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Objectives. The changes to Basic Education Act (624/2010), which came into force on January 2011, as well as the enforcement of the Pupil and Student Welfare Act (1287/2013) in 2014, has restructured the operation of the Finnish education system. The model, known as the support in learning and school attendance, operates on a three-tiered support system, and is based on inclusive principles as one of its goals is to include pupils with special needs to mainstream classes with additional teaching support. This study aims to investigate how the amendments have affected classroom teachers’ work tasks, workload, and well-being at work, and as well as to highlight the ways in which classroom teachers have adapted to the changes. Methods. The research approach of this study was qualitative. The data was collected by interviewing four classroom teachers using semi-structured theme interviews. The participants were selected for the study based on their year of graduation and by municipality, as they had worked as classroom teachers before the enforcement of the previously mentioned amendments, and as they all were working in schools in different municipalities. The data was analysed using a qualitative analysis of content. Results and conclusions. According to the teachers, adoption of the new support model has not created any new work tasks or responsibilities to the teachers although the changes have affected how the workload is divided between different work tasks. Majority of the participants brought up how the adoption of the three-tiered support model had increased work bureaucracy and workload, in the form of preparation of pedagogical documents, multiprofessional cooperation and cooperation between home and school. However, the teachers underlined that the model had created positive developments in teaching as well. There were major differences in teachers’ experiences regarding the changes in the work and well-being at work, as the teachers experienced changes in different areas of their work in different ways. Similarly, teachers' ways of adapting to change were different, where the results of this study can provide different perspectives on examining and developing teachers' well-being at work.

The main purpose of the study is to describe the social context of meal times and food-related routines in the Moomin books. Previous research has looked at what the Moomins are eating, but there are no studies about other dimensions of their eating. The research data was collected from eight Moomin books. One of them was a collection of short stories and the other seven were novels. The data includes all descriptions of meal times found in the books as well as scenes where food was discussed. In order to be included in the data, the scene had to include some member of the central Moomin family: Moominmamma, Moominpappa or Moomintroll. The nature of the study was qualitative and the data was analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method. Family meals were the most frequently occurring meal type found in the data. During these meals, all of the central Moomin family along with their closest friends came together at the Moomin house to enjoy the company of family and friends and to discuss the news of the day. Another common meal format was having a packed lunch to bring to one of the Moomins' trips. Participating in these trips were usually all of the Moomin family along with friends or only Moomintroll with his friends. Generally, Moominmamma prepared all the meals. The results showed that the Moomin family had routines related to food and meal times. Moominmamma was normally the one responsible for the routines. When these routines were broken, the Moomin family fell into confusion. Fortunately, this did not occur often. The study showed that the family meals and regular routines had a positive influence on the well-being of the Moomin family.

The purpose of this thesis was to disclose the current views of Finnish and English language use and development in a multiculturalising Finnish service industry company from its personnel and their views of the future changes in the use of working languages. The research is topical as the foreign workforce in the industry keeps growing and the Finnish population is becoming more multilingual. So far there has been little research on the working languages of Finnish companies, as the research has mainly focused on multinational companies. The aim of the thesis is to find prevailing differences of views about the meaning of languages in multilingual working life from a phenomenographic point of view. Views have been outlined to the themes of everyday work, foreign language development and future working language. The language choices in work situations are studied from the perspectives of language skill development and situations of communication. In the study, seven people from four different organizational areas were interviewed: workers, supervisors, manager-level supervisors, and a member of the training team. The interview material was analyzed with phenomenographic methods using the Atlas.ti software. The results of the thesis show that there are regional differences in the importance of languages in everyday work within the service industry company. In work communities, the choice of language was based on the language skills shared by the members of the community. In situations where the employee did not have sufficient skills in the Finnish language, communication was facilitated by common languages of the work community. The respondents felt that the importance of the English language in the company will increase as the share of foreign workforce in the industry increases. The employees saw the importance of English language skills increasing at the supervisor level, but at the same time they also felt that the use of the English language acted as a slowing factor for foreign workers' learning of the Finnish language in everyday work.

Aim. The idea of a Finnish-Swedish bilingual school has been a popular topic in the Finnish media since September 2011. The aim of this study was to analyse the construction of cultural identities in the discourses emerging in the debate and thus to increase comprehension of the cultural context of the debate. Identity was examined as a cultural and discursive construction in a post-structural framework. Cultural identity was defined in relation to memberships in ethnic, linguistic and national cultures. The construction of identities was examined in relation to difference and representations of otherness and, moreover, as connected to the descriptions of a postmodern society. Methods. The data consisted of 127 texts in four different newspapers and was analysed within a critical discourse analytical framework influenced by Foucault and combined with elements of Laclau's ideology and discourse analysis and Derrida's deconstructive reading. Conclusions. The link between language and identity was mainly comprehended as straightforward. Belonging to the Swedish minority was linked to an essential, collective identity that can be considered as an essentialist strategy for increasing the cohesion within the minority. Cultural identities were constructed in a discourse based on an established dichotomy, by producing difference and otherness. The dichotomy was however challenged in a discourse that stood up for bilingualism by talking back .

