Browsing by discipline "Educational Psychology"

Participation and social modes of thinking - An intervention study on the development of collaborative learning in two primary school small groups This study explores the thinking together -intervention programme in three primary school classes. The object of the intervention was to teach pupils to use exploratory talk in small group collaboratory learning. Exploratory talk is a type of talk in which joint reasoning is made explicit. Research has shown that exploratory talk can improve mathematics and science learning, argumentative skills and competence in reasoning tests. The object of this study was to investigate the theory of social modes of thinking which the intervention program is based on. I tried to find out how the thinking together -intervention programme suits the Finnish context. Therefore my study is part of an international research project of interventions that have been implemented for example in Great-Britain and in Mexico. One essential drawback in former research made on thinking together -approach is that the nature of participation has not been studied properly. In this study I also examine how the nature of participation develops in small groups. In addition to that I aim to develop a theoretical framework which includes both the perspectives of the social modes of thinking and the nature of participation. The perspective of this study is sociocultural. The research material consists of video recordings of collaborative learning tasks of two small groups. In groups there were pupils of age groups 9 - 11. I study the nature of participation using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Quantitative methods include for example IR-analysis method and counting of turns at talk and words. I also use qualitative content analysis to analyze both the nature of participation and social modes of thinking. As a result of my study I found out that the interaction of the other group was leadership based and in the other group the interaction was without leadership relations. In both groups the participation was quantitatively more symmetrical in the end of the intervention. In the group in which the interaction was leadership based the participation of the pupils was more symmetrical. Exploratory talk was found more in the group without leadership relations, but in both groups the amount of exploratory talk was increased during the intervention. Leadership based interaction was further divided into interaction of alienating and inclusive leadership according to how symmetrical the participation was in the dialogue. Exploratory talk was found only when the leadership was inclusive or the interaction was without leadership relations. The main result of the study was that the exploratory talk was further divided into four subcategories according to the nature of participation. In open and inclusive exploratory talk all group members participated initiatively and their initiatives were responded by others. In closed and uneven exploratory talk some group members couldn't participate properly. Therefore it cannot be said that exploratory talk guarantees symmetrical participation. The nature of participation must be investigated separately.

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between university students' epistemic beliefs, conceptions of learning, socioeconomic background and academic achievements during their first years at the university. In addition, it was examined what kind of epistemic beliefs and conceptions of learning students had, what kind of socioeconomic background they had and did the epistemic beliefs and conceptions of learning differ between students with different age, gender and socioeconomic background. This research setup was chosen because the relationship between epistemic beliefs, conceptions of learning and study success has not been adequately studied and there is a need to find factors that influence the progress of university students. The data (n = 929) for this study were acquired from the Academy of Finland Mind the Gap -research data which was collected from first-year students from the University of Helsinki at 2013 and 2014. The credits and grades from two years studies were added to the data. 33 primary school 6th graders in Helsinki in spring 2013. Evaluating based on average values and a one-way analysis of variance with paired sample t-test was conducted to see how students' epistemic beliefs and conceptions of learning differed between age, gender and socioeconomic background. The relationship between epistemic beliefs, conceptions of learning, socioeconomic background and academic achievement were evaluated using stepwise regression analysis. The results suggested that valuating certain knowledge had a negative effect in progress of studies and valuating Collaborative knowledge building had a positive effect in university students' study success. The university students' parents' socio-economic status was not significantly related to the progress of the studies or the academic success. The results of the research can be utilized in developing and designing university and pre-university education, and in particular from the point of view: what kind of knowledge and learning concept these studies develop.