Browsing by study line "Luokanopettaja, kasvatuspsykologia"

Objectives: There is already strong evidence of the negative impact of the global COVID-19 virus pandemic on the well-being of young people, especially on their study and work engagement, but there are relatively few studies comparing different life situations of young people. This thesis examines whether there are differences in the study and work engagement and resilience of young people born in 2000 living in different life situations during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the summer of 2020. In addition, the differences in study and work engagement of young people in different life situations are examined further by controlling their resilience. The participants are divided into three different life situations: full-time students, young people preparing for entrance exams, and employed. The multidimensional effects of the coronavirus on young people's engagement and their life situations are examined using ecological systems theory. Methods: The participants of the thesis (N = 250) were young people born in 2000 living mainly in the metropolitan area of Finland. The study and work engagement of the subjects was measured with the EDA scale consisting of nine items and resilience with the BRS scale consisting of six items. Differences in motivation and resilience between groups (students n = 91; applicants = 130; employed n = 45) were examined using variance analysis and the effect of resilience on engagement was controlled using analysis of covariance. Results and conclusions: The study engagement of the student group was statistically significantly lower compared to the entrance exam applicants and the employed. There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in the resilience of the subjects. In addition, the difference in engagement between the groups remained the same when resilience was taken into account as a covariate in the analysis. The study engagement of the student group is in line with previous studies about the pandemic. The results of the thesis open up views on the connections between young people's diverse life situations and study and work engagement during the pandemic. It would be important to continue researching the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people's study and work engagement and broader well-being, so that in the future we would be better prepared to protect young people in similar exceptional situations.

As forests flee further away from the everyday environments of Finns, concerns arise about the alienation of forests and the distance of adolescents from the forest. Previous studies have shown that adolescents’ human-forest relationships require exposure, and human-forest relationships are known to be built on significant life experiences. This study aims to describe and analyze the human-forest relationships among Finnish adolescents. This thesis examines the human-forest relationship of adolescents, the factors that affect the human-forest relationships, and the thoughts and concerns that adolescents have about the forest. The aim of the thesis is to form a picture of the dimensions and factors that the human-forest relationship of adolescents holds inside. In this thesis, the dimensions of the human-forest relationship were examined based on Palmer's (1998) tree model of environmental education and previous data on forest relationships among adolescents. The thesis has been implemented as part of the research project Vaikuttavia metsäsuhteita – seurannan kehittämisestä ennakointiin. The material for the thesis was collected through six focus group interviews with 13–17-year-old adolescents (n=21) during the spring and autumn of 2021. The material of the semi-structured thematic interviews was analyzed using theory-based content analysis. The material was used to examine the dimensions and factors affecting adolescents’ human-forest relationships, and the effects of their ideas on their activities. The results of the thesis show that the human-forest relationship of adolescents is multidimensional. Most adolescents considered forests important and experienced a positive relationship with the forest. Based on the results through significant experiences and individual factors, the human-forest relationship may also be affected by an individual forest identity. Based on the thesis, the forest relationship of adolescents arose through different dimensions and included numerous factors that affected the activities and well-being of the adolescents. The forest was seen as a social and functional environment and, if necessary, a place of calm. In addition to calming down, the forest was a prominent place for leisure, and experiences in the forest were shared with significant people as well as pets. The results showed that adolescents were concerned about changes in forests and the environment, and in principle, the concerns they experienced were related to their local environment. The results of the study show the need to support adolescents’ human-forest relationships through environmental education. The results can be used to develop ways to support the strengthening of forest relations and forest identity among adolescents.

