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(2014)Aims The purpose of this research was to analyze the evaluation of adults' vocational competence and the possibilities of learning partnership in a triangular evaluation discussion between the student, teacher and representatives of work life. The development of evaluation is important in a vocational skills demonstration system, where mature students are aimed to be trained effectively for working life and for the needs of the job market. The starting point of the research was to investigate how the evaluation discussion appears as a multivoiced interaction situation, and how the student's voice is present and heard in a joint evaluation process. The identification of disturbances breaks and innovations and the hearing of the student's voice in the evaluation discussion are important in order to develop the system. The research questions were: 1. What kind of disturbances, breaks and innovations there occur in the evaluation discussion? 2. How is the student's voice heard in the multivoiced evaluation discussion? Methods The research data consisted of five final examination evaluation discussions of social and health sciences basic degree students. The data was collected through recording the evaluation discussions and interviewing the participants separately after the evaluation. The researcher participated as an observer in the evaluation discussion. The methods of Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research were applied to study the disturbances, breaks and innovations in a multivoiced discussion, as well as to study the multivoicedness. The researcher further developed these methods by means of a network perspective to illuminate the different voices in a triangular discussion. Two objects of discussion were differentiated, the work under evaluation and the evaluation discussion. Results The research produced knowledge about the nature of the evaluation discussions and their multivoicedness. The evaluation discussions turned out to be relatively teacher-driven discussions, where various disturbances and breaks were present. Large amount of the disturbances was focused on the evaluation discussion, whereas the breaks and innovations were evenly focused on the evaluation discussion and the work situation under evaluation. The disturbances were already noticed during the evaluation discussion and the participants considered them as a rather natural part of the situation. Instead, the breaks and innovations were missed and only became evident in the researcher's analysis and in the interviews with the participants. Therefore, the development potential of breaks and innovations cannot be utilised unless they are consciously scrutinised. The most important type of breaks was the ambiguities in evaluation during the evaluation discussion. The most important type of innovations was the cooperation effort between the participants of evaluation. The voice of students was partly overridden by the voices of evaluators particularly when the self-evaluation and grade suggestion by the student were discussed. The students' voice was emphasised when the focus of the discussion was one's own work and even the development of the whole work community. On the basis of the research results it could be concluded that the evaluation discussions are still predominantly oriented towards the evaluation situation and the formal evaluation task, which could be expanded towards addressing the work by strengthening the voice of the student. This would also create better prerequisites for a more genuine learning partnership and its further development.
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(2016)Objectives. The aim of this case study is to find out whether negative climate appears in primary school drama lessons. Previous research has shown that climate has a huge impact on schooling. A positive climate in school gives pupils a better opportunity to learn and provides pupils with more opportunities to be creative. Drama and creativity are strongly linked together because in drama, pupils work in creative way. A negative climate in turn reduces pupils' chances to learn and to be creative. Therefore, studying negative climate in drama lessons is of importance. In this study, I compared negative climate in drama lessons given by graduated classroom teachers' with those given by student teachers. I measured negative climate with The Classroom Assessment Scoring System™ (CLASS). During the study I also evaluated how the CLASS-scoring system worked in measuring the negative climate of the drama lessons. Methods. My study was a qualitative case study and the method was video analysis. I analyzed eight drama lessons with another student, Pauliina Kivi. The lessons were videotaped during the autumn of 2013 and the spring of 2014. Kivi used the same videotapes as material for her study. The level of the pupils in the videos varied from pre-school to third-grade. Four of the teachers in the videos were graduated classroom teachers who all had some kind of qualification for teaching drama. Other four were student teachers who had studied drama education as their minor subject. The videos were analyzed by using the CLASS-scoring system. A negative climate score was given to every exercise of every lesson. Results and conclusions. The results showed that negative climate took place in the observed lessons but the scores were low. One exception aside, the lessons of the teacher students received higher scores in negative climate than the lessons of the graduated teachers. However, none of the scores reached even the middle of the CLASS scale of negative climate. Therefore, according to this study, drama lessons do not have a negative climate in general. CLASS-scoring system turned out to be suitable for observing the negative climate in drama lessons. CLASS-scoring system can also be applied to evaluate how teacher or students create negative climate.
