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Research shows that women are treated differently than men in news reporting, and sports reporting is no exception. Female athletes are underrepresented in media and are often de-scribed in terms of other attributes than their performances. Research exists regarding how equally media reports about sports, but there is a lack of research regarding the way, in which newspapers write about gender equality in sport, and whether such research perhaps would lead to a more equal reporting. Agenda-setting journalism can affect readers’ views on sports and may thereby contribute to maintaining the lower status of women’s sports. Because newspapers are part of one’s informal learning, agenda-setting journalism can indirectly have an impact on one’s informal learning. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to examine how two daily Finnish newspapers write about gender equality in sports, by analyzing all articles that have been published in 2020 that deal with aspects related to gender equality in sports. The thesis assumed a qualitative research approach. In the gathering of the data, altogether about 100 articles were identified in the two newspapers, whereafter the identified articles were analyzed thoroughly using qualitative content analysis. In the analysis seven themes emerged, which were then analyzed and interpreted to answer the research questions. In 2020 HBL and HS reported about gender equality in sports on a broad spectrum. The re-sults showed differences in the newspapers’ sports reporting. HBL wrote more frequently and comprehensively about gender equality in sports, they reflected upon their responsibility and how the situation could improve. HS had several journalists among the analyzed articles than HBL. Many articles in HBL were defined as opinion pieces which touched upon injustices fe-male athletes experience and brought attention to problems, HS had no opinion piece. Con-clusions that can be made are that HBL to a larger extent highlights existing injustices and brings attention to problematic situations and unequal terms. HBL reflects upon their own role and acts through for instance their project where the goal is a gender equal sports journalism. HS doesn’t as clearly take a stand on unfair terms and doesn’t consider their responsibility as a big newspaper with power to influence people. An agenda-setting journalism has large part in how the readers regard (women’s) sport, and to not clearly promote gender equality can re-sult in that one’s informal learning is affected. It can lead to readers being unaware of the ex-isting situation.

Purposes of the study The purpose of this study is to understand phenomenologically the experience of the communication anxiety among university students during speech communication special course. In addition, the purpose of the study is to discuss how the speech communication teachers can deal with the communication anxiety of the students. Anxiety among university students has been noted as a problem for their studies and future career. Within the branch of communication studies the communication anxiety has been conceptualized in many ways, and it's been highly noted field of study for decades. The aim of this study is to understand the communication anxiety as an experience: How is the experience formed, and how does it change during special course? In addition, this thesis views how speech communication teachers understand students experience of communication anxiety when trying to influence the experience pedagogically. Method For the purposes of this study six university students and four university teachers were interviewed. All interviewees participated a special course as a student or a teacher. In addition, 21 learning assignments written by students at the end of the special course were analyzed. The thesis pursues a phenomenological research approach. The data collected were analyzed by phenomenological method. Results and conclusions The experience of anxiety narrated by students was considered to be an experience of being an outsider. The experience lived changed during the special course. The certain communication situations that earlier had aroused anxiety, were considered not to isolate the student from the others any more. The results indicated that the teacher of the special course cannot understand the experience of anxiety lived by the student. However, via the communication of the student group and by his/her own teacher role, the teacher is able to influence the experience. Both the students and the teacher are able to build an approval of the experience of communication anxiety within the special course. The experience of communication anxiety lived in a special course is a layered phenomenon related to peer support, self-approval and pedagogical decision making.