In this study, the actions of teachers are examined in the light of attachment theory. Attachment theory explains individual behavior based on early childhood caregiving experiences, leading to the formation of either a secure or insecure attachment model that influences an individual's behavior in close relationships throughout their lifespan. In attachment theory, the teacher-student relationship is seen as an attachment relationship closely resembling the bond between a child and a parent. The focus of this study is on the role of the teacher, aiming to investigate how the teacher's insecure attachment model affects the teacher-student relationship and whether it influ- ences the use of specific disciplinary methods in the classroom. Discipline is categorized into five common methods, as identified in previous research: angrily shouting at students, sarcasm, humiliation, collective punishment, and removing students from the classroom. The study employs a quantitative research approach, gathering data through an online survey from 134 teachers. The survey includes the use of ECR-R, STRS, and Discipline Scale instru- ments to examine teachers' attachment patterns, the quality of the teacher-student relationship, and the use of five different disciplinary methods. Data analysis involves analysis of variance and correlation testing. Respondents are categorized based on their attachment patterns, resulting in 101 secure and 33 insecure individuals, including 12 with avoidant attachment, 10 with ambivalent attachment, and 11 with fearful attachment. The results of the analysis of variance indicate that there is a statistically significant or nearly significant difference between teachers with secure and insecure attachment models in three var- iables measuring the quality of the teacher-student relationship. In the closeness variable, a nearly significant difference is observed between securely and ambivalently attached individuals (p = .040). In the conflict variable, a nearly significant difference is observed between avoidantly and ambivalently attached individuals (p = .024). In the dependence variable, statistical signifi- cance is found between securely and ambivalently attached individuals (p = .008) and between avoidantly and ambivalently attached individuals (p = .002). According to the correlation test, in- secure attachment has a statistically nearly significant correlation with angrily shouting at students (r=.35) and collective punishment (r=.377). Additionally, it is observed that secure attachment has a statistically significant correlation with the use of sarcasm (r=.311) and humiliation (r=.308), and a nearly significant correlation with angrily shouting at students (r=.229), collective punishment (r=.225), and removing a student from the classroom (r=.215). The findings indicate that teachers with secure and insecure attachment models impact the teacher-student relationship both positively and negatively in terms of conflict, closeness, and dependence. Securely attached teachers use disciplinary methods in a more diverse manner, while insecurely attached teachers primarily use yelling and collective punishment as effective means. The research emphasizes the importance of considering the teacher's attachment model in educational research, as its role in teaching is significant.

Aims. The aim of this study was to find out what kind of social reality is produced about teachers’ occupational well-being in Finnish newspapers’ opinion section in the time of the pandemic. This was seen to include the question of who talk about the subject and how, what kind of subject positions are given to teachers and what kind of power-relations are included in the conversation. The news about teachers wanting to change fields and recent studies of teachers’ decreased well-being (including the research produced by The Trade Union of Education in Finland) justify the currentness of this study. The pandemic made significant changes to the everyday life which also raised the question about teachers’ occupational well-being and working conditions. In this study the occupational well-being of teachers is seen through the occupational well-being theory of Rauramo (2012), Self Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and Job Demands – Resources –model (Demerouti et. al., 2001). Methods. The epistemological and ontological backround was based on social constructionism and the method of analysis was critical discourse analysis (CDA). The research data included 29 writings which were from three Finnish newspapers. Four of the writings were from Aamulehti, four from Turun Sanomat and 21 from Helsingin Sanomat. The data was gathered in November 2021 and the writings were published from March 2020 to October 2021. The participants of the conversation were teachers, other professionals of the field of education, politicians, and external participants of the field of education. The participants were categorised into groups by writer status and the voice of the writing, and the categories were teacher, neutral and defender of teachers. Results and conclusions. There were four discourses constructed from the data. The discourses were The concern about teachers, Teachers in distress, Satisfied teacher and The change of society. Teachers were given different subject positions in each discourse and they were The help needer, Exhausted teacher, Capable worker and satisfied teacher and The executor of the impossible task. The subject of teachers’ occupational well-being was mostly seen as a problem that needed a solution. Teachers held the decision makers accountable, whereas the other participants argued that the teachers were responsible for their own well-being. The discussion about the subject had an emphasis on negation as well as the most recent studies on teachers’ occupational well-being. The negativity of discussion can decrease the attractiveness of the education industry which is already reflected from recent studies.

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract Objective: The aim of this article-type master's thesis was to examine agency of pupils in primary school during phenomenal learning. this is article-type master’s thesis is a study of child perspectives. The aim of the study was to study what kind of agency occurs during a phenomenal learning process. Students’ views and experiences of phenomenal learning were studied as well. Research concerning student’s agency during phenomenal learning process is limited. Previous research refers that there is still a resistance in school that limits the possibility for students to act as active agents of their teaching and learning environment (Mameli ym. 2020). Methods: The data of the study were collected by observation and thematic interviews with students (n=24) and a teacher at a school in Southern Finland. The students were asked to describe their experiences and views of phenomenal learning and how their agency occurs during this learning process. The data were analyzed using theoretical content analysis. Results and conclusions: The results showed that pupils’ agency occurred individually and collectively within a group or within the whole class and instructed by the class teacher as well. During phenomenal learning process pupils have to take more responsibility than in teacher-centered environment. Learning during the phenomenal process occurs by peer learning. Teachers at the school were providing pupils opportunities to agency during phe-nomenal learning and also during teacher centered learning process. The article “The agency of pupils’ in primary school during phenomenon-based learning process” is to be published in Journal of Educational Change.

