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The purpose of this study was to examine how Home Economics as a school subject is arranged in grades 1-6 in mainland Finland and how distribution of lesson hours and curriculum varied between schools. Also, teachers qualification requirements and teaching facilities at schools were examined. The aim of the study was collect all the national information in one place, analyze the data and present the current state of Home Economics in grades 1-6. This was a descriptive and a quantitative study where quantative and qualitative methods were used. The research data was collected with a survey cooperated with Finnish national agency for education. The scope of this study was all schools in mainland Finland where grades 1-6 were taught (N=2004). Statistical analysis with SPSS-program, content analysis and quantification were used to analyze the collected data. The results show, that the schools that responded to the survey offered Home Economics in grades 1-6 only marginally. Only 8,6 % of schools that taught grades 1-6 and 10,9% of schools that taught grades 1-9 had Home Economics studies for grades 1-6. The biggest obstacles for not offering Home Economics were the lack of teaching facilities, resources and the fact that the local education authorities didn't hold mandatory to have Home Economics for local curriculum. In addition, the results show that the lack of a teacher eligibility in the subject was an obstacle even if the qualification requirements criteria were met. Home Economics in schools with grades 1-6 were mostly taught by class teachers and schools where grades were between 1-9 by subject teachers. If the classroom for Home Economics was unavailable, Home Economics teaching was organized in more diverse learning environments in the respondent schools with grades 1-6 than schools with grades 1-9. The results show that Home Economics for grades 1-6 has not yet gained a strong foothold in mainland Finland. This study is important for the society because it serves Degree Programme in Home Economics Teacher Education, teachers continuing education and evaluation and development of curriculum for basic education.

Objectives. In recent years worldview education in early childhood education and pre-school education has turned from religious education into non-confessional worldview education. The aim of this study is to examine what worldview education is like in early childhood education and pre-school education in Helsinki. This study investigated worldview education in national and local curricula of early childhood education and care and pre-school education. In addition, this study explored how worldview education is put into practice in the early childhood education and pre-school education in Helsinki. Methods. The data was collected in spring 2019 by analysing the curricula for early childhood education and care and pre-school education and by a qualitative survey sent to the workers of the early childhood education and pre-school education in Helsinki. The data was analysed by using qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions. The National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (2016) emphasized familiarizing oneself with different cultures and worldviews, acting in the diverse Finnish society and enhancing equality. Helsinki’s local Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (2017) had the same themes but they were emphasized differently. The themes in worldview education in the National Core Curriculum for Pre-School Education (2014) were uniform with The National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Educa-tion and Care. Also, Helsinki’s local Curriculum for Pre-School Education (2016) was the same as the national curricula. In practice, the implementation of worldview education in both early childhood education and pre-school education differed from the legally binding curricula. In early childhood education the worldview education was not predominantly put into practice at all, or it was shown as conversations, as Christian education or as restrictions in the every-day life. In pre-school education the worldview education was most often shown as conversations but also as Christian education, as restrictions in everyday life or was not implemented at all. Therefore, in practice, worldview education meets many, but not all, of the objectives set by the curricula. In pre-school education the worldview education corresponds the curriculum slightly more than in early childhood education. Nonetheless, the practices in both early childhood education and pre-school education need to be developed when the practice is wanted to correspond the legally binding curricula.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between first-year Aalto University School of Business students success in student selection, previous study success, approaches to learning and academic achievement. The purpose of university student selection is to select the best possible students who will succeed in their studies. Many would like to use matriculation examinations more than currently in the student selection process. The question then becomes; does success in previous studies or the success in the student selection actually predict future academic achievement? Previous studies have shown that students' approaches to learning are connected to their academic performance. The deep approach to learning is connected to good academic performance, whereas the surface approach to learning is connected to poor academic performance. However, research results concerning business students have been very contradictory. The study first examined which kind of approaches the students used in their learning. Second, it analyzed how success in previous studies and success in student selection are related to students' approaches to learning, and third it examined how previous study success, success in student selection and approaches to learning are related to academic performance. Methods: In total 113 first-year Business students participated in the study. The data were collected with OPPI questionnaire, and in addition to which were used students points based on matriculation grades, entrance exam points, grade point average and number of credit units which were received from School of Business student affairs office. PASW statistical software was used to analyze the research material. The research data were analyzed by factor analysis, linear regression analysis, analysis of variance, and independent samples t-test. Results and conclusions: Business students primarily used the deep approach to learning in their studies. Organised studying was also very typical for them. Women used the surface approach to learning more than men and the difference was statistically significant. Conversely, age and educational background were not related to approaches to learning in this study. Also previous study success and success in student selection were not related to approaches to learning. According to regression analysis, previous study success, organised studying, age, gender and success in entrance examinations were the best predictors of academic performance as measured by grade point average. Previous study success, organized studying and gender predicted good academic performance best when academic performance was measured by number of credit units. Previous study success seems to predict future academic performance better than success in student selection, so my research provides support for renewal of student selection to that direction, that matriculation examination will be exploited more than currently in student selection.