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(2015)Objectives of the study Depression is one of the greatest factors to decrease the quality of life. However, its etiology has no clear scientific base. It has been thought that depression is a latent variable, but this view has been questioned. According to the network approach stressful life events are directly linked to depressive symptoms without a latent variable. Body image dissatisfaction is a more long-lasting and stable depressive symptom than the other symptoms. In addition, body image dissatisfaction predicts depression, but depression does not predict body image dissatisfaction. It is probable that body image dissatisfaction is linked to appearance. In this study I examine if different adverse effects of unattractive appearance are associated with body image dissatisfaction, when the level of depression is controlled. If this is true it would indicate that body image dissatisfaction cannot be explained by one-dimensional depression. In this study the adverse effects of unattractive appearance were low income level and living alone, which are both linked to unattractive appearance according to previous studies. Methods In this study there were 1638–2969 participants depending on the analysis. The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study was used as the research material. Item response theory model and logistic regression were used to examine differential item functioning (DIF) in this study. DIF appears when an item of some latent variable has different scores in different groups even if the groups have the same score in the latent variable. Therefore I examined if equally depressed people do differ in body image dissatisfaction if they belong to the low income or living alone groups. Results and conclusions According to this study it is possible that depression is not a one-dimensional phenomenon. Low income level and living alone were inked to depressive symptoms and body image dissatisfaction. In addition, income level was associated differently to body image dissatisfaction than other depressive symptoms [χ² = 459.01, P < 0.001]. Living alone was not. Regardless, questioning the one-dimensionality of depression demands same kind of examination of other depressive symptoms in the future research.
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(2010)This study highlights the formation of an artifact designed to mediate exploratory collaboration. The data for this study was collected during a Finnish adaptation of the thinking together approach. The aim of the approach is to teach pulps how to engage in educationally beneficial form of joint discussion, namely exploratory talk. At the heart of the approach lies a set of conversational ground rules aimed to promote the use of exploratory talk. The theoretical framework of the study is based on a sociocultural perspective on learning. A central argument in the framework is that physical and psychological tools play a crucial role in human action and learning. With the help of tools humans can escape the direct stimulus of the outside world and learn to control ourselves by using tools. During the implementation of the approach, the classroom community negotiates a set of six rules, which this study conceptualizes as an artifact that mediates exploratory collaboration. Prior research done about the thinking together approach has not extensively researched the formation of the rules, which give ample reason to conduct this study. The specific research questions asked were: What kind of negotiation trajectories did the ground rules form during the intervention? What meanings were negotiated for the ground rules during the intervention The methodological framework of the study is based on discourse analysis, which has been specified by adapting the social construction of intertextuality to analyze the meanings negotiated for the created rules. The study has town units of analysis: thematic episode and negotiation trajectory. A thematic episode is a stretch of talk-in-interaction where the participants talk about a certain ground rule or a theme relating to it. A negotiation trajectory is a chronological representation of the negotiation process of a certain ground rule during the intervention and is constructed of thematic episodes. Thematic episodes were analyzed with the adapted intertextuality analysis. A contrastive analysis was done on the trajectories. Lastly, the meanings negotiated for the created rules were compared to the guidelines provided by the approach. The main result of the study is the observation, that the meanings of the created rules were more aligned with the ground rules of cumulative talk, rather than exploratory talk. Although meanings relating also to exploratory talk were negotiated, they clearly were not the dominant form. In addition, the study observed that the trajectories of the rules were non identical. Despite connecting dimensions (symmetry, composition, continuity and explicitness) none of the trajectories shared exactly the same features as the others.
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(2015)Aims: Repair is one the three structures that organizes conversation. Repair organization is used for solving problems in speaking, hearing and understanding in conversation. Self-repair is initiated by the person who has produced the trouble source turn. Language deficits affect person's possibilities to communicate with speech. Different kinds of language deficits affect in different ways to person's possibilities to participate in conversation and to be understood. Self-repair is a way to maintain intersubjectivity in conversation. If one of the participants in conversation can't self-repair his speech because of the language deficit, the intersubjectivity between the participants might be endangered. The aim of this study is to describe self-repairs made by a 4-year-old boy and how his language deficits affect on his self-repairs. Methods: The main approach to this study was conversation analytic. Conversation analysis is a qualitative method. It is used for finding recurrent structures in conversation. The study examined self-repairs made by a 4-year-old boy who has deficits in speech understanding, naming and inflection. The material for the study was from speech therapy sessions. Speech therapy was held 20 times and a partner in the conversations was a logopedics student. The study observes three types of situations in speech therapy. The conversation topics were limited in different ways. Results & Conclusions: The participant made lots of fluent self-repairs despite his language deficits. He also made self-repairs when they were started by the other. The deficits of speech understanding and naming caused self-repairs. The deficits of naming caused multiple self-repairs one after the other. To the inflection the participant made just few self-repairs. The participant had not acquired the language skills of inflection at the time.