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills are recognized as an important asset in the transition phase of society that we are living in. The attitude climate in entrepreneurship education is mainly positive and has developed significantly over the past decades in Finland. The importance of entrepreneurship education as part of the Education Curriculum has been strengthened since the 1990s. Despite this, the role of entrepreneurship education in the everyday life of elementary schools is small. In my research, I wanted to find out why entrepreneurship education does not appear in basic education according to POPS (2014)? The goal of my research was to form an understanding of the current state of entrepreneurship education in basic education based on the views of entrepreneurship education experts, and thereby define measures that support the future of entrepreneurship education in basic education. I approached the research question through three sub-questions: "What kind of role does entrepreneurship education have for the individual and society?", "What kind of opportunities and challenges are associated with entrepreneurship education?" and "What kind of views do entrepreneurship education experts have about the future of entrepreneurship education in basic education?" My research was based on the theory of entrepreneurship education (e.g. Seikkula-Leino 2018, Lackéus 2017) and guidelines defining entrepreneurship education. The research was carried out as a qualitative case study by interviewing seven expert teachers of entrepreneurship education and was analyzed using content analysis methods. The research results showed that entrepreneurship education has a significant role for the individual and society. The main influencing factors of entrepreneurship education were the attitude climate, financial resources and the role of teachers. The most important challenges were the lack of teacher training and teachers' skills, as well as the school's marginal conditions and lack of resources for multidisciplinary learning that crosses subject boundaries. In their views, the experts criticized the division of subjects and knowledge-based nature of the current school and emphasized that the school should serve the student's interests more strongly than it currently does. As conclusions, POPS should provide a stronger backbone for entrepreneurship education than at present, which forms an integral learning path for basic education. POPS should strengthen its concreteness and clarity, as well as the importance of multidisciplinary and broad competence skills. So that in the future every student has equal opportunities to receive entrepreneurship education, the Board of Education must use financial resources and training to support the realization and implementation of POPS in elementary schools and university teacher training more strongly than at present. School curricula should include an annual calendar of entrepreneurship education, and the management should provide sufficient resources for teaching that crosses subject boundaries.

The aim of this study is to find out whether self-esteem or well-being are related to socio-emotional skills measured according to the CASEL framework, which classifies socio-emotional skills in the categories of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making. In addition to this, the relationship between self-esteem and well-being will be looked into. The theoretical framework for this study lies in the theory of social constructive learning, which will be used to formulate the hypotheses of this study and which will also be used in interpreting the results. The study has been conducted as a descriptive quantitative study using a data set collected in the Learning 2 Be research project. The analyses have been run on SPSS 28. The methods used in this study were Spearman’s correlation analysis and Welch ANOVA with Games-Howell post hoc tests. According to the results, every aspect of socio-emotional skills has a positive correlation with all the other aspects of socio-emotional skills, as well as with self-esteem and well-being. The strongest correlations were found between relationship skills and responsible decision-making, as well as between self-awareness and responsible decision-making, while the weakest correlations were found between well-being and social awareness, as well as between well-being and self-management. The results of the ANOVA show that greater perceived well-being is related to better skills in every aspect of socio-emotional skills measured, at least when well-being is measured by life satisfaction. Greater perceived well-being is also related to higher self-esteem, when well-being is measured by life satisfaction and when self-esteem is measured by an adaptation of the classic Rosenberg self-esteem scale. The results of the correlation analyses are in accordance with the results of the analyses of variance and they both also agree with previous studies conducted on the subject. Based on these results, numerous ideas for possible future studies can be named so that more light can be shed on different factors related to socio-emotional skills in the future.

