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Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract Aims. Our cultur is getting pictorial at a tremendious rate. The number of pictures around us is very plentiful. We often take pictures as an obvious part of learning materials. Yet their importance for learning has been studied very little. I seek to gain insight into the perceptions teachers have of the importance of pictures in primary school maths learning materials. I also try to clarify the teachers’ thoughts on the descriptions of a good teaching picture. It was assumed that pictures in a learning material play a major role in the mathematics learning of a primary school pupil. Previous studies have shown that the use of pictures in teaching mathematics is useful for learning especially when pictures are closely related to both the subject being learned and the world of childrend’s experiences. Methods. The research data was collected between June and November 2017 by interviewing seven pre-primary and class teachers from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The teachers had several years of experience teaching mathematics in primary school. The analytical approach was to analyse the content through a thematic interview. The theme was the use of pictures in mathematics teaching. Results and conclusions. The teachers felt that the use of pictures was an important or very important part of teaching mathematics. The clarity of the pictures and the signifigance of everyday life were important criteria for a good teaching picture. In addition to the finished pictures it was considered important to make the teacher’s and the pupil’s own drawings.The concept of a picture also included operational tools and the observable environment. Challenges appeared in the pupils’ difficulty in perceiving pictures and the lack of ability to train in image literacy. The importance of pictures for learning is great, both based on previous studies and this thesis. The use of pictures in teaching will continue to be an important part of learning mathematics.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the time of Villayhtymä’s 1959–1969 and Hyvilla’s 1970–1978 factories from the point of view of one textile, the travelling rug. The research is a continuation of my Bachelor’s thesis, and the meaning of it was to provide a broader review of the travelling rugs of that time, and thus to find out more exact facts about the travelling rugs’ material, manufacturing process, design, designers, uses, and connection to society – both domestic and foreign – through events and exports. In addition, the research aimed to define what kind the travelling rugs were. The research strategy was a historical case study. The material was selectively collected from Villayhtymä’s and Hyvilla’s head offices and Hyvinkää’s factory archives of Valvilla Wool Mill Museum’s archives of Hyvinkää City Museum. After the initial analysis, the material for a more detailed analysis was selected by themes. The answers to research questions were formed by using content analysis. According to the research results, Finnish wool was the most important material for travelling rugs due to its special features. However, there were difficulties in applying it due to low availability. The manufacturing process included many phases from sorting wool to finishing. Nature was one of the key subjects in the design of travelling rugs, and Aune Gummerus appeared to be one of the most significant designers of travelling rugs during Villayhtymä. Lapponica, Lake Blanket, and Moharella were the most important series of travelling rugs. Several different purposes of uses were suggested for travelling rugs, and they were presented at fairs and exhibitions. The designers were rewarded both domestically and abroad, and the travelling rugs made of Finnish wool were also ordered to many distant countries. The travelling rugs provide a connection to homes, decoration, design, society, and the surrounding world in the 1960s and 1970s. The Finnish design and quality were appreciated, and on the basis of the results, it seems that despite the difficulties of the wool industry, the travelling rug as a single textile has been a popular textile.

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of three Finnish volunteer teachers in developing countries. Specific point of interest was to understand the functions of volunteer learning experiences in developing teacher identities. The objective of the study is to understand the possibilities of personal and professional growth that international volunteer teaching can provide. In this study, identity was seen as socially constructed narratives (Sfard & Prusak 2005). Learning was considered the bridge between actual and designated teacher identities. Teachers' professional growth was seen as interplay between developing the teacher's personal identity, professional identity and collective identity (Heikkinen 2001). This study follows constructivist theories' conception of knowledge as socially and subjectively constructed. A narrative approach defines the study as a whole. The research method applied was a combination of autobiographical narrative interview (Schütze 2005) and a semi-structured interview. The subjects were three Finnish teachers who all had taken part in an international volunteering program for six months. The collected data was analysed using Polkinghorne's (2005) analysis of narratives and narrative analysis. Analysis of narratives was utilised in categorizing the teachers' learning experiences. Narrative analysis then was applied to construct a new narrative: a typical story of the functions of international volunteering in teacher identity development. The teachers' learning experiences through volunteering were substantial and strongly linked to the teacher's personal background. The learning experiences were categorized as follows: 1) adapting in a new country, 2) working in the school community, 3) facing challenging situations in teaching and 4) cultural encounters. All categories except for the first one were linked to teacher identity development in the teachers' narratives. Learning experiences were utilized in two ways: realizing designated identities and creating new ones. International volunteering can support teachers' professional growth, but learning experiences are not linked to professional identities automatically without reflection. For the organizations providing international volunteering opportunities, it is important to identify the reflexive nature of volunteering and be organized in guiding teachers to reflect their experiences.