The aim of this thesis was to find out how textile care appears in home economics textbooks. Textile care is considered as an essential area of focus in home economics education and an important everyday skill. The study examines what topics are associated with textile care, in what order they are presented, and what terms are associated with the different stages of the textile care. In addition, the study exam- ines how environmental aspects are merged with textile care. The environmental perspective is im- portant to consider in everyday activities so that they are sustainable and do not contribute to climate change. The research was conducted as a qualitative textbook analysis using theory-driven content analysis. The materials utilized in this study were six home economics textbooks published within the 21st cen- tury. A table of analysis was used to categorize the different themes found in the textbooks. In addition to the text contained in the books, images, additional information content, and possible attachments in the books were also included in the analysis. Clothing care, laundry, as well as pre-and post-treatment of laundry were recognized as the main themes among the researched materials. These concepts and themes are described in more detail in the theoretical section of the thesis, as well as within the research results. In all the researched textbooks textile care clearly appears as its own area of focus. The magnitude of the content has some influence on the extent to which the various stages of textile care have been covered in the textbooks. Sustainable aspects of textile care were also found in other sections of the book. The themes related to sustainable development were raised in a few books in sections related to consumer education, addressing especially the circular economy and sustainable decisions when pur- chasing clothing. The four main themes used as basis for the study were found in all the books and were mainly presented throughout the books in the same order. The most notable differences in the different stages of textile care were found in the contents related to clothing care. In more recent text- books, sustainability was clearly an integral part of the textbooks’ other content and was considered in all stages.

Background and objectives. The aim of this study was to clarify the usage of the concept of continuous learning. Another aim was to understand what conditions or expectations were set for continuous learning in different settings. These questions were examined by reviewing scientific research and reviews to identify themes in which the concept of continuous learning was used. Continuous learning is in the centre of Finnish government programme with expectation to correspond to the needs of changing working life and to enable longer careers for individuals. Corporates are also leaning on continuous learning to minimize business risk and enhance profitability by offering training or job rotation for employees. Bonding the concept of continuous learning to specific models or targets creates a contradiction to fundamentals of learning which is continuous regardless of context. Based on this setting the concept of continuous learning is reviewed from the angles of lifelong learning, political aspiration, and financial interests, for example the enhancement or change of working life. Methods. This research was conducted as a systematic literature review. This method was recognized to be the most informative when investigating the usage of the concept of continuous learning as previous meta-analysis brings out the different angles and context in which the concept was used. Data was collected from three databases and sixteen articles or reviews were included in this research. Results and conclusions. The concept of continuous learning was connected to theoretical framework of this study which included lifelong learning, political discussion, and financial interests. Especially remarks considering working life and its demands stood out from the data. These were tightly connected with political and financial interests from individual as well as societal perspectives. Continuous learning can be viewed a necessity to prosper in working life and life in general. This perception narrows down the fundamental meaning of learning as a continuous process.

The aim of this study was twofold: 1) to examine the structure of the job simulation test "Research Budget" and 2) to examine job simulation performance in relation to the extremes of personality traits and cognitive abilities in personnel assessment. Job simulation performance in this context was viewed as performance evaluations provided by the assessors of the simulation test. Previous research indicates that measures of personality and cognitive abilities are the primary correlates for job simulation performance, which supports the setting of this study. The participants (N=224) completed the assignments as a part of their assessment day at a Finnish Personnel Assessment Company. Measures used in this study were a job simulation test concerning decision making, a personality inventory Stress Reaction Styles, measuring the extremes of personality traits and three measures of cognitive abilities; Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices set II, Verbal Critical Reasoning (VCR) test and Numerical Reasoning (NR) test. All data was gathered from an internal database of the company between years 2013-2014. An explorative factor analysis was conducted to study the structure of the job simulation test. The relationship between, the different measures were examined by Pearson's correlation analyses and by linear regression analyses. The results of this study showed that four SRS-type dimensions of the extremes of personality. Dependent, Avoidant, Paranoid and Borderline and cognitive ability test VCR had moderate but significant correlations with job simulation performance. In addition Dependent and VCR moderately predicted job simulation performance.