Aims. Finland can be described as a land of thousands of lakes. Fishing has been an important source of livelihood since the early days of settlement. However many structural changes in the society, as urbanization and industrialism, have effected the fishing culture. Migration from the rural areas brought fishing to cities, where it became a popular leisure activity. Besides self-sufficiency, also recreation has become a central reason to fish. The aim of this thesis is to look what kind of relationship is established with nature while fishing in the urban environment. Further the study attempts to explain, what kind of characteristic features fishing culture has in the city, specially Helsinki area, and which elements of sustainable development can be recognized in it. Finally this thesis asks, what kind of material and immaterial benefits one can earn by practicing recreational fishing in Helsinki. Methods. The data of this qualitative study was collected with focused interviews during late autumn 2014 in popular fishing spots of Helsinki. In total 13 local recreational fishers participated in the research, of who majority were men. The data was analysed with qualitative content analysis. The theoretical framework of this study was relying on the cultural ecological theory and viewpoints offered by the literary sources and previous research. Results and conclusions. It was found out that one could be self-sufficient in terms of fish in Helsinki, and enjoy a varied selection of self-caught fish food throughout the year. However, successful fishing in city requires a great commitment and high knowledge of fish waters. Motives behind fishing were not only material. Besides the fish itself, also social, recreational and natural aspects were significant purposes for fishing. Interviewees named mental and physical well-being as key benefits alongside the more measurable goods, like the actual catch. Surprisingly informants defined Helsinki as a brilliant fishing area. Maritime location and infrastructures of the town offered easy access to various fishing spots. This made the relationship with nature rather unique. The social features of sustainable fishing were particularly visible in the fishing culture of Helsinki.

The Bachelor’s degree should prepare students for the working life. Previous research has shown that especially students from generalist study fields have challenges to transfer to working life. In order to succeed in an ever-changing working life, students must learn during their studies the needed generic skills. The aim of this Master’s Thesis was to explore what generic skills the Bachelor’s graduates experienced that they had learned during their university studies, and which generic skills were the most important that should be learnt during university studies. Many previous studies have explored generic skills using quantitative methods, so there is a clear need for a qualitative approach. The research material of present study consists of 10 interviews of graduated generalist Bachelor students from The Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki. The research was conducted using theory-bound content analysis. The graduates described that they had learnt the following generic skills during their university studies: academic knowledge and thinking skills, knowledge integration skills, social and communication skills, leadership and network skills, IT skills and lifelong learning skills. The graduates experienced that academic knowledge and thinking skills were the most learnt skills, and they considered the skills to be the most important generic skills that should be learned during university studies. Other skills perceived important were knowledge integration skills, social and communication skills and lifelong learning skills. Identifying generic skills appeared to be challenging for some of the graduates. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the graduates emphasised that they have learnt generic skills moderately well during their studies. However, social and communications skills should be further developed during studies because challenges in learning them have been observed as this study shows.

My master's thesis is a study of citizenship and its ideals in disability policy from the perspective of critical ability studies. The main focus of ability studies is to analyze ableism and how it produces ideals of perfect humanness. Therefore, from the perspective of ableism these ideals produce disability and impairments as something intolerable as well as inherently and ontologically negative. My study focused on the disability policy paradigm as it is after the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities from the year 2006. The disability policy paradigm emphasizes both the rights of people with disabilities to full citizenship and their participation in society. The study data included 20 documents from European, national and municipal disability policies, released from 2006 onwards. In this study I explored how ableism defines the construction of full citizenship and how ableism affects individual's possibilities to participate as citizen according to the current disability policy. As my research method, I applied interpretative reading style based on the New Rhetoric. In the current disability policy paradigm the ideal of full citizenship is based on individualistic and neoliberalistic views, which emphasize self-mastery and independence. This ideal is impossible for people with disabilities because self-mastery and independence are defined as autonomy from other people and social services. Moreover, falling short from the ideal is located in ontologically negative space. Subsequently the bodies with impairments are always seen as imperfect and defective as well as economically burdening. Emphasizing the physical imperfectness of individuals defines their possibilities to participate in society because this participation is emulating the ideal. Also, the individuals with disabilities are forced to repeat their imperfectness in order to obtain social services, which enable participation. Ontological discrimination of people with disabilities is evident in the disability policy, even though it contradicts the aims of the policy.