Group building creates new possibilities to improve the quality of living and everyday life of individual inhabitants. It adds the competition to the housebuilding and promotes communal operation. The communal living is seen as one alternative because there is an increasing interest in communities. The aim of the study was to clear the ways of action of cohousing projects and their creation process at the planning stage and building stage of projects. The research subjects were two separate cohousing projects in which the building was carried out as non-profit group building. Group building means that the future inhabitants design their private apartments and the common premises, and function as constructors themselves. In the described projects the communal living is carried out with the Nordic model of communal living which is determined by common operation, common premises and the communal organization. The study describes the ways of action of the two projects starting with the planning stage of the block of flats and ending with the beginning of the building. Furthermore, the study examines factors, wishes and expectations affecting the choice of communal living, forming of the community and the creation of communal ways of action. The head concepts of the study are community, sense of communality, confidence, social capital and living. The material consisted of ten (10) theme interviews. The participants in the study represented the future inhabitants from both cohousing projects. The material was collected in spring and autumn 2018 and the results were described with the help of qualitative research methods. It was possible to find features of the case study also in this study. A theme interview was used as an interview method and the results were analyzed by utilizing a content analysis. Social, communal, ecological and economic factors affected the choice of communal living. The choice based on a natural desire to share the life with other people. The creation process of the communal living was determined by the common goals of which the building of the house was the most important. The sense of communality was not left to chance or randomness, but it was consciously built in the ways of action and in the jointly planned premises. Getting acquainted with each other, meeting practices, decision-making process, hearing different point of views and the possibilities to influence the operation were some of the ways of action. The inhabitants hoped that communal living would create safety and versatility of the social life as well as make every-day life easier through neighbourly help, planning and spontaneous doing together and also through shearing information and commodities. It was generally hoped that communal living and group building as a method of construction would become more common on the housing market.

The school world has long focused on the problem-based assessment of students. When the focus is on the pupil's deficiencies and areas for improvement, the aspects that should be valued and praised may be left behind. Positive education is a pedagogical application based on positive psychology that focuses on enhancing the well-being and learning of students. The focus is on the student's strengths and successes rather than weaknesses. In recent years, the emphasis on positive education has also increased in Finnish schools. Research has typically focused on measuring the effectiveness of methods and developing well-being measures in the form of intervention or action research. Since teachers' perceptions of positive education have not been studied much, this study aims to chart how positive education has been carried out in the ordinary Finnish classroom environment. The research was carried out by using qualitative research methods. Six classroom teachers that were interested in and using positive education were interviewed about their perceptions and experiences of positive education. The interviews were conducted with a semi-structured theme interview and analyzed by theme analysis. According to the results of this study, teachers perceived positive education as character strengths and their further development, positive perception and positive feedback. Teachers shared their thoughts and experiences of teaching positive education from the point of view of their desires, benefits, hands-on teaching, attitudes, recommendations, distribution and applicability. Based on the positive experiences of teachers, positive education can be taught in school as separate lessons or as embedded into other lessons. The study suggests that positive education could be implemented more widely in schools, as it could be a potential way to increase the well-being of the whole school community.