The purpose of this study was to research how the leadership of kindergarten leaders is correlated to the quality of early childhood education. The correlation between leadership and early childhood education quality was studied from the perspective of personnel and parents. In addition this paper studied how parents and personnel experience the quality of early childhood education. In addition, the correlation between personnel’s as well as parents’ views about leadership and to their understanding of early childhood education quality was studied. It is important to study the correlation between early childhood education leadership and quality because leadership styles affects early childhood education quality (Vlasov ym., 2018, 46). The aim of this study is to find out what leadership factors are correlated to early childhood education. Once you have found the leadership factors, you are able to develop these forward. Research data was collected in 2019 from one early childhood education area in Helsinki. The data was collected by electronic questionnaire from early childhood education personnel (N = 14) and parents (N = 36). The questionnaire had allegations about early childhood education quality and leadership. Personnel’s and parents’ views of the early childhood education quality were studied by descriptive analysis. The correlations between personnel’s and parents’ assessments on leadership and their understanding of the early childhood education quality were investigated by non-parametric Kendall´s tau-b correlation test. For the analysis, sums of variables were created from the claim categories of the questionnaire. There were eight sums of variables on both personnel’s and parents’ questionnaires. Seven of the sums of variables included early childhood education quality claims and one sum of variables included the leadership claims. The personnel´s and parents’ answers implied that the quality of early childhood is positive. The respondent group gave especially high points to the claims that child’s early childhood education curriculum was being fulfilled and that personnel and parents had discussed child’s growth, teaching and care. Kindergarten’s leader’s leadership correlated with early childhood education´s functionality of the premises, versatility, safety and with the premises enabling time to be alone as well as group to operate. In addition, when leadership was seen as high-quality, personnel were more professionally skilled and engaged to work. By taking the findings into account, kindergarten leaders should acknowledge that by their own leadership abilities they might affect the quality of early childhood education.

Aims: The aim of the research is to identify the sphere of work among academic middle managers and the dilemmas they face in their profession. During this millennium, academic leadership as a research area has increased. Yet there is little research on the subject despite the fact that academic leadership is directly connected to a university’s main goals and tasks, and therefore linked to the university’s overall success. An academic middle manager is a supervisor, a coordinator, a strategic leader and a change agent. They have a wide range of tasks and they work with many stakeholders. The position is, by its nature, one where tensions arise, which is highlighted through the context of an academic work environment and its culture. The tensions in the position may increase if the career path of an academic middle manager falls on them unintentionally. During the past decade, there have been various changes in the universities, which have shaped both the organizational structure and the tasks of an academic leader. Methods: The research data consisted of eight semi-structured theme interviews that were collected from academic middle managers working at the University of Helsinki. The interviews were analyzed by using qualitative content analysis. The research follows an abductive strategy on the analysis part. Based on the analysis, two work task areas were emphasized and four dilemma groups were identified; community dilemmas, operative dilemmas, change dilemmas and leaders’ career dilemmas. Results and conclusions: The research highlighted two main areas in a middle manager’s sphere of work; 1) strategic and operative leadership and management, and 2) people leadership. Other tasks within their sphere of work had been delegated to others. The research also showed that middle managers face both weak and strong dilemmas in their work, which were categorized into the four dilemma groups introduced above. Within these four dilemma groups there were three dilemmas that especially created tension. The first was the tension between individualism and collectivism. The second was caused by the power dynamics of an academic middle manager and the academic community. Also, lack of time appeared in three different dilemma groups creating tension in different situations. The research showed evidence of the dilemmas that academic middle managers face. The evidence and results may be used for building academic leadership training programs.

The aim of this research is to find out the leaderships connection to learning environments and children's play in Early Childhood Education (ECE) by the next problems of the study: (1) What kind of leadership types there are in ECE? (2) What kind of connections there are between the types of leadership and learning environments? (3) What kind of connection there are between the types of leadership and children's play? There is no previous research about this topic so I will try to fulfill the gap on my account. The research was carried out by using the quantitative research methods: The Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient (Rho), Principal Components Analysis, (PCA) and the frequency analysis. The theory of this paper based on research material by using the earlier theories about leadership, learning environments and children's play. The data used in this study was a part of the "Orientation project" -research by Jyrki Reunamo. There was 2889 children, 156 teams and their leaders, who took part in the study from thirteen different municipalities in Southern Finland. The response rate among leaders was 80 %. According to this research the leadership of ECE consists of five categories: The Pedagogical leadership, the Leadership of development, the Leadership of economy, troublesome leadership and weak leadership. To clarify comparison, five types of leadership were compressed to two types: The Quality leadership and the Demanding leadership. According to the results there are some connections between leadership, learning environments and children's play. From the results it can be deduced that if the leader thinks that she/he is "The Quality leader" learning environments are more versatile, more high-quality and children have more opportunities for rich and versatile play. Children have also many opportunities for free play. If the leader thinks that it is demanding to lead personnel, the play of children is more physical. There are also fewer opportunities for supported play or controlled play. It is very important to develop and improve the quality of leadership so that the play of children can be of highest quality.