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(2016)Teaching historical thinking in elementary school has been part of the curriculum since 1994. In this study historical thinking is seen as in the current curriculum (OPS 2004) as source skills, understanding time, cause and effect and historical empathy. Although teaching historical thinking has been part of the curriculum for 20 years, its teaching in elementary school has been scarce. The research problem is why historical thinking is not taught as it stands in the curriculum. In this study I survey four class teacher's thoughts about historical thinking in their teaching and how the teachers' vision of history as a school subject affects their teaching of historical thinking. I also examine how teaching materials used by teachers affect the teaching of historical thinking and compare the teachers' visions to research literature on the subject. Study was executed as a semi-structured thematic interview. During the spring of 2015 I interviewed four history teaching class teachers in Southern and Northern Finland. Interviewees were selected so that they would differ from one another for example by their background, teaching experience and alma mater. Interviews were recorded with the acceptance of the interviewees and transcribed for analysis. The data was analyzed using textual analysis and by comparing it to existing surveys. The study shows that the teachers' vision of history is outdated; ergo it is not in line with the targets set by the current curriculum. In the teachers' thoughts knowing history was seen as remembering important things and explaining the present through the past. The study also suggests that the teachers are not fully aware what is meant by historical thinking. It revealed that the teaching of history, at least in the eyes of the four teachers surveyed, leans a lot on history schoolbooks, which also respond badly to aims set by the curriculum.
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(2022)Objectives. Family background and school bullying victimization has been a popular research topic globally yet studies focusing on Finnish school system are still rare. Usually, family background is studied from the perspective of socioeconomical background. Previous studies have found that family background factors and several other individual factors may influence the likelihood of being bullied. The theoretical framework of this study focuses mainly on factors related to parental relationship and parental behaviour. The purpose of this study is to deepen the knowledge on how different family background factors predict bullying victimization among fourth and fifth grade primary school pupils. Methods. The data used in this study consists of a Finnish school wellbeing survey that was conducted in May 2019. The survey is a nation-wide study with target group being one cohort of fourth and fifth grade primary school pupils. The survey received a total of 99 632 responses of which 70 814 fulfilled the criteria of the employed analysis methods. A literature review acted as a basis for forming 11 family background variables and a gender variable. The influence of different variables on school bullying victimization was then analysed through a binomial logistic regression using a forced entry method. Accuracy and goodness of the regression model was tested with multiple accuracy measures, Hosmer-Lemenshow test and classification table. Results and conclusions. In contrast to previous research, the family background factors of this study did not significantly predict school bullying victimization. Even though the logistic regression model itself was statistically significant, it was capable to explain only 8.4 percent of the total variation in school bullying victimization variable. In this model, the neglect of parental duties proved to be the best predictor for school bullying victimization. Of the different forms of parental violence experienced by pupils, mental violence was the most significant predictor. The results also indicate a minor gender difference in bullying with boys having higher odds of being school bullying victims.
