Browsing by discipline "Pedagogiska psykologi"
Now showing items 61-67 of 67
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(2016)The purpose of this thesis is to describe how the phenomena of agency and control occur in an action research study of school satisfaction. The main focus is on the description about agency and control given by pupils as they contemplated the satisfaction of transitioning to lower secondary school. Another area of interest is action research as a method that supports the agency of the pupils. A sixth grade from a village school that emphasizes the learnercentred pedagogy took part in the research in the spring of 2016. The action research consisted of four stages: introduction and conceptualization, data collection, analysis and individual reflection. In this thesis, the data consisted of a group discussion of the analysis stage and the pupils' individual reflection tests. Content analysis was used in analysing the discussion and texts of the pupils when examining what kinds of occurrences of agency and control could be detected. When finding out what kinds of initiatives of agency the pupils took in interactive situations, the analysis of interaction was used in analysing the group discussion with a focus on initiatives. In the conversation of the pupils, the most essential matters concerning control were the school rules and teachers who made sure that the rules were followed. Control was seen as a restriction to creativity but also as something that brought safety. The talk about breaking the rules together was an essential thought that reflected agency through opposition. Freedom and independence for studying as well as for transport was hoped for. The answers reflected the youth's need for independence and its meaning for each individual's school satisfaction. The initiatives varied and changed quickly in the interactive situation of the action research. For example, the pupils would take initiatives of supporting each other's ideas by repeating the same idea. However, in constructive initiatives they started to modify an idea presented by someone else. In group discussion, dividing and opposing initiatives took place, which occurred, for instance, by focusing too much on the details or rejecting another person's idea. There is a pedagogical contradiction in everyday school life. On the first hand, pupils should be guided to become independent agents but on the other hand, a safe school environment should be maintained for everyone. The purpose of this study was to bring this pedagogical paradox to the fore and to clarify in a concrete way what kind of agency and initiatives concerning it can occur in everyday life, and how all these matters are interwoven into the pupils' school satisfaction.
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(2019)The purpose of this study is to implement immersive virtual reality (VR) technology as part of an environmental studies project in the actual complex school reality and analyze both the students’ and their teachers’ experiences and observations on the use of VR in learning and teaching. This study focuses on the user experiences and affordances that the appliance of VR technology brings forth in education. There are but few earlier studies on similar topics, most of which have been conducted in clinical settings. Three teachers and 59 students, 5-6th graders, from two different Finnish elementary schools participated in this study. The participants were all volunteers and took part in a nationwide VISIOT-project, coordinated by a nationwide Innokas Network. Its main purpose was to provide opportunities for trying out and developing virtual reality, augmented reality and Internet of things -technologies in education. The three teachers in this study applied a VR system that consisted of HTC Vive -device and Google Earth VR -program. The different ways in which the teachers ended up implementing the VR system turned out to be an important research topic in this study. The project went on for over three months, spanning from December 2017 to April 2018. The students assessed the use of the VR system during and after the project. Their experiences became another key research area in this study. Data was gathered with online questionnaires, pre and post-surveys for students, a test of the students’ spatial reasoning abilities, and with a pre-survey and innovative post interviews for the teachers. This mostly qualitative data was analyzed with clustering content analysis, where I would find similarities and differences in the participants’ answers and place them in schematized categories. The teacher’s encountered technical, spatial and temporal challenges, as well as challenges in orchestrating the implementation of the VR system. It appeared that VR’s implementation in education demanded more innovative scripts and different spatial, temporal and pedagogical arrangements than the two studied schools were used to. Albeit, the students adapted to the use of VR technology rather quickly and had a very positive emotional experience with it. The VR system was mostly used as a motivational addition to learning. Besides the visually enhanced exploration of the Earth and tourist role-play, the VR system’s actualized affordances included enjoyment and interest, realism and mental immersion, and mastery experiences. Students found the device as very comfortable and the program as user-friendly. Their conception of virtual reality was evidently affected by the applied VR system and its uses during the virtual field trip project. Despite of this, the students were able to imagine diverse learning worlds for VR. In addition to typical categories, they imagined high fantasy worlds and time travelling to the future. By and large, the students appeared willing to use VR technology again in the future. Their post-survey measures for self-efficacy and interest to engage with the technology were relatively high. The self-reported self-efficacy of boys was statistically significantly higher than the girls corresponding. The students found the VR program to be a credible source mostly due to the virtual world’s realism or resemblance with their experiences of the real world. Altogether, VR technology appears to be something that these 11-12-year-old students would gladly include in their learning environment, on the other hand, the teachers rightfully felt that the implemented VR system was too complex and demanding for permanent inclusion.
