Browsing by Title

The production of textiles poses many ecological and ethical challenges. Increased research data on the harmful effects of synthetic dyes on textiles and other products has increased interest in natural dyes. Consumer attitudes towards the origin of natural dyes or the significance of synthetic dyes as part of ecological consumption have not been studied much. The study examines the views of consumers on the sustainability challenges related to the production and consumption of clothing and how they themselves have made their textile con- sumption more sustainable. The study also examines the importance of the origin of colourants for consumers and their attitude towards synthetic and natural dyes in textiles and other consumer products. The research is qualitative and the research material consists of individual and pair interviews collected using a semi-structured theme interview. There are nine individual interviews and three pairs of interviews, which means that the entire material consists of 15 people. The material has been analyzed using data-based content analysis. The analysis utilized themes, categorization and conceptual maps. From the perspective of sustainability, the quality of textiles is a significant factor for consumers when purchasing clothing. The results infer that consumers do not consider fast fashion clothing products to be high-quality and that’s why they don’t consider them to be a part of sustainable consumption. Consumers are aware of the ecological and ethical challenges associated with the production and consumption of clothing and strive to change their clothing consumption in a more sustainable direction. The challenge, however, is the rapidly changing knowledge of sustainability. It’s also hard to evaluate how the global textile production chain works. Consumers value the safety of dyes in various consumer products. Consumers consider natural dyes to be more ecological and safe than synthetic dyes. Colour shades are an integral part of the attractiveness of textiles dyed with natural dyes. However, the shattered colour shades share consumers' opinions. Consumers are interested in natural dyes. They would need more information on the properties of colorants and the care of textiles dyed with natural dyes, especially if natural dyes are used to become more common in textiles.

This Master's thesis examines the Yrityskylä learning concept from the point of views of the 21st century skills, and conceptions of leadership professions. The aim of this study is to examine the ways of the 21st century skills appear on the theme of applying a job on Yrityskylä learning concept for the sixth-graders. The definitions of the 21st century skills by Binkley et al. (2012) were especially used as a framework for the study. The research material was collected during the spring of 2018. Research material consisted of Yrityskylä’s own teaching materials and interviews of six teachers who participated in the Yrityskylä learning concept. From teaching materials, job advertisements were chosen which represented the Yrityskylä learning environment’s miniature companies. In addition, one chapter was included which addresses with applying for a job from student’s exercise book. The research materials were analysed by adapting either with a theory-driven content analysis or with a theory-driven content analysis and a dialogical thematization analysis. Chapters which described the appearance of the 21st century skills on the learning concept were formed analysing the materials and reflecting on earlier studies. The results of the study indicated that the 21st century skills appeared as a part of the learning concept. The 21st century skills appeared especially as “Ways of Thinking”, “Skills of Acting”,” Skills of Working” and “Skills of Expression”. While examining the conceptions of leadership professions, leadership was not separated in the student’s exercise book. The 21st century skills that were aimed at leadership profession contained especially skills of express and conceptions of leadership qualities. According to this study the 21st century skills also seem to include individuals’ active role and have control over one’s role. As a result of this study, a figure is displayed to support the understanding of the 21st century skills. The results of this study can be used, for example to develop Yrityskylä learning concept.