Objectives. School is an important context for adolescents’ growth and development, but quite little is known about their mutual social relations prevailing in school. In this paper, I tried to answer to this need by examining the relations between lower secondary school students from the perspectives of hanging out, school help and socio-digital participation. I investigate the structures of the networks, as well as, how the networks of genders differ from another and how different patterns of using technology are related to the networks. Moreover, I examine the networks of active and passive school helpers and the differences between schools. Methods. The data were collected from 7th graders (N = 192) from three lower secondary schools in Helsinki and concerned grade-level networks within school. The data were collected with a social network questionnaire and a questionnaire about socio-digital participation and digital skills. The methods included social network analysis (SNA) and statistical methods. With SNA I examined the structures of the networks and with statistical methods I classified participants according to level of school help and patterns of socio-digital participation and examine between group differences with t-test and ANOVA. Results and implications. The results showed that students had seven friends on average, and the hanging out networks were the biggest and densest of the examined networks. There were not gender differences regarding number of friends, but females had denser hangout networks than males. On average, school help was shared among six students. Providing help was common in general, and only few people did not take part in school help networks. Females sought and provided help more actively than males and had denser school help related networks. The closer analysis of school help groups showed that active school helpers (n = 74) had generally larger networks than passive school helpers (n = 118). On average, students took part in technology mediated activity with five students. There was no gender difference in the sizes of the networks of socio-digital participation, but again females had denser networks than males. There were differences between basic users (n = 102), gamers (n = 66) and creative participators (n = 20) mostly only in digital skills and help seeking so that creative participators had higher skills and they were especially active to seek help in their schoolwork. The visualizations of the networks, in turn, revealed that students’ networks were quite homophilic in terms of gender and student’s class. Overall, the study indicated that many adolescents have large networks in school and helping each other in schoolwork is common, but there are also big individual differences regarding within-school networks.

