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The starting point of this thesis is the question of a probable tension between educational and economic objectives in art museums. I have chosen to approach this question by focusing on gallery education. My primary aim has been to analyse what kind of concepts, goals and values gallery education is founded on. I have also deliberated upon the change in gallery education during the last decades. The data for this thesis was produced by interviewing gallery educators in nine (9) separate interviews. The interviews were partly structured and proceeded according to chosen themes. I have analysed the interviews by using the discursive approach. The main themes and negotiations that arose in the interviews were set between institutional and individual point of views, but also between economic objectives and intrinsic values. As a result of the analysis of these negotiations I have constructed a discursive field of gallery education. On this discursive field gallery education is approached from four points of view – as an experience, as service, as learning, and as an opener of new horizons. On the basis of the discursive field, I conclude that gallery education and its development at the present time has two strong emphases: individual experience and economic interests. These emphases are partly opposite and partly supportive to each other. There is a tendency to underscore the economic objectives and design activity according to these objectives. Sometimes this tendency is opposed and answered by using the concept of experience. By using experience it becomes possible to keep the economic objectives at a distance. On the other hand, the stress on experience shifts activity to more individualistic ways of thinking and sometimes further away from cultural and educational goals. On the basis of this thesis it seems that emphasizing individualism in general is producing a need to strengthen the connection between society and individuals, and anchor the activity back to the society. It also seems that this is done by bringing the focus back to the intrinsic values of the activity by applying the goal of societal effects to gallery education as a separate object.

This study is a case study of Taika Kultsu, the cultural education plan for early childhood education and care in Tuusula. The aim of my thesis is to find out whether the staff feels that the new plan is a useful document and tool in their own work, receiving support for the implementation of cultural and art education in the daycare centre's everyday life. Efforts have been made to make the plan easy to use and concrete. Previous studies by the National Centre for The Evaluation of Education (Karvin) have revealed uneven quality of art education (2019) and the fact that the documents guiding the activities of early childhood education and care remain at a very abstract level (2018). In the framework of this thesis, I aim to describe the multidimensionality of art education, reflecting on art education as part of cultural education, and to highlight the importance of art for the child and the comprehensive development of the child. The concreteness of the guiding documents, its need and level have been considered in several studies. In the theory section, I looked at concreteness from the perspective of the individual's sense of autonomy and, more broadly, the realization of common goals. The data was collected in May 2020 using an electronic questionnaire sent to the entire Tuusulas early childhood education and care staff, approximately 310 persons. 42 responses were received. Like theory-controlled content analysis, the analysis was carried out in combination with the qualitative and quantitative data obtained. Quantitative data were at the level of average and type values, as the small number of respondents did not allow comparison between different groups of respondents using statistical methods. The new plan had received a positive reception and was found useful. It had been used as a support for the brainstorming, planning and evaluation of operations. Taika Kultsu could be judged better as a whole from the perspective of cultural education than from the perspective of an individual art species. There were still few things to develop. This was partly caused by the coronavirus epidemic, which affected the number of respondents and the content of the responses. Taika Kultsu's plan was introduced at the beginning of 2020, and the changed conditions in the spring did not allow us to familiarize yourself with the plan or carry out the activities as desired. The results of this thesis will be taken into account in the development and updating of Taika Kultsu. On the basis of the results, it could be said that concreteness and consideration of locality in the document were considered useful and facilitate ideas, planning, evaluation and diversification. The presentation of the plan is easy to use. The plan clarified the concept and goals of cultural education and presented the possibilities of local cultural offerings. However, setting and implementing common goals requires more debate, as it was not always considered sufficient. The bindingity of this new plan must also be further defined. In municipalities that consider the preparation of their own cultural education plan and its form, the results can be used as user experiences from a document that strives to be very concrete and to put its content into practice.

Objectives. The objective of this study was to research how handicraft in contemporary art can weaken traditional gendered structures. There’s been active discussion of gender equality in the early years of the 21st century. History has had a big impact on how handicraft is regarded and how gendered it has been. Previous studies has shown that textilecrafts in the 21st century has also artistic value, not only practical value. In this study I consider handcraft’s impact on gendered structures in the context of art. Methods. The theoretical background of this thesis is based on an interview of an specialist and on relevant research literature. The research material consisted of Noora Schroderus (a Finnish sculptor) artworks which included embroidery. The research method used for qualitative content analysis was hermeneutic research method. By using content analysis I made interpretations on the artworks. Results. When researching art, one can not reach final interpretations on art works. When looking at the artworks through qualitative content analysis, it became clear that the most rewarding way of interpreting artworks is from their contexts. Through the analysis it is possible to find four different contexts where the embroidery of the artworks occur and weakens the gendered structures. These four contexts were the artwork in the hands of the artist, the artwork in exhibitions and the interaction between the artwork and the viewer and the society. Through handicraft in the arts it is possible to weaken the deep-rooted paradigms and norms. In the context of art, handicraft is seen more widely as art and not just as an item. The untypical and interesting material choices of Embroidered banknotes-series attracts the viewer to consider the artworks that weaken the traditional perceptions of the possibilities of handicraft, or more specifically, of embroidery. Thus it is possible to question the gendered structures in the society and build dialogue between different actors. When considered as art, handcraft is more expressive and more appreciated than when considered just as an handcraft item. These study results can not be generalised to other artworks but the results increase awareness of handicrafts possibility to influence art, society and discussion of equality.