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(2016)The new Finnish curriculum (FNBE, 2014) calls for active and engaging learning that supports students' agency and active role in their own learning. It emphasizes creating meaningful contexts that interrelate also with students' out-of-school interests. Research shows participating with organized out-of-school activities has a positive relation to school grades. In addition, it seems that school engagement is low among Finnish 6th graders (Salmela-Aro et al., 2016). However, little is known of what currently interests Finnish pupils and how their topics of interest are related to academic well-being. This study explores the topics of interest and interest-driven participation and further, their relation to school engagement, school burnout and grades (GPA) of 6th graders. The study was part of Mind the Gap project (Academy of Finland #265528) and the participants (n=735) were 6th graders from Helsinki. I conducted content categorization of the whole sample that showed a rich variation of interests, largest categories being sports (43.8%) and arts (27.9%). The quantitative analyses looked at the intensity and form of the activities. I identified three interest profiles with two-step cluster analysis: Organized team participators, Informal individualistic participators and Intensive participators. The Organized team participators were most interested in team sports. They reported high school engagement, low burnout and high GPA whereas Informal individualistic participators had lower school engagement, high GPA and moderate school burnout. They were the most interested in music and arts. Intensive participators, who were especially interested in social interaction, were engaged to school, but had higher levels of burnout and the lowest GPA. The results indicate lack of supporting interest-driven participation in schools: only Intensive participators were almost as active inside as outside of school. It may be difficult for teachers to adopt new practices that call for supporting interest-driven participation. However, it would be important to use students' personal interests to bridge between school world and students' lives and to promote student agency and support school engagement.
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(2019)Aims. Information and communication technologies are defined as important civics in the new curriculum and every student should have the opportunity to improve these skills. They are seen both as an instrument and as a target of learning. The increasing importance of social media in society has also remarkably increased the social media discourse. It is seen as an opportunity although it simultaneously raises fears and concerns. The previous research has focused on examining social media as a tool for learning. Less attention has been given to the opportunities it offers to building interaction between pupils and teachers. This study examines the collective interaction of a school class in WhatsApp application. The aim of the study is to find out how the role of the teacher is formed in the conversation and to approach the interaction from the third space viewpoint. In addition this research aims to locate the dissonance experienced by the researcher as a class teacher taking part in the informal interaction in social media. Methods. The data in this study is a WhatsApp discussion from the spring semester of 2016. It was not originally collected for research purposes but was selected for research at the end of the academic year. The study was attended by all 22 pupils of the class and the class teacher who later assumed the role of the researcher. The data is approached through discourse analysis with autoethnographic features that are based on the teacher’s experience in researching her own practice. This analysis utilized both data-driven and theory-driven analysis. The framework of the analysis is based on Gutiérres et al. (1995) theory of a third space by means of building the conditions of a third space. This concept worked as a middle level analytical tool. The experienced dissonance was located using the concepts of agency and especially the contradiction of control – agency as well as through the dialectics of the epistemic and the existential dimensions of being a teacher. Results and conclusions. Pupils were active agents in the interaction. They were more active in initiating and participating in discussions than the class teacher whose role was emphasized by the existential dimension of being a teacher. The teacher appeared as an equal participant in the conversation. The WhatsApp conversation acted as a third space and building this space required the abandonment of traditional institutional interaction. WhatsApp application worked as an interesting mediator that enabled the subjects of the study to build their interaction in a new way. The dissonance was placed in the dialectics of control - agency and balancing between the existential and epistemic dimensions of teaching. This study helps to see the opportunities of interaction in social media and reveals the challenges it brings from the teachers point of view. It also points out the importance of the teachers presence.
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(2007)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.
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(2019)Goals. The study deals with home-school collaboration in the context of resolving school bullying. The goal of the study is to find out how home-school collaboration is constructed and described in parent-focused online texts about school bullying. The rationale for the study is that these texts contribute to parents’ preconceptions about home-school collaboration when dealing with bullying. These preconceptions will inevitably be reflected in the home-school collaboration. Methods. Research materials were gathered using Google search engine. The final research material was put together by specifying exact criteria for the material. The selected material was classified into themes using content analysis. Identifying the themes helped understanding the texts in the material. The material was then examined using discourse analysis, which allowed identifying specific discourses in the discussions about home-school collaboration. Results and conclusions. By identifying the themes in the material, it was found out that texts directed at parents included with topics such as forwarding information, instructions and subjects that mentally affect the parents. A discourse analytic examination indicated that the texts contain several different discourses: 1) School leading the collaboration, 2) Parents leading the collaboration, 3) School and home being equal agents, 4) School and home against each other and 5) No collaboration due to circumstances
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(2017)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.
Now showing items 61-67 of 67