The purpose of this study is to analyse learning assessment of practical action skills goals in grades 7-9 in home economics education done by teachers. The study is based on theoretical home economics education goals and learning assessments of it. Home economics education is defined in national core curriculum, which includes specific goals based on the subject and general goals. Goals of practical action skills is one of the key categories in home economics education. Practical actions are, for example, skills to work with hands and skills to work safely. Assessment of learning as a term includes assessment of a pupil, which concerns the pupil, the teacher, and the school. Assessment of home economics education has been studied earlier by qualitative methods and it has been mostly based on formative assessments. This study focuses on analysing assessment of practical action skills goals by teachers. This study was done using qualitative methods. The data for the study was gathered during the spring of 2022. The data consists of eight interviews of home economics teachers. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. The transcribed data was analysed by theory-guided qualitative content methods. Results of this study indicate that the assessment of practical action skills goals of home economics is done by both teachers and pupils. Assessment happens constantly in every lesson. The aim of the assessment is skills, which are defined in the national core curriculum. The most used assessment methods include observing, which is supplemented with self and peer assessments, assessment discussions and practical tests. How the assessment data was documented was the most varied. Some of the teachers studied write down short memos, but the assessment is done mostly based on memory. Difficulties in assessment, for example, a lack of time and interpretation of curriculum makes the assessment harder. The conclusion of this study is that there should be more research on assessment of home economics education. There could be follow-up studies of how teachers could be supported and educated more so that the assessment would be more systematical and fluent. Home economics education has an important societal impact which creates the basis for education and development of education of teachers.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to describe and analyze the processes supporting learning new work tasks and to study employees wishes of how to support their learning. The research is located in the context of organizational change and studies the importance of social learning, communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation in learning new work tasks. The communities of practice theory has been utilized to study learning of new work tasks in previous studies as well. The research is based on the assumption that more experienced colleagues and work practice will support learning new work tasks. For the study, 14 individuals were interviewed from three different units of a particular organization. All the interviewees had had to learn new work tasks during organizational change. In the data collection a theme interview was used with a semi-structured structure. The interviews were conducted as individual interviews. The analysis of the data was done using theoretically directed content analysis. The results of the research were classified into these key categories: help gained from a more experienced person, asking from a more experienced person, learning by working with a more experienced person and learner's own influence on learning. Also, the results showed that learning in guidance training and training programs organized by sales representatives had supported learning, along with learning through practice. Internet was also found to be a source of information for some. Employees hoped for more guidance training, especially targeted training was hoped for and both time and investment were desired for learning new work tasks. Working with a more experienced colleague and learning through practice support the underlying assumptions and theories used in this study. Based on the results of the research, organizations could benefit from employees working with a more experienced colleague and by arranging different kind of training programs.

The specificity of children's behavior and children considered as special have been raised in school discussions as the cause of deteriorating learning outcomes, causing problems with teachers' time use and preventing teaching of the so called majority of children in primary school. Naming a child special affects the way and place of his/her teaching and therefore it is necessary to look at the definitions and discourses of special behavior. The purpose of the thesis was to find out how the behavioral problems and a child with a behavioral disorder named in many ways is constructed in expert articles and to examine the specificity of behavior using the social disability model of disability research. Sahlin's cultural model was used as a way to study the change in the discipline of special education together with changes outlined through paradigms. The study highlights the discourses special pedagogy experts have built on the specificity behavior of a child in the book series “Childrens’ Special Care and Education in Finland” over seven decades. These discourses are considered in the context of changes in special education and paradigms of special education. Critical discourse analysis was used as a research and analysis method in the study. The material of the study consisted of the texts of the thirteen editions of the book “Childrens’ Special Care and Education in Finland”, dealing with behavioural disorders. The textual material was analyzed by thematizing the medical, disability or feature related definitions of these texts, as well as the definitions of the social construction and creation of specificity according to the theoretical background of the research. After the thematizing, the selected text samples were analyzed for how the causes of specificity are localized and what is the child's position in them, and the discourses formed by these were named. These discourses were also examined in the context of changes in special education and the paradigms of special education. The research showed a hegemonic discourse based on psycho-medical interpretation, which at different times defined the child's position as a victim of the child's psychological and biological structure and as achild who is not mentally adaptive. Parallel and intertwined discourses were also built on a hegemonic discourse. The discourses of the specificity of behavior in the material reflected changes in the paradigms of special education and special pedagogy and the cultural reproduction of the category of specificity. According to the study, the discourse based on psycho- medical interpretation is the hegemonic discourse of the “Special Care and Education of the Child in Finland” book series, in which the child’s position is a child with internal pathology. The discourses of the material and the child's positions reflect changes in special education and in the paradigms of special education, as well as the cultural structure of the discipline.

