Browsing by Author "Maaninka, Tiila"

The purpose of this qualitative case-study was to determine home economics teachers’ views on the collegial collaboration and its impact on wellbeing at work. The author came to the subject for the study, because it’s current and closely related to work of home economics teacher. In the future teachers are going to collaborate more and more with colleagues. The research questions were: what kind of collegial collaboration there is between two or more home economics teachers, who work in the same elementary school, what are the benefits and challenges of collegial collaboration and how this collaboration will affect the wellbeing at work. The purpose was to find out answers by previous studies and interview data, which were collected by a structured interview via e-mail. Data was analyzed by means of content analysis. Home economic teachers made collegial collaboration regularly: daily, weekly and at the beginning of the semester. Collaboration was self-determined or made when necessary. There were two forms of collaboration: concrete, such as planning, and abstract, such as support and feedback from a colleague. All home economics teachers felt that collegial collaboration is a great and useful part of their work. They said that functional collaboration made their work easier and smoother, supports their own expertise, brings fairness to pupils and promotes the wellbeing at work by improving the atmosphere at work. The challenges faces by home economics teachers were as well as physical, such as lack of time and defective working environment, that mental, such as teacher’s differences and introversion. Home economics teachers need to have enough time and suitable working environment, that collegial collaboration promotes wellbeing at work. Collaboration requires also discourse, flexibility, justification from both sides and common goals. For this to happen, home economics teachers should set the regular times for planning with colleagues. They should also observe their working hours, develop actively interpersonal skills, share and confront the work issues collaboratively. It would be useful to guide the teacher’s collegial collaboration by the schoolmaster and the other school community. The common goals need to create together and concrete actions need to do together.