The aim of this study is to find out the classroom teachers' perceptions of learning motivation, the factors influencing it and their motivation strategies. I use two different theories related to learning motivation as the theoretical background of the research. These are Deci's and Ryan's (2000) Self-Determination Theory and Eccles’ and Wigfield's (2000) Expectation-Theory. According to these theories, an individual's motivation is constructed by various factors. At the heart of self-determination theory are basic psychological needs that, when fulfilled, increase an individual's intrinsic motivation. According to Decin and Ryan (2000), the basic psychological needs of an individual are perceived autonomy, perceived ability, and a sense of belonging. In Eccles and Wigfield's (2000) expectation value theory, an individual's motivation is again seen to be influenced by performance-related expectations and values. This study is a qualitative and its research approach is a case study.The subject of this study was six classroom teachers. Classroom teachers were interviewed individually using themes related to learning motivation. All interviews were recorded and later transcribed. Thematic design was utilized in the analysis of the obtained material. The results of the study showed that the perceptions of learning motivation of the interviewed teachers were very similar to each other. Three different themes were created from the responses of classroom teachers as factors influencing learning motivation. These included psychological factors, social factors, and student alertness. Three different themes were also created from the motivational strategies provided by the teachers themselves. The themes related to the strategies of motivation were the strategies related to working methods, the strategies related to the learning environment and the strategies related to the learning situation. This research does not actually provide entirely new information on the topic I am researching, but it does give voice to the interviewees ’perceptions of learning motivation. I find this important both from a research point of view and from the individual point of view of the interviewees. Some of the interviewees stated that they had never thought deeper about perceptions of learning motivation, because they felt that it was automatized.

There has been intense debate over the Finnish school system and new curriculum in recent years. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze this public debate in the comment fields of news sites. I try to describe the ways in which school reality is constructed in these comment fields. The material of the study was the discussions under the articles about school and new curricu-lum in Helsingin Sanomat and Yle Uutiset from autumn 2018 to spring 2019. The delimitation was made based on the topic of the news and the number and quality of comments on the dis-cussion under it. The method of analysis was interpretive discourse analysis, which was also supported by rhe-torical analysis. In discourse analysis, language is seen as a tool to shape reality, and it is im-portant to examine what kind of image about school is produced in public debate, when public debate is increasingly influencing in educational policy processes. As a result of the analysis, five discourses were constructed. Discourses were called the dis-course of the circle of accusations, the discourse of confrontation, the discourse of international comparison, the discourse of solutions, and the discourse of defending the school and the cur-riculum. All discourses presented different perspectives on education policy, teachers, methods, and students. The new curriculum was seen as a failure. The discourses used strong and even offensive rhetoric.

Self-efficacy is an important performance factor. Self-efficacy is more than knowing what to do and being motivated to do it, it reflects ones' beliefs about ones' capabilities in different situations. Teacher self-efficacy has been a popular subject of research, and it is having been shown that novice teachers typically suffer from lower and weaker self-efficacy compared with more experienced teachers. It would be important that during teacher education teacher students could have possibilities to develop their self-efficacy and gain experiences that emphasize it. A forthcoming study has been found that future teachers do not express high levels of self-efficacy in entrepreneurship and working life skills as a cross-curricular competence even though entrepreneurship education has been a part of Finnish schools since the 90s. Many teachers have a narrow and insufficient understanding of the phenomenon. The present study aims to understand what affects self-efficacy in entrepreneurship education, and what kind of impact does teacher education has on it. This study has been conducted with a qualitative approach and the research materials have been acquired by interviewing 16 class teacher students. Analysis has been done using the thematic analysis method. Future teachers seem to comprehend entrepreneurship education consisting mainly of skills and knowledge and their attitudes towards it seems to be mostly positive or critical. Self-efficacy has been described mainly in a relatively positive way or as relatively weak. Former mastery experiences as a teacher had the greatest impact on self-efficacy with entrepreneurship education. Personal interest seems also to be a meaningful factor, teacher students who expressed interest in entrepreneurship education also seemed to comprehend the phenomenon more positively and they also expressed higher levels of self-efficacy compared to others. Teacher education doesn't seem to be important in future teachers’ expertise and self-efficacy with entrepreneurship education. Skills learned are described as insufficient and narrow, focusing mostly on a few ways of teaching and a few skills to be strengthened within pupils. Future teachers would like to have more experimental learning and possibilities to develop one’s skills and knowledge during teacher education.