Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p5164"

Migration is becoming broader and more complex by the day. After the refugee crisis in 2015, the state policies revolving integration were revised in order to better meet the needs of the situation at hand. The revision lead to a strong focus on labour market integration, and consequently a narrower understanding of integration. Previous research shows that employment is the gateway to society, but at the same time it is widely acknowledged that sensing belonging is crucial for well-being, hence also a building block for integration. However, sensing belonging is constantly challenged due to migration. People move to Finland due to very different reasons, and also have different needs, therefore integration needs to be inspected from a broad perspective, taking into account various factors. Questions revolving what the objectives are with integration, and what it means for the individual as well as for the society are predominant when doing research on integration. The aim of this thesis is to place the immigrant in the centre of the discussion, to gain a deeper understanding of what is perceived as meaningful for integration and furthermore to investigate what value employment has within integration for the persons involved. The data was gathered during the spring of 2018, thematic in depth interviews were made with five informants, all of whom are first generation immigrants and have experience of working life in Finland. The results demonstrated that integration is a manifold process, that it was subjective and had a temporal connotation. A unanimous result showed that interactions with society, sensing belonging and employment are central for what is perceived as meaningful for integration. In regards to what the value of employment is within integration, a more shattered result was seen, central experiences were that employment gives financial security, purpose and daily routines. Furthermore, the result showed that perceptions of the value of employment were often loaded with faulty expectations that were not met in real life. The main result showed that employment was not a precondition for integration, neither was employment equal to integration, furthermore a differentiation between being employed and unemployed was far too easy to make, since today a lot of the benefits that a paid job gives can be found in other settings, for example through volunteer work. Despite this, financial security which only derives from a paid job was a precondition for all informants to be able to stay in Finland, and therefore employment was of great value for integration.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore children's views of their physical learning environment. The aim is to take part from the child perspective in the discussion surrounding the development of learning environments. The study seeks to make children's viewpoints more visible and strengthen their role in both planning and evaluating their learning environments. The information that has been gathered in this thesis can be used in practice of pre-primary education to renew the existing praxis. The study concentrates on which elements of the physical learning environment children value and how does the interaction between a child and the environment show in their discourses. The theoretical base of this study is in transactional environmental psychology which emphasizes on the two-way interaction between a person and the environment. The elements of the physical learning environment are based on theoretical literature and the Finnish curriculum for pre-primary education. The interaction is examined based on the self-determination theory and themes of meaningfulness. The thesis was executed with qualitative methods by combining studies of child perspective and case study research. The research material consisted of photos and thematic interviews collected by children. The subjects were two classrooms designed for pre-primary education: the other was the children's own classroom and the other Playful Learning Center in the Teacher Education Department at the University of Helsinki. The research material was collected separately from both subjects. The photo material was coded and categorized by data based analysis. The transcribed interview material was categorized based on theory. The two classrooms differed in several respects in the children's accounts. In their own classroom the children took photos mostly of the toys, preschool associated material and their own lockers. The material showed how meaningful being part of a group and identifying oneself as a preschooler is when connecting with the environment. At the Teacher Education Department the children paid more attention to the colorful walls and activating furnishings. It could be seen that an indoor environment which supports physical activity can be motivating and exciting for children in pre-primary education. In their own classroom the children expressed strongly a type of intellectual competence over the environment. They also expressed strong group cohesion in their discourses. These factors can be seen significant in building a positive human-environment relationship. The experiences of competence were not as strong at the Teacher Education Department. Instead the children strongly brought up physical activity in their discourses. It could be associated with children's natural and meaningful ways of being.