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(2024)This master's thesis aims to explore home economics teachers' perspectives on the revised final assessment criteria in home economics. Assessment is a significant part of a teacher's daily work, therefore it is important to develop assessment practices, and criteria, and equality of assessment. Assessment criteria allow for more accurate assessment, giving teachers a clear framework for assessing students' performance, and increasing the equality of assessment. The revised final assessment criteria were introduced on 1 August 2021 and applied for the first time in the final assessments conducted in schools in spring 2022. The criteria define the required level of knowledge and skill for grades 5, 7, 8, and 9 in each subject. The purpose of the criteria is to guarantee objectives common to all, within which teaching and learning are implemented in basic education. The thesis was carried out empirically using a qualitative research approach. The data were collected in September-November 2023 utilizing thematic interviews with seven (N=7) home economics teachers who had personal experience with the final assessment criteria in home economics. The data were analyzed through qualitative content analysis. The results of this thesis cannot be generalized quantitatively. The results show that the final assessment criteria were seen as practical, clear, and concrete, which facilitates assessment and promotes equality among students. Challenges were seen in the over-detailedness of the criteria as well as the lack of evaluation criteria to accommodate different learners. Teachers were seen as needing more resources, in-service education, and material to support their assessment work. The assessment criteria were felt to provide security in uncertain situations and to help justify the grades given. The high-level standard seen in the criteria raised concerns that teachers could balance the assessment by giving higher grades than students' actual competence according to the criteria would be. Gender was no longer felt to have a significant impact on assessment. The assessment was perceived to be subjective and there was variation in the interpretation of teachers' views and assessment criteria in the interviews. For example, the criteria for giving a grade of ten varied, weakening the equality of the assessment criteria. Cooperation among col-leagues was seen as important in the development of assessment expertise. In addition, the need for continuous education was emphasized to promote diverse assessment and consideration of the changing circumstances of students. The final assessment criteria were seen as a significant tool, but their practical functionality and equality should be evaluated and developed in the future. In the future, it would be important to study, among other things, the practical variation in the interpretation of teachers' own mental images and assessment criteria, and to identify factors that affect it. In this way, equality of assessment can be promoted nationally. The results of the study can be used in similar contexts, and the study brings current information on the functionality of assessment criteria to the field of home economics science and pedagogy.
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(2014)The study focuses on the Nepalese 8 grade Mathematics, Nepali language and Social study teachers' confidence to teach their own subject. Every skill, such as teaching skills, brings with uncertainty and insecurity creates a need for security. The aim of the master's thesis is to research how substance knowledge, the teacher's personality, pedagogical knowledge and classroom management, and their components are connected to each other. In addition, has been researched how much personality, pedagogical knowledge and classroom management, explain the teacher's self-perceived competence assurance to teach. Altogether, 1224 of Nepalese teachers responded to the survey. The survey sample was stratified. The questionnaire, teachers were asked to assess their teaching confidence in their teaching subject and its sections, on a scale of 1 to 4. Many studies have been done about teaching and the teacher's impact on learning outcomes. That has been considered as a possible cause of Finnish students' good learning achievements. Since the schools have small differences between them, it is easier to study the teachers and the teaching effect of the student's achievements in a country, where the school differences are considerable bigger. According to Hattie (2003, 2), the teacher effect is 30% of the student learning achievements, in Nepal the corresponding figure is 68% (Acharya, Metsämuuronen and Metsämuuronen 2013, 281 316). The study examined by tree-analysis how personality, pedagogical knowledge and classroom management elements are linked to educational confidence and by regression analysis how much these independent variables explain together the effect of the phenomenon. According to regression analysis, there are age, teaching years, assessment, professional development over the last two years, and the curriculum understanding and using, as well as the school equipment shortages. The study found that the most confident were those teachers who were under the age of 30 teachers; who had teaching experience five years or less; who used the project work as assessment; who experienced that they understood the objectives of the school curriculum, and in addition they experienced to implement it successfully. This study was empirical and explorative work and the results obtained on the regression model shows that the model explains 9.5% of teacher's confidence to teach their own subjects. As regression model explains less than 10% certainty, is the teacher's teaching confidence and competence a good follow-up research object. Another good object would be to compare the self-perceived reliability and the validity of the comparison of the measured whether teachers' own experience of the same qualifications as a measurable skill.
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(2016)Goals. Overweight and its consequences cardiovascular diseases are global problems. Problem arises often as a child and will follow along until death. Although a healthy lifestyle has been widely studied, and on the basis of studies has been prepared in e.g. general nutrition recommendations, the solution to the problem has not been solved. This study has taken a child-oriented approach to a healthy diet. The goal of this study was to examine the six-graders' knowledge of nutrition and food choices, taking into account their psychosocial and physical development. The study describes the levels and sources of students' nutrition knowledge. Methodology. The data were collected by interviewing ten six-graders from Capital Region. The interviewees were 3 boys and 7 girls. All students except one were from the same school. The interviews were semi-structured theme interviews and assisted by photos of food. The data were analyzed by theory oriented qualitative content analysis method. Results and conclusions. Interviewees knew better foods than nutrients. Carbohydrates were the least known of the nutrient. Parents had a significant role as sources of nutrition knowledge and dietary motivation promoters. The teacher's role in nutrition education was rather small. Nutrition knowledge and motivation affect students' food choices. The biggest impact on food motivation was the social influences, the supposed food taste and simple. Motivational nutrition education promotes students' nutrition knowledge and external support improves the motivation.
