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Horse enthusiasts have insufficient knowledge about horse behaviour and welfare (BW) and learning and human-horse communication (LC), which poses a risk for both human safety and horse welfare. The main objective of this study was to investigate why riding school pupils participate or do not participate in non-riding education in BW and LC, using Self-determination theory (SDT). SDT posits that the quality of motivation is related to the individual’s basic psychological needs. A convenience sample of 568 riding school pupils from Finland and Sweden completed an online questionnaire. The results show that forty percent of the riding schools offered education in BW, and thirty-two in LC. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents had participated in education in BW, and twenty-five in LC at the riding school. The respondents were autonomously motivated to participate in education, i.e., they would participate because it is interesting and personally important. Perceived needs satisfaction at the riding school predicted autonomous motivation to participate. Education was offered to a greater extent in Swedish riding schools and Swedish participants participated more, experienced more autonomous motivation, and relatedness and competence satisfaction. To our knowledge, this study is the first to explore riding school pupils’ motivation towards non-riding education.

Aims. There is a growing body of research indicating that childhood experiences interact with genetic vulnerabilities in the development of depression. Parent-child relationship quality has been shown to have a critical role in the development of depression later in life. Moreover, research has shown that the quality of parenting can also have long-term and persistent effects on various neurobiological systems, such as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Indeed, the impaired function of HPA axis has been the most consistently found association with depression. This makes genes related to HPA axis regulation of particular interest to researchers. One possible candidate gene is FK506 binding protein 51 (FKBP5) gene, which has been shown to interact with adverse childhood experiences in predicting future risk of depression. This study examines whether perceived quality of parent-child relationship predicts depressive symptoms in adulthood and whether this association is moderated by the FKBP5 polymorphisms. Methods. This study is part of The Helsinki Birth Cohort Study. Total of 1 667 subjects completed a psychological questionnaire in 2004, including the Beck Depression Inventory (21 item, BDI) and the Parental Bonding Instrument (25 item, PBI). This study utilised the three factor structure of PBI; care, denial of psychological autonomy and encouragement of behavioral freedom, which were measured separately for mother and father. The study looked at three FKBP5 gene polymorphisms: rs1360780, rs9394309 and rs9470080 extracted from the genome-wide data genotyped with modified Illumina 610k array. The study utilised two models 1 and 2; model 1 adjusted for age and gender and additionally model 2 adjusted for childhood and adulthood socioeconomic status (SES) as well as separation experiences. Results and conclusions. As hypothesised and in line with previous studies the quality of parenting predicted depressive symptoms in adulthood. Participants, who perceived having received more care and encouragement of behavioral freedom reported fewer depressive symptoms. Whereas denial of psychological autonomy resulted in reporting more depressive symptoms. None of the polymorphisms predicted depressive symptoms. More importantly, this is the first study to show that FKBP5 polymorphisms modify the relationship between perceived mother-child relationship and depressive symptoms. Among participants with two minor alleles, perceived lack of maternal care and maternal denial of psychological autonomy were most strongly associated with more depressive symptoms. Participants with one minor allele had similar results. Whereas among participants with two major alleles, perceived parenting had a smaller effect on the amount of depressive symptoms. These findings indicate that in addition to adverse experiences and traumas, also deficiencies in parenting can predispose to depression depending on the amount of minor alleles in FKBP5 polymorphisms.

Multilingualism and multiculturalism are very common phenomena in the global world of today. People move into other countries and integrate in other cultures more than ever before. This Master's Thesis is a qualitative study on how multilingual people describe their linguistic and cultural identity and how it is to be a minority within the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. The aim of this study is to increase the knowledge and understanding on people who represent a linguistic minority in the Swedish-speaking linguistic minority in Finland and how they describe their linguistic and cultural identity. The scientific approach of the study is phenomenological, which means that the study aims to describe the phenomenon of multilingualism, multiculturalism and integration based on informants' subjective experiences. Nine people were interviewed for this study, and the collected data were analysed using content analysis. All nine informants were living in the capital area of Finland when the interviews were done, but are born in another country. The results of this study demonstrate the significance of language and culture for a person's identity. The linguistic and cultural identities form during the entire course of life and can be seen as a lifelong process.

