litterature, e.g. to create a more gender equal preschool culture. This qualitative study was carried out through text- and picture analysis of six popular Finno-Swedish picture books. Three books from the 1980s and three from the 2010s. The characters were analysed based on five pre-existing questions. The result indicates that Finno-Swedish picture books show a wide range of various attributes among the characters. The characters that are children are more gender neutral than the adults portrayed in the books. The female characters are the ones who changed most during these years. They show signs of a more explorative and active side, compared to the 1980s books. The male characters on the other hand, already show stereotypical female behaviour like thoughtfulness in the earlier books, and similar behaviour can also be seen among the male characters in the 2010s books. Hence, the male characters show a lesser degree of change than female characters from the 1980s to the 2010s.

The purpose of this study is to give answers to common preconceptions about preschool children’s use of digital technology. The main questions of this study are: 1. Do childhood and digital technology mix? 2. Does digital technology hinder the social and emotional development of children? 3. How can digital technology be used in playing and learning? The method of the study is a literature overview consisting of nine articles. The articles are compared to each other, to the ealy childhood teaching program and also to a few news stories. Method used in study is a narrative overview of the literaure. The majority of the studies compared have a positive attitude to preschool children’s use of digital technology. It is the responsibility of the teachers and other grown-ups to scaffold children to use digital technology in a useful, diverse and safe way. Digital play is a huge part of the lives of today’s children.

The purpose of this study is to get an insight into preschool children's thoughts on gender roles. The topic of gender roles is highly relevant in todays' society and an issue that has been brought into focus in early childhood education as well and my aim is to explore how the preschool children of today think about gender roles. Research in the field of early childhood education related to gender roles is being done more and more but it is still a relatively undiscovered field and very few studies have the children's perspective in focus. This study is made up of individual, qualitative interviews and I have interviewed 26 children in total in six separate interviews. Outside of the interviews I have collected material through the children choosing toys from a toy magazine. The interviews started with a discussion about the children's choices of toys and followed with a conversation about different issues regarding the topic of gender roles. One of the most central findings of the study is that children to a certain extent had noticed differences between boys and girls while regarding some other areas did not think there is any difference between the two genders at all. Furthermore it is interesting to notice that even though children pointed out certain differences between boys and girls they were in general very accepting of different types of genderbending and norm breaking tendencies.

The purpose of this study is to search for people´s describing thoughts and furthermore positive and negative attitudes to the value and status of preschool teachers in the Finnish society, to explain a possible disharmony between these two. The theoretical frame of this study clarifies the concept of professionalism and its meaning in relation to the occupation of preschool teacher. It furthermore clarifies the concept of attitudes and its components, its origin and its ability to change. Furthermore, this study is a qualitative study and its approach is phenomenological, based on semi-structured interviews. Four people, regardless of earlier experience of children, are interviewed in Helsinki with the aim to seize the phenomenon, their positive, negative or indifferent attitudes towards preschool teachers in respect of their value verses their status in the Finnish society. Finally the result shows that positive, affective attitudes seem to be connected with children and positive, cognitive attitudes tend to be connected with their childhood witch creates a link to why preschool teachers has such high value in the society. According to this study, lack of knowledge and stereotypic point of views, lowers their status and therefor a disharmony is created between the preschool teacher´s value and status. Furthermore, in order to make a change, knowledge and visibility of the meaning of the profession as a preschool teacher within young children’s education is needed in purpose to bring their value and status to the same level.

The purpose with this study is to find out the educators’ experiences about conflicts between children at different ages at daycare and to get an insight in how the educators deal with the conflict situations and how they see their own role in these situations. The theory part includes a discussion of daycare as a place of interaction between children and educators, and also between children. It also includes a discussion of conflicts between children, and the educators’ role in the conflict situations. The study is qualitative and was carried out through interviews with three educators working at daycare. A long experience of conflicts between children at daycare and experience of working with children at all ages under school age were the criteria for the interview persons. The interviews were tape recorded, and then transcribed and analyzed. The result indicates that conflicts between children at daycare are diverse and that conflicts are common at all ages. There are many reasons that conflicts between children emerge and the reasons are partly agerelated. Besides that, younger children also act more physically in conflict situations, while older children are more verbal and they also can leave some children outside the group as a consequence of a conflict. The educators feel that their role in conflict situations is important. Their role in handling the conflicts is complex and the educators have to act in different ways in different situations. The educators have to be present when the children interact and they also all the time have to make interpretations of the interaction between the children in order to notice when conflicts between children emerges, what happens in the conflict situations and when to intervene. The educators are clearly aware of the importance of children learning how to solve conflicts themselves.

Objectives; The aim of this Bachelor’s thesis was to compile information on the association between physical activity and academic performance in primary school children from previous studies. The connection between physical activity and academic performance has attracted a great deal of interest and has been studied extensively. Previous studies have found a positive association between physical activity and academic performance. However, the results have been contradictory and the ositive link between physical activity and academic performance has not been found in all of the studies. The purpose of this study was to answer the following research questions 1) Is there a connection between physical activity and academic performance? 2) What kind of physical activity supports academic performance? Methods: Bachelor thesis was executed as a systematic literature review. The research material consisted of nine articles that studied the connection between physical activity and academic performance in primary school children. The material was collected in three differ-ent literature searches from library of the University of Helsinki’s Helka database. The stud-ies were grouped into longitudinal and cross-sectional studies, to studies that examine phys-ical fitness, motor skills, physical activity during school hours and during leisure time. Ana-lyze was carried out as a content analysis. I emphasized main findings by highlighting them in the text and created a table to illustrate most important findings according to the research questions. The results formed in relation with the research questions through the analysis. Results and Conclusions: The majority of studies showed that there is a positive association between physical activity and academic achievement. These results showed that especially good physical fitness and short physically active breaks during school day support learning outcomes. For further research, we would be interested to investigate whether the effects of physical activity are as positive for children of high school age as for primary school children.

Children's literature conveys gender-related societal norms and thus it is important to reflect on the books that are read to children from a gender point of view. This bachelor’s thesis examines how gender is depicted in recently published Finnish-Swedish picture books aimed at 1-5-year-old children. The focus is on the portrayal of adult characters. The study addresses the following research questions: From a gender point of view, how are adults depicted in these books? Are the gender-related positions that are offered normative or norm breaking? Six Finnish-Swedish picture books published in 2015 were analysed using a hermeneutical approach. The results indicate a multi-faceted and complex portrayal of gender. There are similarities as well as differences between female, male and gender-neutral characters. Both normative and norm-breaking gender-related positions are offered. As the books also include characters who break gender stereotypes, Finnish-Swedish picture books may be a good choice from a gender point of view. Nevertheless, certain books are more stereotypical than others and thus the Finnish-Swedish picture books that are read to children should be chosen with care.

The purpose of this study is to explore how educators view sustainable development and visual arts, and how these phenomena are incorporated into practice in early childhood education. This study is a qualitative study in which sustainability in early childhood education and visual arts are studied through a social constructivist and posthumanistic perspective. Method of enquiry is focus group interview. Educators where of the opinion that visual art activities using physical tools are important, but that the addition of digital art adds a new dimension to visual arts. Visual art activities were present in the practice of the educators both as planned activities and as spontaneous child-initiated artmaking. To make artmaking more ecologic educators taught children to use materials sparingly, or to make artwork that could be documented digitally, freeing the material for reuse. Using recycled material was seen both as a solution to making artmaking sustainable and as problematic. Children were taught a sustainable lifestyle and empowered by learning methods to work for sustainable development.