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(2023)The importance of food as a culinary experience, a form of leisure and a way of life is more significant today than ever. The casualization of food is partly the result of the mediatization and recreationalization of food. These developments can be seen to have accelerated when food content moved to television. Social media has expanded food media and culture to a new level, which has enabled the production of food content from different parties and the birth of new food-related phenomena. One example of new phenomena related to food and eating are mukbang eating videos from South Korea. Originally imitating collective dining, mukbang is a form of digital eating, where the person being filmed typically eats a large portion of food while conversing with their viewers. The purpose of this study was to investigate YouTube comments by analyzing the reasons for watching mukbang videos, i.e. why the videos are consumed. In addition, the research wanted to examine the social and cultural meanings viewers attach to food and eating. The thesis was carried out using qualitative research. The research method used was netnography, which is also called digital ethnography. In this study, the video platform YouTube served as the research field. The researcher first carried out observations in the field by getting to know the mukbang community, after which the research material was collected from the comment threads of six (n=6) different videos. The material was analyzed using theory-driven content analysis, and a total of 221 comments ended up in the final analysis. Based on the research, watching mukbang videos is activated by sensory pleasures, food inspiration and feeling connected to the mukbanger, i.e. the creator of the video. In addition, the result of the study can be considered the multi-layered nature of video consumption, as the comments could contain several reasons for watching. Of the meanings attached to food and eating, society's eating norms and staying within them, the idealization of food, and commensality, i.e. the meaning of eating together, came to the fore. This research helps to understand the meanings of the phenomena and communities created around food and the reasons for consuming food contents as the multi-meaning of food increases within people. In addition, the understanding of this research helps to promote the positive effects of food-related content such as mukbang, as well as to increase awareness and prevent harmful ones.
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(2007)The aim of this work was to study, whether international fashion trends show in knit designs in Finnish craft magazines and how trends are modified. Women's knitted clothes and accessories in autumn winter season 2005 2006 were analyzed. Future research, trends, fashion, designing and knitting provides theoretical basis for this study. The trend material of this study came from Carlin Women's knitwear winter 2005 2006, which is fashion forecast for Women's knitwear. In addition to the trend book, I selected two international fashion magazines to reinforce this study. Fashion magazines were L'Officiel, 1000 models, Milan - New York - winter 05/06, No 52, April 2005 and Collezioni Donna, Prêt-à-porter autumn-winter 2005 2006, No 107. Finnish craft magazines in this study were MODA's issues 4/2005, 5/2005, 6/2005 and Novita's issues autumn 2005, winter 2005 and Suuri Käsityölehti's issues 8/2005, 9/2005, 10/2005. For the base of the analyze I took themes from the trend book. From fashion magazines I searched knitwear designs and these designs were sorted out by themes of trend book. To this trend and fashion material I compared knit designs from craft magazines. I analyzed how fashion trends show in knit designs and how they are modified. I also studied what features of trends were shown and which did not appear in knit designs of the craft magazines. For analyzing trend pictures and knit designs in craft magazines I applied qualitative content analysis and image analysis. According to the results of this research, effects of trend can be recognized in knit designs of craft magazines, although the fashion trends have been applied very discreetly. Knit designs were very similar regardless of magazine. The craft magazine data included approximately as many designs from Novita and MODA. In Suuri Käsityölehti provided only fifth of the designs data. There were also designs in MODA and Suuri Käsityölehti, which were made of Novita's yarns. This research material includes yarns of 15 different yarn manufacturers. Although half of all knit designs were knitted from Novita's yarn. There were 10 different yarns from Novita. Nevertheless Novita's yarn called Aino was the most popular. Finnish craft magazines have not respond to popularity of knitting. Magazines do not provide any novelty designs for knitters. Knit designs in Finnish craft magazines are usually practical basic designs without any innovativeness.