The aim of this thesis was to approach the process of change common to the whole school as it transitioned to a new school building and learning environment. The theme was approached from the point of view of both principals and teachers, and the aim was to find out how principals and teachers have experienced working in a flexible learning space. New learning environments have sparked a lot of debate recently, both in the media and in school communities. Active co-operation in everyday life is typical of flexible learning spaces. The flooring and furnishing solutions of the premises support the implementation of diverse teaching methods, and flexible spaces have reported to be characterized by the utilization of multidisciplinary learning and project work. In the implementation of teaching, emphasizes learner-centered approach and attention to the individual needs of students. The thesis was carried out in co-operation with the Tulevaisuuden koulu 2030 research project. The study was a qualitative case study, and the analysis method was used for data-driven content analysis. Interviews with three principals and two teachers were used as research material. In addition to this, the material included spatial walk notes from one of the schools. The data was collected by the project in 2023. The research results described the school management and teachers' experiences of adapting to the new learning environment in a diverse manner. Both the principals and some of the teachers were satisfied with the operation of the learning environment and the opportunities it provided to implement teaching. Co-teaching was said to be utilized in everyday work that supported the well-being of the school community. However, the experience of one school in the implementation of teaching differed much from that of the others studied. At the specific school, the learning environment did not support co-operated activities and facilities that should support flexibility and diverse learning opportunities were perceived to limit them. The thesis describes the experience of certain schools in adapting to a new learning environment, the results of which can also benefit those who are still in the process of change.

Meat production has a number of negative effects on the environment, the climate and the welfare of farm animals. In addition, the consumption of red meat and meat products in particular is linked to a number of lifestyle diseases and certain types of cancer. In Finland, meat is consumed in excess regarding recommendations, and most Finns are not ready to give up eating meat altogether. Studies have shown that people perceive meat as natural, normal, necessary and comfortable. In other words, meat is perceived as food that people want to consume. Health reasons and ethical reasons most often motivate the transition to a vegetarian diet. In addition, ecological reasons have been identified as an important motive for the partial reduction of meat intake. This study examined how meat and it’s substitutes are part of the everyday eating of Finns and what changes have taken place in the consumption of meat and vegetable proteins in 2013 and 2020. The topic is approached with a qualitative research approach, which also includes quantitative features due to the large data size. The material in my research is in two parts; the first sub-dataset contains 485 food day descriptions from 2013 and the second sub-dataset contains 445 food day descriptions from 2020. The main method of data analysis is theory-driven content analysis. In the data, most of the respondents consumed meat or fish during their day. However, in the 2020 data set, holding a vegetarian food day was slightly more common, and plant proteins were consumed more variably than in the 2013 data set. Consuming meat turned out to be an everyday and easy choice based on the data. The most common reasons for reducing meat consumption were the desire to eat healthier, more ecologically and ethically. In addition, in the 2020 data, the choice of vegetarian food was influenced by the ease of cooking and the taste of the food. Many respondents said they were concerned about the climate and animal rights and were actively working towards a more vegetarian diet. Based on this study, the shift toward a more vegetable based diet has occurred fairly effortlessly and naturally. However, a discrepancy between knowledge, attitudes and practice can be identified in the respondents 'descriptions of the food day, as the respondents' attitudes are practically realized in only some of the descriptions of the food day. According to this study, meat consumption is not polarized, and the majority of respondents fall into the middle ground in terms of meat-related values ​​and consumption habits. In addition, the majority of respondents were positive about the plant-based nature of food. According to a previous study, a mere positive attitude may not be reflected in consumption at a practical level, which is why new ways are needed in the future to support consumers' shift towards a vegetarian diet.