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The first goal of this thesis was to study the differences in the attitudes towards schoolification of early childhood education among the parents using early childhood education services. The second goal was to study the association between the attitudes towards schoolification of early childhood education and the intention to apply for weighted-curriculum education. Based on Bourdieu’s theory, the hypothesis of this study was that parents’ choices regarding their children’s education differ according to their social status and educational background. There is no set of indicators for schoolification of early childhood education, thus, in this study, Seppänen’s et al. (2015) attitude indicator for parents of primary school aged children is applied. The principal components of this attitude indicator were instrumental value of education, paying attention to individual tendencies, inclusion and wellbeing. The study was conducted in collaboration with the city of Hyvinkää. The questionnaire was sent to customers of early childhood education services in Hyvinkää, and 60 parents responded to it. According to the hypothesis highly educated parents and parents with high socioeconomic status consider instrumental value of education and consideration of individual tendencies more important in their children’s early childhood education than other aspects. Similarly, less educated parents and parents with lower socioeconomic status were expected to value inclusion and wellbeing over other aspects. In this study, in contrast to the theoretical background, highly educated parents were found to value inclusion more than other parents did. Similarly, on contrary to the assumptions made on the basis of theory, the consideration of individual tendencies in early childhood education was valued the least by highly educated parents. Mothers were also found to appreciate the consideration of individual tendencies more than fathers. In this study it was also discovered that there was an association between instrumental value of education and emphasis on applying to the weighted-curriculum education.

Educational partnership is a working concept introduced in 2003 for the Finnish early childhood edu-cation services. The objective of my research is to study how early child-hood educators describe in their talks cooperation with parents in the context of educational partner-ship. I try to answer to the following questions by analyzing mutual shared cultural concepts used by the educators to structure their daily actions: What is the role of educational partnership in respect to the nature of their relationship with parents, their subject position, scope of their work, objectives of their work and their agency? I collected the research material by means of group interviews carried out in eight day-care centers located in the metropolitan area. The methodology of the research is based on social constructionism and discourse analysis. The analysis is qualitative, material based, detailed analyses of the early childhood educators discourse. The educators described their work through efforts towards equality with parents as well as occupational and professional expertise. Working as equal partners with parents means balancing between conflicting ways of working, thus a change in the professional and expert-focused way of working. The aim to support the growth and development of a child was viewed mainly through the aspects of structure of day care, parental, family, customer orientation and interaction. In the educational partnership talk seems not to have much room for the pedagogy deliberation when the language resources are directing educators attention away from child. Working according to the ideal of educational partnership was interpreted as a change to the early childhood care whereby the customer- and help-oriented as well as unofficial and trust-building cooperation has got foothold. Thus, the educational partnership gives room for expansion of the tasks of the workers. The contextual factors were seen as limiting as well as enabling aspects of educators agency. The responsibility of the education and interfere to the activities of parents was seen problematic, limiting the agency of the workers. On the other hand working as partner was seen as acceptable way to get access to the educational questions concerning families.

Modernization of society and increased opportunities for choice has made it easier for parents to make individualized breeding solutions. Current parenting is described as "free option" but also growing challenges of quality of breeding. On the other hand, researchers are also increasingly reporting the growing risks of wellbeing among young people, such as loneliness and ill feeling. This research aims to find links between the different parenting styles and the wellbeing of the young people. The purpose of this research is to study the subjective testimonial of the child - parent relationship among the 7th grade students in Helsinki, and to compare the results of the established types of parenting to the ones that are found in professional literature. The aim is also to analyze the connection between the different styles of rearing to the self-reported quality of life, feeling of loneliness and the subjective image of self-esteem. This study is part of the University of Helsinki carried out by Mind the Gap research project (2013-2017). The data was collected from seventh graders (N = 1226) via a questionnaire spring 2014 in Helsinki 20 different schools. The link between parenting styles to self-perceived life satisfaction, loneliness and self-esteem by multidirectional variance analysis (MANOVA) and the differences between genders by Post-hoc (Tukey) test. With the help of a group analysis (K-means Cluster), the aim was also to find new rearing groups that would best describe emphasized dimensions and combinations of parenting. Based on the material, three parenting styles were found. They were called to as intensive, controlling and distant rearing styles. The results showed that previous rearing style classifications are not entirely adequate in relation to the nature of today's parenthood. There were statistically significant differences in the parenting styles when compared to the welfare indicators experienced by young people. Parenting styles intensive and guiding were more positively associated to youth's wellbeing than the parenting style distance. As a conclusion, the results show that parental involvement and presence appear to be in a positive relationship with the indicators of wellbeing experienced by youth.