Abstract The topic of this study is strength of character education applied to pre-school education. The purpose of this study was to examine, did understanding of the concepts perseverance, self-regulation and compassion increased during strength of character education intervention. Analysis and interpretation sought to clarify, whether these character strength concepts can be used as a tool in preschool everyday life. For example, the abstractness of character strength words, subjects young age and poor Finnish language skills can pose challenges to the use of character strength words. There were several Finnish speakers who spoke a second language and children with special developmental and learning characteristics. Children's age also influences linguistic development, the construction and understanding of concepts. Character strengths are based on positive psychology. Positive pedagogy is the application of positive psychology in practice. The goal is individual and meaningful teaching that supports the holistic development, personality and happiness of the individual. Character strengths are among many other qualities and abilities that have a positive impact on learning. They can be taught and learned just like any other skill. Studies show that positive psychology increases well-being and happiness. Most strength research, such as identifying strengths and influencing strengths on happiness and success, focuses on adults. In the work of fostering learning and well-being in kindergarten and school, the examination of strengths and resources are now limited. There is a clear need for positive education and pedagogy, but the debate about strengths, and especially the conscious and systematic teaching of these concepts, has been little. This study was conducted (executed) as a qualitative action study. The baseline for the three-week intervention was Uusitalo-Malmivaara´s and Vuorinen´s (2016) research and Huomaa hyvä! character strength teaching material, which they have developed for a Finnish school. The strength of character education intervention was used to test the teachability of Huomaa hyvä! character strengths in pre-school education. Efforts were made also to change the culture of the preschool group into a philosophy of positive pedagogy. The data was collected by interviewing six 6-year-old children. The research material collected in the semi-structured interview was analyzed by means of theory-based content analysis. The results showed that the understanding of each subject increased with each of the three concepts during the character education intervention, regardless of language and cultural background or learning challenges. The amount and quality of definitions and examples given by children vary to some extent. In practice, children learn to recognize strengths so well that they can be used as a tool in everyday life in preschool and systematically practiced. They identified strengths more in their everyday lives outside of preschool after the intervention. Thus, they were able to apply the new knowledge they learned in the preschool to different contexts in practice which indicates that understanding learning has happened. The concept of compassion was best adopted by children and self-regulation was the most challenging to adopt. Authentic learning environments and hands-on exercises positively influenced on learning.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine what aspects of their everyday life sixth-grade pupils find important. The second research question aims to find out what kind of experiences pupils have on a tool named Positive CV and the teaching of character strengths. The pupils have attended an intervention piloting Positive CV earlier the same academic year. The study was conducted as a case study. The data consists of five group interviews, where the interview method was a semi structured theme interview. The interviewees were pupils from a sixth grade class of a school in Southern Finland that took part in the Positive CV intervention earlier the same academic year. The data was analysed by applying Grounded theory method. The interviewees’ important aspects of everyday life were family, friends, free time, and school. According to the results of this research, the sixth graders considered teaching of character strengths and the Positive CV tool to be a welcomed addition to school. With the help of these, the pupils’ self-knowledge improved. The PCV tool also enabled the recognition of wide ranging knowledge. The results support the idea of the developmental ecosystem model of education, which suggests that the entire network of social interaction of pupils should be taken into consideration when planning on educational conventions. Teaching of character strengths and Positive CV could offer practical tools to promote well-being in schools as demanded in the curriculum and legislation. Learning happens in social interaction, and the recognition of the entire social network of pupils could support the well-being of pupils, both in and outside of school settings.

This Master's thesis explores how school and student welfare services form a multi-level institutional space of whiteness in which the legacy of colonialism, the primacy of Western knowledge and racism are intertwined. Although the Finnish education system is often perceived as egalitarian, previous research has shown that educational practices and policies are white-normative and perpetuate and produce racism. However, there is a lack of research examining school student welfare services specifically from the perspective of whiteness. To fill this research void, this thesis asks in what ways school and student welfare services produce and maintain a space of whiteness, and how it is challenged. This thesis takes as its starting point the debates that challenge and deconstruct the Western production of knowledge by decolonial thinkers. The thesis is guided by issues raised by black feminists about structural racism and the white normativity of social institutions. The nine interviewees in the study were curators and psychologists working in student welfare services in the metropolitan area. The interviews were conducted as remote meetings in spring 2021 and again with four interviewees as face-to-face meetings in spring 2023. The analysis of the interviews was based on "thinking with theory" and "writing against racism", which in this thesis were based on decolonial premises. The results of this thesis suggest that school and student welfare as physical, social and mental spaces are permeated by whiteness. As such, they reproduce whiteness, as there is a lack of ability or willingness to recognise structural racism. The schools and student welfare services as spaces of whiteness, silence both the cautious efforts to resist whiteness and the efforts of students to report experiences of racism. Racism is repeatedly moved beyond the spaces of school and student welfare in the narratives of the interviewees. Based on the findings of this study, I suggest that in school and student welfare there could be a decolonially informed third space based on temporality, where Western assumptions about knowledge and knowing are abandoned and negotiation takes place relationally. In student welfare, this third space would also extend beyond the school, which means that racism must be understood as a phenomenon that has consequences that do not remain outside the school, even if racism is not recognised in the school and student welfare spaces.