The premise of the thesis was to study Finland’s folk costume’s most prominent aspects and develop learning material based on those aspects. I started by reviewing literature connected to the topic about teaching materials. Based on the results, I concluded that quite a bit of research has been done about folk costumes’ history, and there exists a fairly extensive amount of literature about it. However, there wasn’t that much teaching material available about folk costumes, even though a need for it has been recognized. Therefore, the mission for my thesis became to develop introductory teaching material about folk costumes for beginners. The goal for this thesis is to develop a folk costume manual, that offers an extensive information packet for beginners, along with instructions for wearing and acquiring one. As a research method I chose design-based research which consists of developing the teaching material and the theory of its development. I started the development of the manual by mapping out, what meanings are associated with folk costumes. This was carried out by interviewing four experts. The results were narratives of their experiences around folk costumes. These narratives were divided into categories to be used as material for the first draft of developing the manual, along with literary reviews. The first draft was tested by a heuristic review, in which three of the assessors of the previous step were evaluating the manual by making notes about ideas for developments and other comments. A heuristic list was offered to support the evaluation. Then, the notes were summarized into comments, and the experts classified them based on their prominence. The manual was developed based on the comments, if the experts estimated the problem to be significant. The result of the design-based research is a folk costume manual, and information about the development process. An expert interview and a heuristic evaluation proved to be functional methods for developing this type of learning material. Two themes were highlighted in relation to folk costumes in the experts’ comments: Way of speaking and vocabulary with which the costumes’ instructions and recommendations are being described, and versatility of the folk costumes. These themes had a significant impact on the folk costume manual as well.

The aim of this study was to examine accessibility in folk high schools from the perspective of students with disabilities or learning difficulties. Accessibility in education means that psychological, sociological and physical environment enables equal study opportunities. Therefore the focus in this survey was on equal study opportunity deficiencies. Folk high schools are an essential subject for accessibility research as they follow the equal educational policy of liberal adult education. This study is a part of Liberal adult education -research project (2010-2012), which is the first accessibility research in Finnish liberal adult education. The equality-based claim of accessibility together with the need to separate the experiences of students with disabilities and learning difficulties from common experiences led naturally to comparative research frame. Firstly, experiences of the experimental group (students with disabilities or learning difficulties, N=278) were compared to experiences of the comparison group (students representing the educational majority, N=498). Secondly, experiences within the experimental group were examined according to gender, need of support and educational background. This study was mostly quantitative survey study. Data was collected from folk high school students with an inquiry created for this study. Data-analysis was mainly made by using analysis of variance (GLM) and test of Kruskal-Wallis. Qualitative data was analysed as an additional element by quantification. Equal study opportunity deficiencies were found in teaching and studying, other people's awareness and attitudes, own attitudes, information and peer group, where the experimental group found significantly more accessibility deficiencies than the comparison group. The most considerable difference was found in teaching and studying, wherein also the quality of deficiencies was explained differently between the groups. Within the experimental group women experienced more accessibility deficiencies than men. Also regular and great need of support and low educational background were connected with the experience of greater accessibility deficiencies. As a conclusion it seems that the equality-based accessibility in folk high schools could be improved especially by differentiating teaching and learning. This study also proved general need for more exact definition of the intention of accessibility: is the priority to develop common quality or equality of education, and is the aim to remove the barriers or advance support to overcome them.

This is a research of the use and manufacture of Finland's various folk costumes and its related meanings. You can see folk costume in Finland rarely, although in many places people are still using them a lot. In dressing it is its own world to use the folk costume. The study had three research issues that were used to investigate the matter. Research issues investigated different meanings of folk costumes for their users and analyzed what the folk costumes means its user and manufacturer. The study analyzed what kind of things people can attach to use of the folk costumes. The study research what kind of role crafts had when people are making the folk costumes and whether handicrafts are needed in the manufacture of folk costume. At the beginning of the study, two theme interviews had been conducted to the people who are working with the folk costumes and based on these theme interviews, an internet-based questionnaire was prepared. The questionnaire was assigned to the target group in social media. In Facebook there are groups, with members of the people who are interested in folk costumes and many of them use folk costumes regularly. 78 people responded to the questionnaire. The study material was analyzed by a qualitative and quantitative method. Based on this investigation, it was found that the folk costume and its utilization played great importance to their users. Each user had its own meaning to the use of the folk costume, but in the investigation, the biggest importance rose to bringing their own family roots. The use of folk costume joined the user's identity, as its use is a very visible communication. In the study, it was clear that hobbies have a great role in the manufacture of folk costumes, as many defendants reported that they were a handicraft enthusiast but felt to be too novice to make a challenging folk costume for themselves.