Goals. The purpose of this study was to find out what kind of information and support parents need during their baby’s first year and to map out the mental and social support the parents need. The aim for the study was to describe the views of the parents about their needs, and to find the differences between the two groups, which consisted of parents with previous children and parents that are having their first child. The theory section of the study deals with the parenthood itself and the transition towards parenthood, the mental wellbeing of the parents as well as the meaning of the first years of life for the future development of the child. The previous studies about the needs of the parents are also acknowledged. Methodology. This study was constructed as a mixed methods research, in which quantitative and qualitative phases combine. The data collected from the Parental Box research was used as the material for the study. The data was collected from parents with children under one year of age, and it was collected by using questionnaires, which included both open and close ended questions. The questionnaire included 21 factors for support and information needs, and the parents needed to evaluate their answers in a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 stands for never and 5 stands for very often. The analysis of data was based on 373 answers that were analysed in SPSS statistics program. The methods used were counting descriptive statistics, factor analysis and determination of the sum variables. Open-ended questions about the needs of the parents considering information and support were analysed using qualitative content analysis after quantitative analyses. Results and conclusions. The study indicated that the parents need different kinds of information and support during their baby’s first year. In the quantitative analysis, the support for the parenthood was organised into five different aspects: the basic care of the child, sleeping, crying, development and health of the child and the wellbeing of the parent. However, the need for information and support for the parents were not particularly important in the quantitative analysis. The most support the parents seemed to need considered the health and development of the child. The basic care of the child was the aspect that needed the least support. The results show that the parents who are having their first child need more overall information and support than their counterparts, for whom the baby is not the first. The biggest difference in the average answers of the groups considered the sleep of the baby and the smallest difference the cry of the baby. When answering the open-ended questions, the parents highlighted the need for peer support. The need for concrete help in running everyday life and doing chores in their homes was also needed. Furthermore, the results indicated that the role of maternity clinic or guidance centre was received with mixed feelings. The most things that parents need, seem to be current and reliable source for information and increase in peer support as well as concrete help in and around their house.

Finnish students with an immigrant background get lower learning results compared to their native peers. According to previous research, home-school collaboration has a significant impact on students’ school performance. Therefore, this study is interested in the experiences foreign parents have with home-school collaboration, how home-school collaboration manifests in practice and what kind of suggestions do foreign parents have to improve the quality of home-school collaboration. Hornby’s (2000) model for parental involvement will act as the theoretical background for this study, as it illustrates what kind of needs and contributions parents have regarding collaboration with the school. This research was conducted as a multiple case study. The data was gathered through interviews with and was analysed by a deductive content analysis. A total of six parents took part in the study. Three parents spoke Farsi as their mother tongue, two spoke Bengali and one spoke Dari. The interviews were conducted in the parents’ mother tongue and when needed, an interpreter was present. The foreign parents’ experiences with home-school collaboration regarded how the school pays attention to the needs and wishes of the parents. In the positive experiences which the parents’ mentioned, the school had been able to take notice of the parents’ needs. However, in the negative experiences the school had ignored parental needs. The lack of attention to parental needs were also reflected in the parents’ suggestions for improving home-school collaboration, as they mentioned their wish for schools to take more into consideration the needs and wishes of parents. The results of this study make apparent how the school is unable to utilize the contributions of foreign parents’ contributions. Additionally, they do not attend to the needs of foreign parents. One way to improve home-school collaboration with foreign parents, is to utilize the resource of multilingual advisors as this way at least the language barrier between home and school would be removed.