Previous results concerning the association between high blood pressure and work-related stress have been inconsistent, although both high blood pressure and work-related stress independently have adverse effects on health. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the personality trait conscientiousness reduces the adverse effects of work-related stress on blood pressure. Work-related stress was measured by Siegrist's Effort-Reward Imbalance model (ERI-model). The hypotheses were: 1) High effort-reward imbalance is associated with high systolic and high diastolic blood pressure and 2) Conscientiousness reduces the adverse effects of effort-reward imbalance on systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The study sample was from The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study and the data for the present study was collected in 2011 and 2012. The subjects (n = 998) were both women (n = 568) and men (n = 430) who worked full-time and did not take medication to reduce blood pressure. The mean age of the subjects was 43 years. Hierarchical linear regression was used for the statistical analyses. Effort-reward imbalance was not directly associated with blood pressure. However, conscientiousness did moderate the association between effort-reward imbalance and systolic blood pressure. Individuals high in conscientiousness had lower systolic blood pressure than individuals low in conscientiousness when effort-reward imbalance was high. Conscientiousness also moderated the association between effort and systolic and diastolic blood pressure, although the effect on the diastolic blood pressure was only moderately significant (p = .051). Conscientiousness did not moderate the association between reward and blood pressure, but higher reward was independently associated with lower diastolic blood pressure. Conscientiousness seems to reduce the adverse effect of both effort-reward imbalance and effort on systolic blood pressure. The results from the present study suggest that personality traits can affect the associations between work-related stress and blood pressure.

Master's degree in Early Childhood Education consists of 120 credits and it trains Early Childhood Education specialists and developers. In the Spring of 2013 85 people applied for studies. 40 new students were chosen. To apply for studies candidates have to write a motivation-essay. In the essay there are five questions candidates have to answer. The purpose of these questions is to find out candidates earlier work experience, training, potential challenges in studies, knowledge about the degree and motives for studying. The theory section of my master's thesis consists of motivation theories, from which Self-Determination Theory is the most relevant. I'm also going to introduce motives for adult education, because most of the candidates have been working for many years after graduating. 55 motivation essays are the research material of my study. The purpose of my study is to find out why these candidates want to apply for Master's degree in Early Childhood Education. I also want to find out if there are some kind of similarities in candidate's motives. This study is a qualitative content analysis. By reading essays carefully, I'll find phrases that answer my research questions. Similar motives belong to same group of motives. I have also quantified research results in a chart. In my research I found out that there are five types of motives for applying for studies: making research, developing oneself, advancing in career, social influencing and postgraduate studies. Largest group was those who wanted to advance in their career. 50 candidates mentioned it. Most of the candidates had more than one motive to apply for studies. Second largest group was those who wanted to develop their professional skills, it was mentioned in 40 essays. My aim is to compare research result with motive theories. By comparing results with motivation theories, I was able to conclude that some of the motives were intrinsic and some were extrinsic. Advancing in career and postgraduate studies are extrinsic motives. Developing oneself and making research are intrinsic motives. Social influencing can be perceived as intrinsic or extrinsic motive.

The aim of the study was to describe persuasive performance and its impressions in Communications Agency Deskis 'Oma Puheenvuoro' concept's news videos. Persuasive performance was explored in a new context from the fields of television and internet media studies. The new concept was web television. The theories and studies were chosen to fit with the context and persuasiveness. The purpose was to find out how persuasive performance is in online videos and what kinds of impressions does persuasive performance create. Persuasive performance and its implications were evaluated based on six Communications Agency Deski's news videos. The evaluation was done by an evaluation panel that consisted of communications professionals. Two evaluation measurements were created for the study. The first measurement measured persuasive performance in the online videos by thirteen statements which were divided in to four performance skill areas. The other measurement weighted the impressions of the performance by seventeen statements. Both measurements had open commentary options with the purpose of deepening the study results. The evaluation panel evaluated the performances persuasive and the impressions of the performance positive. Argumentation and content skills were seen as more persuasive than speech structure and articulacy skills. Relevance, credibility and consistency were evaluated as persuasive impressions of performance where as compelling, pleasant or interesting impressions were not seen as persuasive. Based on the results a conclusion can be made that the persuasive performance in online television can be studied by comparing the level of persuasiveness compared to the impressions of performance. The results indicate that certain features in online television context influence the persuasiveness. The results of this study contribute to enhancing the persuasive performance in online television shows.