For years, mathematics in Finland has deteriorated according to Pisa. The results of the students has deteriorated even if mathematic has an important roll in todays society. Mathematic is needed in many professions, but also in the everyday life. According to both national and international surveys, both mathematic results and the attitude towards mathematics has decreased. Previous research shows that childrens working memory is facilitated by learning things by heart. Research has also shown that traditional teaching methods and sufficient repetition improves students results. The aim of this study is to investigate how school books, used in mathematical education, have been changed during the last ten years, which teaching methods are used the most by teachers, and how teachers are working with pupils motivation towards mathematics. A survey and content analysis is used as collection methods. The survey consists of both open and closed questions. The schools books Min Matematik and Karlavagnen for the grades two, four and six has been analysed by content analysis. The surveys respondents consists of 20 teachers working in grade two, four or six, with a work experience of atleast ten years, in five municipalitys in southern Finland. The surveys results is analysed by using the programme IBM SPSS Statistics 28 and tematic analysis. The results showed that there is a difference between the school books used today compared to school books used ten years ago. Today there exists more variation and aid in the tasks. Ten years ago there was more repetitions in the books. Teachers, working in elementary schools, use the school book a lot during their classes, it is used almost every lesson. Teachers mostly use traditional teaching methods, which benefits pupils. The presence of aids in the mathematic education is big. Most of the teachers says that pupils attitude towards mathematic is unchanged. Most of the pupils have a good attitude toward mathematics. Teachers try to work with pupils motivation by showing the pupils when they will need the konwledge they get during the mathematic lessons, in their everyday life.

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary school teachers' perceptions of assessment in general, the methods and techniques used in formative assessment, and to identify the challenges they bring. Assessment, particularly formative assessment, interested me as a subject because a significant part of a teacher's profession focuses specifically on assessment (Atjonen, 2023). Additionally, the revised as-sessment chapter 6 of the National Curriculum Framework (2014) emphasizes the importance of forma-tive assessment during learning in student evaluation. Several studies and research articles highlight the importance of formative assessment as part of evaluation. The aim of the study is to gather more infor-mation about assessment in general, formative assessment, and to present the methods and techniques used in formative assessment, as well as to identify challenges that may arise in assessment. The study was conducted qualitatively, as a qualitative study, using theory-guided content analysis, aim-ing for phenomenographic inference. The data for the study were collected by conducting five semi-structured interviews with elementary school teachers who had 2-6 years of experience as elementary school teachers. The research results indicated that the perceptions and definitions of assessment and formative assessment among the interviewed elementary school teachers were limited. Although the teachers' definitions of as-sessment were limited, the content conveyed was still relevant. Teachers emphasized assessment methods that activate students in formative assessment, such as the importance of self and peer assessment. In ad-dition, teachers perceived guided assessment as important in classroom work, as well as goal- and criteri-on-based equitable assessment, which enables improvement in learning. Based on the study and its results, it was noted that elementary school teachers' theoretical knowledge was limited. According to the study, teachers conducted assessment and formative assessment reasonably well within the constraints of limited resources, albeit somewhat unconsciously. This emphasizes the need for further training to gain more knowledge and skills in implementing formative assessment in el-ementary school. Overall, it can still be concluded that the interviewed teachers considered assessment and formative assessment to be extremely important parts of teaching.

The Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014 stresses the role of formative assessment in student assessment in basic education. The national curriculum offers some guidelines for how to work with formative assessment, but a lot is left unsaid. The aim of this thesis was to describe how teachers in secondary school view formative assessment and how they experience working with it. The research questions were; 1. What kind of profit do subject teachers feel the formative assessment has? 2. Which methods do subject teachers use in working with formative assessment and how do they experience this work? 3. Which challenges do subject teachers experience in connection to formative assessment? A qualitative research approach was used in this study and the data material was collected through semi-structured research interviews with eight subject teachers working in secondary school. The data sample was a selective one, consisting of teachers that felt that they were to some level working with formative assessment, even if the new national curriculum was not yet put in to effect in secondary school when the material was collected (spring 2017). The data material was analyzed trough content analysis. The results showed that subject teachers considered the profit of formative assessment to have various aspects, they felt that formative assessment functioned as a support tool for instruction and as a way to motivate and activate students. Formative assessment functioned as a support for instruction in providing the teacher with information about the students' progress and offering the students more feedback and there for helping them perform better. Working with formative assessment was also seen as a chance to motivate students by steering the instruction towards their interest and skills and making sure that everybody received some sort of positive feedback. The teachers also felt that one aim for formative assessment was to activate students and make them understand and take responsibility for their learning. All teachers had worked with self- and peer assessment as methods for formative assessment. They considered peer assessment to be easier to work with because it was easier for the students to give feedback on somebody else's work than to evaluate their own. Both self- and peer assessment required that the students had some sort of understanding of the criteria for the task they were supposed to give feedback on. The teachers had also worked on making learning intensions and criteria more explicit. This work was appreciated by both teachers and students but the challenge was to find enough time, especially when this required planning together with colleagues. Another method for working with formative assessment was discussing with the students, the discussions could be between teacher and student or a classroom dialog. The teachers experienced general challenges in working with formative assessment to be a lack of time and the need to flexible as a teacher.

The objective of this research was to describe autoethnographically the intecration points on my personal history´s narrative identities. Material comprises of work plans and work diaries, and the resulting artworks. The scope of the study reference frame was set around narrative identity consepts, integrated with the narrative identity of personality psychologist Dan McAdams (1995) and narrative identity theories of hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1992). The reference frame concerning the craft science was practice-led research where artist acts as researcher of his/her own work. Maarit Mäkelä´s dessertation (2003) ” Memories on Clay” has influenced this work. Mäkelä studied representations of subjective creating process and gender, and verbally described the creative process and the resulting artworks. Research questions: 1. How integration points of my personal history´s narrative identity are materializing into textile art? What kind of process it is? 2. How this research process is shaping my narrative identity? Methods The research material was composed of autoethnographical processing of my personal history´s narrative identity integration points. The work plans and work diaries material comprised 85 pages and included photographs from different stages of the process. During my research process, I created five piece of textile art based on the fragments of my personal narrative identity. I interpreted and analysed the process in the course of it (reflection-in-action) and retrospectively (reflection-on-action) applying to the practice-led research. Results and conclusuions The outcome of this study were five textile art works.

The aim of the study was to investigate ideas and idea generation of designers in free improvisation tasks at conceptual level in the experiment, planned primarily for the physiological and neurological measurements. My study was a part of the multidisciplinary research project Handling Mind: Embodiment, Creativity and Design which concentrated on studying relations between mind, body and materials combining the fields of psychology, neuroscience and creativity. The neurological study did not reveal what and how participants felt, thought and experienced during the experiment which was the main interest in my study. Previous research has focused on investigating various fields of the design process, as well as the ideation phase, but investigating idea generation in the context of neuroscientific research is a new and interesting chance for the research. The ideation phase represents an iterative and vibrant nature of the design process. Previous studies have brought out the meaning of available sources of inspiration, and designers' competence to adapt the essential parts of the original sources and transform them into design outputs regarding the aspects of novelty and functionality. Therefore, I developed my research questions concerning ideas and idea development in freely improvising tasks in a new design situation. The 30 participants participated in the study as volunteers from the School of Art, Design and Architecture in Aalto University from November 2014 to March 2015. They performed copying, designing or free improvising tasks by drawing or forming clay. I organized the Stimulated Recall (SR) interviews with my colleague to collect data. We selected the 15 out of 30 interviews to represent the data in our studies. I analyzed the transcript data by qualitative content analysis: the classification scheme was both data and theory driven. The analysis revealed that designers had different ideas emerging from internal stimuli, for example, from their mental library or they were impressed by external stimuli, for instance, material, tools and cup images from the experiment. The experiment represented an external design constraint: it confined the problem space and narrowed down the alternative solutions. Designers had concrete and abstract ideas, but also the abstractions of ideas were developed. They relied on familiar topic choices but also were capable of creating analogies. Even this minimalistic design experiment revealed that designers are able to use their mental sources of inspiration and capable of picking profitable stimuli from their surroundings in new and uncertain situations for adapting and developing ideas further. Designers sought meaning for their sketching and experimenting as well.