Objectives. Feeding disorders affect families in many ways, like causing challenges for parenthood and daily routines. Parents' perspectives on their children's feeding disorder and its rehabilitation has not been investigated thoroughly. It is according to clinical practice guidelines to take parents' view into account for parents being in essential position in their children's rehabilitation. Parents' experience can also help speech-language pathologists to improve their practices. The objective of this study was to describe parents' perspectives on their children' feeding disorder and its rehabilitation in speech-language therapy. Also the impact of the therapy to the family was examined. Method. Nine parents were interviewed for the study, whose children with feeding disorder had been evaluated by speech-language pathologist in the specialized medical care. Children were under 2.5-year-old and their rehabilitation had ended less than a year earlier. Children's etiologic background differed significantly of each other. Parents were interviewed using a semi-structured theme interview. The themes were formulated using previous research literature and clinical expertize. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the data were analysed using inductive content analysis. The categorisation was made from the content into themes. The themes were analysed and complemented using previous research literature. Results and conclusions. The feeding disorder manifested in children's eating and behaviour in various ways. The feeding disorder caused mental, physical and social burden for the family. It had caused a lot of negative emotions, stress and daily challenges to the parents. Thus an early intervention could be beneficial for the family. The parents found the rehabilitation positive and beneficial. The rehabilitation took parents' expertize and daily concerns into account, increased parents' understanding and emotionally encountered them. The therapy methods were diverse and interdisciplinary team approach was used. The rehabilitation had changed parents' behaviour and attitude, which was seen for example in feeding practises, parents' emotions and competence. The effect of the rehabilitation appeared in children' oral sensorimotoric functions and in feeding behaviour. Children were more active, self-regulated and their reaction to feeding were eased in many ways. The feeding rehabilitation can affect positively both to parents' competence and children's feeding disorder. In future it would be beneficial to study what kind of feeding intervention services families undergo outside specialized medical care.

The goal of this study was to investigate the connections between parental involvement and children’s school well-being. Previous studies in the field have considered cooperation between the home and the school system mainly through its’ affects on school performance. Correspondingly, parental involvement has had a respectively small role in the study of school well-being. Previous studies have proved that parents have an undeniable effect on their children’s overall well-being, and their support positively affects school performance. I’ve set a goal to research the connections between parental support and school well-being, because that has not been thoroughly investigated in past research. Well-being research is often goal oriented and serves a purpose in improving well-being, and parental involvement seems like an unused resource. In this study I will investigate the connections between parental involvement and school well-being, both as a whole and on different dimensions of well-being. I used a dataset of around 10 000 answers that surveyed well-being in Finnish schools. The data was accessed through the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. The data is collected from 7–9 grade students during 2017–2018, and it collected with the Koulun hyvinvointiprofiili survey in Finnish secondary schools. Koulun hyvinvointiprofiili is designed as a self-evaluation tool for schools, and it is based on Anne Konu’s Koulun hyvinvointimalli -conceptual model that was introduced in her dissertation and published in 2002. The data contains a division of well-being into four dimensions: the answerers experience of the school conditions, social relationships, means for self-fulfillment and health status. In addition, the survey measures parental involvement, which it includes in the social relationships dimension. I will analyze the connections between parental involvement and school well-being using correlation (r), coefficient of determination (r²), and regression analysis. My analysis indicated that parental involvement and support in their child’s schooling is in clear connection with children’s school well-being. Parental involvement has the strongest connection to means of self-fulfillment and social relationships. With other dimensions of well-being there was a positive correlation, but not as strong. It is also important to note, that the dimensions of well-being strongly correlate between themselves. As a result, the possible benefits gained from parental involvement in one dimension of well-being will support the whole of the child’s school well-being. The Finnish school system must be able to cooperate and communicate with a diversity of families, and thus take into account the potential of home as a resource in children’s well-being.

The everyday life of families with children is seen as a fertile micro community from emotions point of view. Many emotions are being experienced and transferred there. The everyday life is being described as cyclic and multilevel unity, which consists of routines, that are repeated daily and weekly. The food choice is part of everyday life activity and the emotions that impact on food choice in everyday life are previously been researched rather slightly. The research shows, that in addition to positive emotions lots of negative and contradictory emotions are being related to everyday life of families with children. The purpose of this research is to find out, what kind of emotions parents experience in family's food choice situations and into what kind of situations are the positive and negative emotions being attached to. Furthermore, the purpose of this research is to find out, how mother's and father's emotions about food choice differ and what kind of contradictions mother's and father's emotions cause in family's everyday life. The research was executed as a qualitative research and research data was collected by diary approach. Four families with toddler-aged children took part in research and both mothers and fathers completed the diary (n=8). The data was organized by content analysis and analyzed by theme analysis and typology. The results showed that various emotions are being connected with every day life's food choice. Mother's and father's emotions differed clearly. Fathers felt positive emotions when dinner was ready after work and guilt from not making it home early enough or from not being there to impact on food choice. Mothers felt emotions of success inter alia when they became aware that their food choice promoted health or when the child agreed to eat what was offered. Negative emotions were experienced when weekdays were busy and there wasn't enough time to impact on food choice. This research gave a different point of view to observe the everyday life of families with children and an opportunity to understand reasons behind parents emotions better. On the other hand, this research gave a new, emotions acknowledging angle also on nutrition promotion.