The purpose of this study was firstly to find out what kinds of fears occur in the literature, what kind of characters are very fearful in the literature and how the people in the literature control their fears. Secondly the investigation concerned fears and talking about fears of primary school aged children and the effect of literature when processing fears. Reading fiction can be helpful in processing difficult things and I believe that it can also be helpful for processing fears. Previous studies have shown that among other things, children are afraid of being left alone, death, victimization, darkness and imaginary creatures. When I decided to do research from the literature that I've chosen, the assumption was that these children's most common fears will be found also in the chosen literature and from interview data. This master's thesis was a two-step research. This was a qualitative research and the methods of analysis in use were content analysis and close reading method. In this two-step research I firstly read the literature specifying passages from the text were there was fear, anxiety or controlling fear. The parts that I found in the literature material that concerned fear, I attached to the results of previous studies. In the second phase I interviewed four primary pupils. First I interviewed these children about the fears they experience. Then I read a short story to the interviewees which I had chosen with the help of the first phase of this research. After reading I interviewed the children again. In the material there were a lot of different kinds of fear, whose target variety was versatile. It seemed that the self-image is strongly linked to how fearful the characters were, and also to how strongly and even hysterically characters were afraid. Fears appeared both adult characters and child characters in the material. The characters of the book tried also to control their fears with different means. This study showed that self-image can effect on individuals fearfulness. In addition it became clear that for characters of the novels it was possible to control fears and that the book characters fears had a target. To the interviewees I chose a short story were there were most fears from one's imagination. Fears which are rising from our imagination are very common among children of the age I interviewed in this study. I found out that children have multifarious fears. For example children are afraid of darkness and imaginary creatures. Reading literature to children had a great effect on handling fears in this research. Conceptualisation can be very difficult to primary pupils. For some children conceptualisation of fear was extremely difficult, for some it was partly possible and for some it was easy.

The purpose of this study was to describe factors that affect the enjoyment of physical education. It is known that children consider enjoyment being an important part of their physical activity. As an institution that reaches out to all children, school has a significant role to play in the physical activity of children and teenagers, which is why it is important to find out what kind of PE classes pupils enjoy. Earlier studies have shown that PE classes are influenced by, among other things, the content and motivational climate. This study explores and describes factors that, based on pupils' experiences, affect their enjoyment of PE classes. The research was carried out using qualitative methods. 28 pupils from the sixth grade attending the same school in the same class participated in the study. The only criteria for the target group selection was the pupils’ grade. The research material was collected using non-active role play and an open questionnaire. Thematic analysis was performed for the acquired material. On the basis of the results, many different factors contributed to whether or not the pupils experienced enjoyment. Factors contributing to the enjoyment were related to the presence, character and activities of the teacher, as well as pupils' activities, grouping and social relations between pupils. In addition, factors related to PE classes, including content, competition and group size, also affected the pupils’ enjoyment. Finally, under the 'miscellaneous' theme, there were factors that were not related to the issues mentioned above. When all aspects related to these themes were in order, they were seen as factors that make pupils enjoy PE. When aspects related to the same themes appeared the opposite pupils experienced lack of enjoyment. Factors that compromise enjoyment were similar to the top themes described for the factors of enjoyment, except for the "miscellaneous" theme. Finally, in addition to content, competition and group size, factors affecting enjoyment of the theme ”PE classes” included the facilities and experiences of failure. Competition, grouping and group size both contributed and compromised to enjoyment.