Abstract The aim of this study is to research and describe how the criteria in designing and manufacturing of a figure skating dress are formed and how the aspects of functionality, expressiveness and aesthetics show from dressmaker’s point of view. The study seeks to answer the question: what kind of process the design and manufacture of figure skating costume typically is and how to reach an understanding with the customer about the implementation of the costs of the dress and other details. The aim is to describe the nature of the maker’s work, the challenger and prospects from a perspective of an entrepreneur. There have been only few previous studies of competitive sports covering the fields of arts and skills comparable to figure skating, and those have often focused on mapping the client’s point of view. In this study the focus is on the design process and the voice with maker. The costumer ordered for seasonal competition programs, are few custom-made outfits in the field of sports. Hence, their position is of interest of the increasingly commercial sports business. The study is made by using and thematic interview conducted remotely using the Zoom program for online meetings. The interviewee was a costume designer and maker Titta Kettunen, whose design studio Ateljee Titta Kettunen is currently one of the most popular costume making companies in the Finnish figure skating community. The interview questions were pre-designed to cover perspectives of design principles based on FEA model by Lamb and Kallal (1992). Also, to answer research questions about factors make up the quality and design criteria for figure skating costumes consist of, from the perspective of the costume designer and, on the other hand, what is the design process about. The study aims to describe what emphasis the components receive according to the customers’ needs and wishes and the realities of implementation. Quality is referred to through Garvin’s (1988) classical definitions of quality and the study seeks to describe how different budgets and realities affect the quality of the costumes. Images of varying figure skating outfits selected by the interviewer were used as support and foundation for the interview. The Atlas.ti program was used to save and extract the material, in which the interviewee’s answers were classified by theme. The interview took 1,5 hours. Based on the study; figure skating outfits are valued, and the clients are willing to pay for handcrafted product made in a peasant, themed and individual purposes. There will probably be a demand for costumes now and in the future, if the thematic consistency in the programs remains a special feature of the sport. Costumes live in time and the digitalized world has been reflected in costume technical innovations, but due to the (new) media, costume must withstand a close-up. Costume maker’s professionalism, fluency, reliability, sport and customer knowledge and pricing ability, alongside up-to-date methods and material handling are a key to costume design company’s success now and tomorrow.

This thesis inspects how community music workshops may affect self-perceived work ability in the disabled, immigrant, mentally ill, or otherwise disadvantaged participants. Community music workshops had statistically significant positive effect on self-perceived work ability in all the subgroups, except the immigrant participants.

The goal of this study was to find out which factors have had influenced to the children with higher educated than their single parent mothers and how the family form has effected to their course of life. Studies have shown that the mother's educational background has significant effect on how the child’s education path is formed. However, the starting point of this study was the opposite. The family's economical, social and cultural capital will determine the resources available to the individual and the family. The educational culture in the family and the associated values transfer from parent to child. When the family’s resources are scarce other factors outside the family will also have an affect to child’s life and educational path. Pierre Bourdieu's field theory is the theoretical basis for this study. The phenomenon was also explained by the inheritance of education and social mobility. The survey was carried out by interviewing six 24-47-year old individuals who had grown up with a single mother in their childhood and had been educated against their mother's educational background. Interviews were conducted with theme interviews. The material was transcribed and analysed by theme analysis. The analysis focused on sub-themes of economical, social and cultural capital. Financial challenges in one parent's family were common. Families were considered to be close and social relationships outside the family and communities were important. Due to the lack if educational resources, interviewees were more interested in educating themselves than their parents. When educated against their parents educational background one’s own nature and goals, encouraging people outside family and a good success in school were proved to be important factors in pursuing for higher education.

The aim of this study was to deepen the knowledge and skills related to the Okinawan dyeing technique bingata, continuing the subject of the bachelor’s thesis on the Japanese katazome dyeing methods. The theoretical part of the research includes information about the history and the geographical location of Okinawa, various aspects of the history of bingata and its technical work methods and working tools, answering comprehensively to the question what is bingata. The purpose of the research was to describe the cultural-related skill learning process through personal experiences and to tell how the knowledge acquired during the intensive period implemented in the research is reflected to the knowledge acquired in the theory part. There is a limited amount if any research about bingata in Finnish, so it is justified to produce profound information of bingata. This was a qualitative research that researched bingata as a dyeing method. The learning process of bingata dyeing at an intensive period in Okinawan dyeing studio was observed and analyzed with an autoethnographic approach. During this period the skill and knowledge of bingata dyeing as well as the working methods and tools were learnt. As a method of observation, the researcher’s notes, logbook, photographs and video recordings were used to save the characteristics and important considerations of the different work phases of bingata. The result of this study was an extensive description of bingata, which made it easier to understand the specificity of the bingata dyeing technique as well as its complexity. The aspects that influenced the birth and development of bingata and combined the importance of history with the development of technique and its current status was brought up in the research. The creation of bingata has more than ten steps which in the study were divided into three main categories based on the work methods and materials that were used in them. The work phases contain many details that only came visible during the intensive period through the observation, analysis and learning process. Examples for these are the details related to the color application of different patterns and areas, learning working grips and using different kind of aids to make the process smoother. By analyzing the dyeing skill learning process with an autoethnographic approach and by mirroring it to the information obtained from the theory part, nuance differences which helped to deepen the learning of bingata dyeing skill, were found and described.