Goals: The purpose of this master thesis is to explore if the self-determination of elderly care workers developed among the users of ITU!-handbook in Toimi-project. The background theory of this master thesis is self-determination theory. Toimi-Project is a project carried out by Institute of Occupational Health in collaboration with elderly care cities of Helsinki, Vantaa and Lohja and Senior Care Home Association (Mereo). The aim of Toimi-project is to support readiness of workers to develop and reform their own work, in other words develop the worker's development agency. One of the methods was use of the ITU!-handbook. The data of this study consist of before and after interviews of the users of the ITU!-handbook. The aim is to explore how the data regarding interviews self-determination of the elderly care workers differs between before and after i. Methods: These questions were addressed by a qualitative deductive content analysis. The data were collected by theme interview. These interviews were randomly selected from a bigger interview database. Work-related Basic Need Satisfaction scale was used as an aid to the identification of psychological basic needs of the material. After this, the findings were analyzed by deductive content analysis according to basic psychological needs. The results of the survey were interpreted from the perspective of the theory of self-determination. Results and conclusions: There were no differences in the fulfilment of the need of autonomy between before and after interviews. The fulfilment of the need of competence occurred between before and after interviews in various ways. ITU!-handbook made the informants think of using feedback from the elderly while reforming their work. This gives an indication that using the ITU!-handbook added the fulfilment of the need of competence. The fulfilment of relatedness occurred also in different ways in before and after interviews. The problems which occurred in before interviews seemed to have disappeared with the Toimi-project. Based on the after interviews the ITU!-handbook encouraged the workers' interaction among themselves about different working styles and reminded of the importance of a colleague's appreciation. ITU!-handbook reminded of the importance of working atmosphere and using the ITU!-handbook seemed to contribute positively to work atmosphere based on the interviews. In conclusion, using the ITU!-handbook developed self-determination of the elderly care workers by confirming especially the fulfilment of competence and relatedness.

Preparatory education for upper secondary qualification (TUVA) has been offered since 2022 as a transition phase education for people of compulsory school age and others who need preparatory education. TUVA program has also been one of the changes in vocational prison education. There is scarcity of studies on prison education and new preparatory education and training (TUVA). The purpose of this study was to generate new information and understanding about preparatory education (TUVA) in prison education. Differentiation was understood as a comprehensive basis of teaching, which considers the individual and diverse needs of students. The research analyzes, interprets and describes the perceptions of TUVA teachers working in prison education about the individual needs of prisoners and the experiences of differentiation. The research explains which means of differentiation teachers use, how differentiation is justified and what challenges arise in differentiation in the prison education of preparatory education.  The data of the qualitative study was collected through a semi-structured theme interview from seven TUVA teachers working in vocational prison education, two of whom worked as teachers in the work-based TUVA. The research material was analyzed with a qualitative content analysis and a theory-guided content analysis. The views and experiences of TUVA teachers were examined using Roiha and Polso's Five O-model. The needs of those studying in the prison's TUVA were seen as diverse, and the teachers justified their differentiation especially with the needs related to the students' school history, school motivation and life changes. All the dimensions of Roiha and Polso's Five O's differentiation model emerged in the data. The teachers felt that the differentiation of the psychosocial environment was the most important and considered the students' individual needs by supporting their self-efficacy with differentiation. Differentiation was implemented reactively as soon as the need for support appeared, and proactively as a planned part of the TUVA. The challenges of differentiation were the social challenges between the prisoners, the hectic everyday life of the prison, the absence of a work partner and the limited availability of ready-made differentiation material. Based on the results of the study, TUVA teachers consider the individual needs of those studying in prison based on their strengths and implement differentiation comprehensively.