Objectives. The schooling system is in great turmoil in Finland at the moment. More effective knowledge creation and sharing among teachers are needed in order to develop the Finnish schooling system and to increase the study results of the students. Previous literature agrees that sharing and acquiring knowledge function as precondition for innovation and value creation in organizational and network contexts and thus makes knowledge vital for contemporary organizations. The transition between an individual's and a collective's knowledge creation, however, has not been widely studied. This study explores the development of a new "Compass Model for Shared Pedagogical Leadership in an activity-theoretical Change Laboratory intervention in the Finnish Viikki Teacher Training School from a knowledge creation perspective. The thesis examines how the transition from individually held knowledge of teaching transform into collective knowledge and a collaborative model of practicing. Further, it combines knowledge creation literature with the theory of expansive learning, which has not yet been done in detail. Methods. The interventionist and ethnographic methodology of the study draws on theoretical concepts, models, and methods from Cultural Historical Activity Theory and from the studies of individual and collective knowledge creation. The data analysed in this study consisted of six meetings carried out in the Viikki Teacher Training School by using the Change Laboratory method. The methodology of the study consists of a thematic analysis and analysis of transitions in knowledge creation during the Change Laboratory process. The analysis of transitions is a new qualitative method developed for this study based on findings in the data. Results and conclusions. The study shows that the knowledge creation of the teachers transitioned on a rough timeline from individually held knowledge of teaching to collaborative practice through multiple small cycles of expansive learning and social processes of knowledge building. Decrease in organizational tensions, creation of shared understanding and increased collaboration enabled the transition of knowledge creation from individual to collective. The collectively created model for shared pedagogical leadership promoted collaboration.

Objectives. Functioning impairments as an outcome for severe mental disorders have been well established. There is also growing evidence for early functioning impairment being a vulnerability marker for psychotic disorders. Recent findings suggest that especially early social functioning impairment may predict later psychotic disorders. However previous studies are few and they are limited to pre-selected psychosis risk samples. In addition, little is known about early functioning in other severe mental disorders. The aim of this study is to determine the level of functioning in adolescents at entry to general psychiatric services and to examine whether early functioning impairment predicts later psychosis or psychiatric hospitalizations directly, and when controlling for the effect of psychosis risk symptoms. Methods. This study is a part of the larger Helsinki Prodromal Study conducted in the National Institute for Health and Welfare. The sample consists of 154 treatment-seeking adolescents aged 15–18 years, recruited at the first visit to psychiatric services in Helsinki. Semi-structured psychiatric interviews were conducted for all participants at baseline. Functioning was assessed with validated and reliable functioning measures for social (Global functioning: social) and role functioning (Global functioning: role) and an experimental functioning measure for psychological functioning (Global functioning: psychological). Information about hospitalizations was extracted from the Finnish hospital discharge register during a 2.8–8.9 year follow-up until the end of 2011. A Cox regression survival analysis was used to examine whether functioning domains predicted later hospitalization for psychosis or psychiatric hospitalizations overall. Positive and general psychosis risk symptoms as well as psychosis risk status were controlled for the analyses. Results and conclusions. The functioning of adolescents at entry to psychiatric services was mildly impaired and the impairment was greater for individuals in psychosis risk and those with a mental disorder diagnosis. 7 transitions to psychosis and 26 psychiatric hospital admissions emerged during the follow-up. The level of psychological functioning was the only significant predictor of increased risk of hospitalizations whereas the level of positive symptoms was the only significant predictor of increased risk of psychosis. Neither social nor role functioning predicted the outcomes. The results concerning social functioning are in contrast with previous finding, which may be attributable to the low incidence of psychosis in the sample or the treatment received by the participants. Overall the results emphasize the importance of interventions for early symptoms to prevent these severe outcomes.