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(2023)To recover from a stressful situation and take care of your own well-being, the important thing is to get your thoughts away from these stressful situations. Here you can use various activities that actively take people's thoughts away from stressful situations. Recovery, i.e., relaxation, starts as soon as your thoughts shift away from stressful things. The goal of this qualitative case study was to find out whether a beginner can have positive effects on his own well-being and feelings of relaxation when he is garter stitching. The study examined how emotions appeared during learning to knit and how emotions changed during learning the skill. The research material was produced together with a novice knitter for this study. The material consisted of video materials containing the thinking out loud of a novice knitter, from which the reflections made by the novice knitter were transcribed and analyzed in text form. The research material was produced in 14 consecutive evenings, about 20 minutes/evening, after the novice knitter's working day. Video files were analyzed with the Atlas.ti 23 program through the themes that emerged from the material and the Making-Process-Rug visual video analysis method. The material obtained during knitting and the material transcribed from the reflections were analyzed on the same thematic levels. Based on the research results, a novice knitter can achieve positive emotions that affect his well-being and a feeling of relaxation. The right knitting technique, the right tools for the knitter, and the working environment have a significant impact on the emergence of positive emotions and the encountering and overcoming of negative emotions. The results challenge us to pay more attention to these aspects and to study the meanings of these effects more.
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(2013)Objectives. The main function of eye blinking is to moisten and protect the cornea. Therefore it may be surprising that blink rate can convey information about the person's emotional and cognitive state, and that people with abnormal blink rates can be perceived as unfriendly or nervous. Moreover, listeners' blinks have been shown to synchronize with a videotaped speaker's blinks. For these reasons, blinks are suggested to have social functions, as well. The objective of this thesis was to probe the neural correlates of blink viewing with magnetoencephalography (MEG). The research questions were: 1) Do viewed eye blinks elicit observable MEG responses? If they do, which brain regions are involved? 2) How does the response change when the blink video is slowed down? 3) Are the self-produced blinks synchronized with the viewed blinks? Methods. The participants (n = 9) were presented with a video of a neutral female face showing no other movement than a single eye blink. The video was played back with normal speed (blink duration 351 ms) and in slow motion (950 ms); a pair of normal and slow videos was repeated 102 times. Between the blink videos, five other facial expressions were shown, and the participants task was to memorize those expressions. A 306-channel neuromagnetometer recorded the brain responses with a sampling rate of 600 Hz. After averaging and filtering the responses, the mean peak latencies, return-to-baseline durations and amplitudes were compared on the channels showing the strongest peaks. The participants blinks were measured with electro-oculogram (EOG), and the proportion of blinks occurring during the viewed blink was compared with the proportions of blinks at other time points. Results and discussion. Both fast and slow viewed blinks elicited prominent MEG responses. The mean peak latencies of the responses to the slow blinks were longer than those to the normal blink (445 ms vs. 317 ms). The responses to the slow blink also returned to the baseline later (921 ms vs. 537 ms). The maximum responses were equal in amplitude between the normal and slow conditions, contrary to our expectations based on earlier results showing that when the viewed stimuli move faster, the responses are stronger. In accordance with earlier EEG results, the cortical sources, modeled as current dipoles, were located mainly in the occipito-temporal cortical regions in the right hemisphere. The subjects also tended to blink more after the blink in the video (peak around 700 ms after the onset of the viewed blink). In conclusion, eye blinks are likely to have social relevance, and this was the first study to demonstrate with MEG how the human brain reacts to viewed blinks.
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(2016)Depression is a psychiatric disorder composed of several clusters of symptoms, which do not necessarily reflect common pathways of pathophysiological processes. Thus, a new conceptualization of depression has been proposed, which suggests that depression should be dissected to its key components instead of treating it as one homogeneous concept. Personality trait neuroticism is a risk factor that is consistently linked with depression. Several models have been suggested for the association between neuroticism and depression. One of them is a so-called common cause -model, which assumes that a shared etiology explains the co-occurrence of the two. Research from twin studies supports this notion, as neuroticism and depression have been found to share a large proportion of their genetic basis. However, earlier research has examined depression as a composite concept, and there are no studies to date which would have examined the shared genetic basis of specific symptoms of depression in relation with neuroticism. This study tests the common cause -model by estimating, whether the same genetic and environmental components are relevant in explaining the covariation between neuroticism and specific symptoms of depression. The data used in this study was from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study (n = 1515, av. age = 62.0). Depression was measured with The Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression Scale (CES-D), and separate analyses were conducted for three factors: somatic complaints, (lack of) positive affect and depressed affect. The results showed that all of the depressive symptoms shared the same genetic and environmental components when modeling the association with neuroticism, which supports the common cause -model. Over a half of the phenotypic correlation was explained by genetic influences between neuroticism and somatic complaints, as well as neuroticism and positive affect. Half of the co-variation between neuroticism and depressed affect was due to genetic influences. Findings of the current study suggest, that genetic and individual specific environmental influences are important in explaining the relationship in all of the symptoms. For future endeavors, it is suggested to search for concrete risk factors and neurobiological endophenotypes that are shared between specific symptoms and neuroticism. While the use of composite concept of depression was supported in this study, the research question has not been yet examined in molecular genetic studies. A twin model can only differentiate sources of variation, not concrete risk factors. Thus, the results presented here only apply in the context of twin modeling. Also, the robustness of the results should be tested by replicating the results among younger samples.