Purpose of this study. The purpose of this study was to find out, which elements do the or-ganizational trust of Esperi Care ’s unit managers consist of, whether organizational trust cor-relates with organizational citizenship behavior and with the intention to change workplace. According to previous organiational trust studies, organizational trust is related to employees’ engagement, work satisfaction, turnover and organizational citizenship behavior. Method. The data for this study was collected with an online survey sent out to Esperi Care’s unit managers (N=203) of which 103 replied to. The data was analysed with an explorative factor analysis, the correlation between organizational trust and organizational citizenship be-haviour was tested with Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and differences between groups were tested with a T-test, sorting variable being the intention to change workplace. Results and conclusion. The results of this study showed that the factors of Esperi Care’s unit managers´ organizational trust differentiated from theory consisting of management group’s action, area managers’ action and communication as well as openness and compe-tence of the organization. All of the trustfactors were related to the following factors of or-ganizatonal citizenship behaviour; altruism, conscientiousness, positivity and civic virtue. Unit managers who had intentions to change workplace had lower levels of organizational trust than the managers, who had no intentions for turnover. The results show how critical it is for the organization to build and maintain the trust of its employees as well as how within health care sector trust consists of the concrete actions of the management group as well as em-ployees’ managers. High levels of organizational trust has positive impact on employees and how they behave within their own workcommunity.

The constant stimulation and strong digitalisation of today’s society are considered to have contributed to pupils’ restlessness and reducing well-being among pupils. Previous studies have found that practising mindfulness skills at school promotes pupils’ emotion regulation, attentiveness, social skills and well-being. Practising mindfulness skills is closely related to practising and learning emotional skills. Despite an immense growth in research on mindfulness skills, most studies are focused on adults and utilise quantita-tive methods. As a result, a need for a study investigating the personal experiences of pupils in lower comprehensive education has been identified. The focus of this study is on children’s perspectives, which means that we are interested in hearing children’s per-sonal views and the views of the adults in the children’s lives. Therefore, the purpose is to examine what kinds of experiences pupils in the first year of education gathered from a mindfulness and emotional skills teaching session. A further aim is to explore the views of guardians of the necessity and benefits of a study unit on mindfulness and emotional skills. Research data were collected from one group of first-year pupils in Finland’s capital re-gion; eight pupils were interviewed at the middle point, and nine pupils at the end, of the study unit. Moreover, six guardians were interviewed at the end of the study unit. The obtained data were analysed using data-driven content analysis by forming upper cate-gories based on the data describing the research findings. Based on the results, the pupils associate positive emotions with their experiences of the teaching sessions and found the sessions comforting. The pupils also explained in detail the bodily experiences they had during the practices. The pupils’ experiences also indicated that they had acquired emotional skills, particularly those related to the recog-nition and regulation of emotions. The guardians perceived the mindfulness and emo-tional skill education as necessary and beneficial and has a considerably positive view of the education. They particularly found that today’s world and digitalisation create a need for mindfulness and emotional skills education and found that it was necessary to start it early on. The guardians also found that there were signs that the skills had been reflected in their home. The results of the study strengthen a previous view of the suita-bility of the practices to the education provided at schools as well as their necessity and opportunities for supporting pupils’ well-being and learning. The results also indicate that children are able to share their views from many perspectives, which emphasises the importance of making young pupils’ voices and perspectives heard in research.

In Finland's new curriculum for comprehensive schools, pupils, teachers and school catering staff are supposed to plan together school lunch, so that school lunch is a part of education. In this study we explore different ideas how to build good relationship between three groups to co-operate together. In the school I studied there has been there have been some small thematic happenings related to school lunches, which have been a success. There are three research questions: 1. What kind of pleasant memories respondents have about school lunch. 2. What kind of improvements do you have about school lunch? 3. How can catering staff, pupils and teachers participate to make these improvements work? Methods: Pupils have been asked ideas about how to develop school lunch. Then teachers, pupils and school catering staff have been intertwined about school lunch. There came some suggestions about infrastructure, such as noise and queuing to cafeteria. Then many suggestions, eg. Soft background music, or for example Greek day with food, decorations and music. Pupils and teacher suggested it would be one class who could arrange this together with catering staff. And maybe some is happening to stop food waste? Pupils can learn a lot at school lunch about healthy food, good manners and many other things. School catering staff should be planning curriculum changes together with teachers and pupils. Next step is to have a meeting where these tree groups develop ideas to reality When co-operating together feeling of community gets stronger in the whole school.