Objectives. The goal of this thesis was to find out what kind of perceptions early childhood education employees have of drama education and it´s use as a pedagogical content and how to strengthen it`s status. This thesis used Bronfenbrenner´s ecological systems theory as a way to look how perceptions will absorb and how they´ll influence. The study examines dramaplay -entity. Finnish education evaluation centre made a report of implementation of the National core curriculum and there were shortcomings in the contents of art education. Methods. Theme interviews conducted in spring 2015. Three early childhood education employee were interviewed. The results analyzed through phenomenographic method. Results. Drama perceived as positive and communal art form but only one of the interviewees used drama regularly. There was less drama and art education if the employee found the group of children challenging. Interviewed employees experienced that kindergartens cultural activities reflect the quantity and quality of art education. All interviewees argued that training was a way to increase art education and drama. Employees had positive attitude towards drama. They participated in the drama with the group and were given concrete tools how to make drama with children. Kindergartens operational culture and leadership influence pedagogical content. Perceptions of arts and drama pedagogy in early childhood education should be examined more depth and their impact on action explored.

Empathy is the human capacity to understand and feel for the other human in distress. The capacity to understand the others emotions and the capacity to feel for the other are separate, dissociable processes, called cognitive empathy and affective empathy, latter of which is the focus of this study. A review of the current methods of assessing affective empathic arousal revealed that there is currently a dearth of available ecologically valid ways to test empathic reactions. Thus, the goal of this study was to develop a new way to measure affective empathy called Pictorial Empathy Test (PET), and assess the reliability and validity of this new test. Pictorial Empathy Test (PET) consists of 7 pictures of people in distress. Subjects were asked to rate their emotional arousal in a five-point scale. It was hypothesized that seven pictures all showed variance in one latent trait, affective empathy. The fit of one-latent-factor model was assessed using structural equation modeling. PET's validity was assessed with tests of other theoretically related and unrelated concepts, such as self-reported empathy, social intelligence, intuitive thinking and gender role orientation. Correlations between PET scores and other scales were assessed to determine the validity of PET. Also, relationships between PET scores, participants' sex and gender role orientation were analyzed using mediation analysis. PET was shown to be a reliable and valid measure of affective empathy. One-latent-factor model was shown to be a good fit to the data. Relationships between PET scores and other related concepts were all in the hypothesized direction. Mediation analysis showed that although gender role mediates much of the effect of participants' sex on the final PET scores, there was still a significant unique portion on the sex directly to the PET scores. The strengths and weaknesses of the present study are discussed. PET is recommended as a free and easy-to-use tool in further research concerning affective empathy.

We are living a time of many kinds of diagnoses. It is suggested by social scientists that in a modern world ADHD is a typical way of describing the ways of being and acting. ADHD has traditionally been linked to childhood, but in the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Man-ual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which was released in 2013, ADHD has been acknowl-edged also as a disorder of adults. This may have an effect on the increasing public conver-sation about adult ADHD. Often the conversation about ADHD has a psychological and med-ical tone. Furthermore, different kinds of views that come from therapeutic culture are popu-lar in our society. There is a decent amount of studies about media representations of ADHD but it seems that there are not many studies about representations of adult ADHD in media. In Finland media has portrayed some adults that have been given an ADHD-diagnosis. There-fore I became interested to study how ADHD in adulthood is portrayed in Finnish media. My purpose was to study what kind of discourses are used to portray ADHD in adults. I also ex-amined the positions the media offers to adults with ADHD. The research data consists of eight (8) newspaper articles that are published in Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. The articles were chosen with the criterion that they portray a profile of an adult with ADHD-diagnosis and that the articles mainly concentrate on ADHD. As another criterion I decided that the articles should be published between the years of 2007 and 2017. In the study I applied the approach of discourse analysis. Four discourses were raised from the research data: ”ADHD as a real medically valid and identifiable disorder”, ”Survival with the help of ADHD-diagnosis”, ”ADHD as a risk factor” and ”Strengths and hopefulness”. I interpreted the first two discourses as the strongest ones. The first discourse validated ADHD as a disorder that can be medically diagnosed and it highlight-ed ADHD as having an effect on life. For the adult this discourse offered the position of a pa-tient and the position of a marginalized person. The second discourse portrayed a narrative about survival with ADHD-diagnosis. It offered the position of a survivor and the position of a victim. In this discourse ADHD-diagnosis and medication were portrayed as very important factors for the individual as the adult survives from difficulties with the help of them. The third discourse talked about ADHD through risks and it portrayed ADHD as a risk factor. It offered adults the position of a risky person and the position of a person that is susceptible to risks. The fourth discourse consisted of a more positive tone than the other discourses: the symp-toms of ADHD were portrayed as strengths and living with ADHD was described in a hopeful way. It offered the adult a position of a person who goes on in life with a positive attitude. The study showed that psychological and therapeutic ways of speaking were reflected in the arti-cles that were examined. ADHD-diagnosis was a central part of the media representations. A popular feature in the media representations was that ADHD-diagnosis was presented as an important factor for the wellbeing of the adult.