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(2016)In this study I examine the discussion of school choice in Helsingin Sanomat in early 2010s. School choice has been part of the finnish comprehensive school system since 1990s. In the earlier studies school choice has been linked to educational inequality. It causes segregation of schools when taking into account students' socio-economical backgrounds, learning results and school's reputations. In 2010s Finnish media has also started to publish more articles about school choice from this point of view. Research literature considers that media has power to control discussions in the society: it defines which topics are important and what should be thought about them. The aim of this study is to examine what kind of discourses can be found in Helsingin Sanomat during 2011–2015 and discover if some of the discourses are hegemonical. The research material consisted of 52 articles about school choice. The articles can be found from the internet archives of Helsingin Sanomat. I used rhetorical discourse analysis as a method. Discourse analysis is based on the idea of language as social actions that reconstructs reality. From this point of view newspaper discourses are crucial part of school choice phenomenon. There were four discourses in this material: segregation discourse, trust discourse, parenthood discourse and realism discourse. First three of the discourses were more critical towards school choice than realism discourse. Segregation discourse emphasized the consequences of school choice to equality. Trust discourse represented trust to the Finnish comprehensive school system and parenthood discourse described parental actions. Realism discourse questioned connection between school choice and segregation. It doesn't believe in denying school choice as a solution to segregation. Segragation discourse and parenthood discourse were in hegemonical position, whereas realism discourse in marginal. The study concludes that the Finnish comprehensive school system has strong position in Finnish society and that there were concerns about growing segragation. In addition to that parents' growing interest in their children's education were essential part of school choice phenomenon.
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(2017)Home-school collaboration has become a truism in educational policy and practice. Cooperation between home and school is considered particularly important when a child has challenges with school attendance. However, not much critical research has been conducted on the quality of that cooperation. The point of view of the parents, in particular, has often been overlooked. In my study I examined how negotiations between school and parents are seen from the parents' perspective in cases in which a decision concerning special support is being considered. I interviewed eight parents with children in special education. I analyzed the data by drawing from discursive theories. In my analysis I asked how the parents position themselves in the interview talk when they tell about negotiations between home and professionals. I also explored how "special needs" and special education are seen and made understandable from the positions available to the parents. The negotiations between parents and professionals were described as strained in the parents' narration. The parents described experiences of having been set aside in decision-making processes and told that getting information about the support system was difficult. The interviewees also talked about experiences of having been evaluated as parents. In their narration, the parents also constructed resistance in relation to the definitions and positions offered to them by the professionals. On the basis of my analysis, I suggest that it is hard for the parent to achieve the position of a knowing subject in the power/knowledge relations between the parents and the professionals. The professional knowledge produced within medical and psychological discourses is considered as predominant at school, whereas the parents' knowledge is understood as informal and inferior. I suggest that schools should critically examine their practices of labeling children as "having special needs" and locating challenges with school attendance primarily within the individual. In addition, the asymmetric nature of the power relations between professionals and parents should be recognized. In my view, this would contribute towards a home-school cooperation in which parents feel that they are heard better.