The societal impact of media has grown during the past decade, mostly as a result of the ongoing digitalisation. We live in a culture where a significant part of our daily experiences are delivered by some form of media. The influential role of media is obvious, and the contents are produced by an unprecedented range of authors, from the children and youth to marketing professionals. For this reason, having good media skills is more important than ever. These skills include the understanding, production and interpretation of media. In the present work, we studied the teaching of media skills at elementary school level from the viewpoint of class room teachers. Our goal was to find out how media education is realised in practice. We approached media education from the perspective of its technical, content-related and cultural aspects. We studied how the teachers understand media education, and how they see themselves as media educators. The study was realised as a qualitative case study. The research material was gathered by interviewing six elementary school teachers during the spring of 2016. The material was interpreted by means of content analysis. The research material is divided into three main themes, which in turn consist of seven sub-themes. The interviewees were very different with respect to their understanding of media education. Nevertheless, they all considered it to be of importance. The practical media education, as realised in the class room, had a clear emphasis on the content-related aspects, as well as on the development of critical media literacy. The same emphasis could be seen in the teachers' own definitions of media education. The interviewees felt uncertain of using media as a tool in their own teaching. They believed that a practical media education guide would be beneficial when planning their lessons. They felt that focusing on media education was challenging amidst their other teaching duties. Majority of the teachers told that media education was only realised integrated into others substances. Our results imply that, in the Finnish elementary school, media education is not realised to its full need and potential.

This study investigates what kind of representations of teachers' are constructed in fiction. Previous research indicates that fiction is as powerful as nonfiction in changing peoples' attitudes, beliefs and opinions. The main concept used as a tool for analysis is representation. Representation is as well as an individual mental model of an element, for example teachers', it also shared. Representation is a process in which also TV-series take part in constructing. Representations are also inscribed in wider discourses. In Finland in literature, TV and movies there has been many teacher characters and, despite their well-esteem status in society, their representation has been mainly negative as is evidenced by labels such as discipline keeper or dictator-like. In Anglo-Saxon movies and TV-series teachers' representation is on the contrary mainly positive e.g. charismatic and heroic. This study examines how teachers are represented in a TV-series called Uusi päivä (New day, 2010-) and if the representations relate to earlier representations. The data used for the analysis was five consecutive episodes of the series from the third season (2012 autumn). Characters web-profiles were analyzed. Data was recorded and transcribed. The analysis concentrates on teacher characters' interaction and with other interlocutors. The analysis was made with qualitative approaches of content analysis and discourse analysis. The results of this study are multiple. Two main categories of teachers' representations were identified. These representations were artist teachers and normal teachers. The juxtaposition of these groups was made in discursive forms but also in the plot of the series. Compared to the traditional representation of teachers the artist teacher's representation is more positive and has Anglo-Saxon influences. The normal teachers seem to be following the Finnish tradition. Both of these representations are not only one sided but rather caricature like representations of earlier representations. Teachers' relationship with students is either friendly (artists) or discipline keeping (normal) oriented. The TV-series reflects societal issues such as school reforms and constructs an "appropriate" cultural model for activism.