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(2018)Goals. The aim of this study was to better understand the ways in which young people make sense of sexual and gender-based harassment. Harassment is recognized as a problem both in public discussion and at the institutional level. However, previous studies have shown that harassment can be difficult to recognize as it intertwines with other phenomena in everyday life, such as humour. In this study harassment was viewed from a feminist post-structural perspective as a phenomenon which is understood through different discourses and categories, and is linked to social differences. This study focuses on how young people make sense of sexual and gender-based harassment in their everyday lives and how the categories of gender, age, and ethnicity, which are connected to perpetrators and targets of sexual harassment, affect the sense making. Methods. The data consisted of theme interviews with 15 ninth graders and a 5-day observation period in a secondary school located in the southern Finland. Discourse analysis was used in analysing the data, and analytical tools from membership categorization analysis were also used. Findings. Harassment and its meanings were constantly negotiated and normalized. Harassment was understood through different discourses that gave it different meanings: on the one hand harassment was interpreted as distressing and on the other hand as ordinary phenomena. Many situations, such as name-calling in schools were often interpret not as harassment, but as common humour. One’s own experience was considered important when defining harassment, but also situations that were not necessarily seen as fun, could be normalized as humour. Harassment was also actively located away from one’s own everyday life. Categories of gender, age, and ethnicity were used to describe and explain both the perpetrators and the targets of harassment. The categories were first and foremost used to make sense of sexual harassment done by strangers. The categories were also used to highlight differences between the perpetrator and the target and some of the used categories strengthened stereotypes. The assumption of humour was constructed mainly on the friend-category. The findings show that the different meanings of harassment are constructed in local interactions which are embedded in broader social culture. The findings can be utilized in the preventive work done by schools, as the study increases our understanding of the ways in which harassment is entangled with school culture and everyday life.
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(2016)The objective of this study is to examine how young people become subjects and construct their future in the discourses of youth workshops. In current governmental and European neoliberal discussion, the youth is expected to be active, effective and straightforward in their transitions to education and employment. Furthermore, the youth outside working life and education is considered to be "at-risk" and in need of guidance and support. In this study, my objective is to examine how it is possible for young people in youth workshops to construct their subjectivity and their future by repeating and mastering the discourses available in current time. My perspective on this study is based on post-structural theories. I conducted three group interviews and one individual interview in the youth workshops. I visited two youth workshops located in Helsinki metropolitan area and interviewed 17 youngsters. As a research method, I applied discourse analysis. By discourse I'm referring to historically, culturally and socially constructed "truth structures" that allow certain ways of thinking and acting. I have applied the concepts of subject position and subjectification as my analytical tools. According to this study, young people had assimilated the idea of an education- and working life-centered society. They constructed their subjectivity in relation to an ideal citizen who is educated and in working life. In the discourses of youth workshops it was possible for young people to become subjects through a position of "non-ideal youngster", "ideal a-like youngster" and through a position where the ideal was critically and reflexively questioned. Further, as constructing their future in the discourses of youth workshops, in addition to discussing education and employment young people brought up the requirement of individuality and uncertainty. Based on the results of this study, it seems clear that according to young people, integrating into the society requires education or having a job. In the discourses of youth workshops there is not much space becoming subject in any other way. However, due to the individuality and uncertainty of young people's future constructions, the straightforward transition to education and working life is challenged and questioned.
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(2016)In this master's thesis, I have reviewed, how women who have moved to Finland from abroad, position their motherhood under the influence of both Finnish residency experiences and transnational residency experiences. In particular, I have clarified the type of negotiations contained in their narration of motherhood, and how the feelings of belonging and not belonging to the Finnish society and motherhood environment are described as a part thereof. The study's questions are set in the fields of educational and social immigration and motherhood research. In terms of theoretical and methodological choices, it focuses on social constructionism, narrative constructionism and a theoretical framework on positioning. The empirical material of the study is formed of the interview narration by three mothers. We produced one oral interview and a second, either oral or written, interview with each interviewee. In the interview method, I utilised the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM). The analysis I produced had two phases: in the first phase, I aimed to define narrative themes in the narrations by means of narrative content analysis, where motherhood experiences were given particular emphasis. In the second phase of the analysis, which utilised position analysis, I paid attention to the position the mothers took in their narrations, objected or built on when telling about motherhood, what categorisations could be defined in the narrations, and how and in what relation were the feelings of belonging, or not belonging, told. In their narrations, the mothers brought up several positions that they found significant, of which the position of being a resource, the position of requiring strength and critical thinking skills and the position of lonely and limited motherhood were the most significant. When the motherly ways and values of the mothers I interviewed did not correspond to the equal and uniform requirements encountered in the Finnish society's social or institutional communities, they were said to be made strange, exceptional or limiting. Holding on to the characteristics of one's own motherhood, when the Finnish representation of motherhood is considered uniformly discriminating, is said to e.g. be a place that requires particular strength and questioning skills. The successful experiences, particularly concerning prenatal clinic services and the arrangements of giving birth, seem to have, on the other hand, strengthened the sense of security and the formation of the sense of belonging towards the institutional society and in general, the entire Finnish society.
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