Careers have changed from moving hierarchically within a single organization to moving in more diverse directions. These changes have proven to affect also the relationship between employee and employer. The psychological contract theory has been used in studies to understand the reciprocal relationship between the employee and the employer and what the parties expect from each other in the employment relationship. This Master Thesis is an assignment from Company X and its purpose is to study former and current plant engineers’ and employer representatives' expectations of a plant engineer’s work and career. According to the sponsoring company, the turnover rate for plant engineers is too high and for that reason the aim of this study is to understand the expectations of both parties. This study is implemented as a qualitative theme interview. I interviewed four current plant engineers, two former plant engineers, and five employer representatives. The data was analyzed using a theory-guided qualitative content analysis approach and psychological contract theory structures the analysis. The research findings indicate that an employee's work and career expectations are subjective and impacted by the messages they receive and interpret from the organization, social cues and individual predispositions. The turnover rate is heightened by the constant messages about the high turnover rate and that the job is positioned as a “fast track” to other jobs. Employer representatives' expectations about a plant engineer's work and career were partly contradictory. Considering psychological contract theory, the expectations should be clarified in order to communicate them consistently to the employees.

This research has its background on Knowledge Practices Laboratory (KP-Lab) research project. One of the aims of KP-Lab is to create virtual and technological tools to support the interventionist who use the Change Laboratory method as a developmental tool. In this research I studied the interventionists' mirror material practices which are context and theory bound and for that reason they pose challenges on the development of new tools. I focused on the gathering and working on the mirror material. The purpose of this study was to find out what kind of user knowledge does the research on narratives of mirror material practices in Change Laboratory provide to the developers of virtual tools? I answered this question by three sub questions: 1. What kind of mirror material the interventionists gather and analyze in different phases of developmental cycle of Change Laboratory project? 2. What kind of knowledge the different mirror materials contain and how is the knowledge transformed when the mirror material is analyzed and worked on? 3. What kind of tools the interventionists use and create when gathering and working on the mirror material? What wishes do the interventionists have on tools? I interviewed five interventionists in four different projects. I created narratives from the document supported interviews. Then I analyzed the narratives in three steps: first I placed the mirror materials in the developmental cycle. Secondly, I analyzed the mirror materials by placing them in a table by the form of the knowledge. Thirdly, I examined the tools the interventionists had used and created and what wishes they had on virtual tools. This research showed that different user groups of Change Laboratory method have different needs. All interventionists transform knowledge from one form to another so they seem to need especially tools by which they can analyze and transform knowledge. It seems that standardized model of gathering and analysing mirror material is not meaningful because mirror material is constructed in accordance with the object developed. This research also shows that the mirror material has a social function. This finding should be also noted when developing virtual tools together with actual users.

Introduction. History teaching, according to the The Finnish Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2014), should be based upon five elements of historical thinking. Thus pupil assessment should address what pupils have learnt about chronology, historical empathy, change and continuity, cause and consequence, reading and interpretation of both primary and secondary sources. Nonetheless, books and other materials used in history lessons mostly still rely on substance knowledge. There is some evidence to suggest that the assessment done by teachers might encourage pupils to memorize facts rather than focus on the skills of historical thinking. It is the aim of this study to create and develop assessment material which gives teachers relevant information about their pupils' progress in historical thinking. The assessment task is meant for pupils in grade 6 and is designed to be aligned with the core curriculum. There are assessment criteria as well to ensure that the marking conducted by teachers could be as reliable as possible. Methodology. This study followed the principles of a design-based research. An artefact, comprising a document-based assessment task and assessment instructions for the teacher, was created. This one-hour-task was then tested in a class of 20 pupils. Two pupils were chosen to perform the task through think-aloud-method while the rest (18) gave written answers. The purpose of using a think aloud interview was to generate as much information as possible about the cognitive processes that a pupil goes through while reading the sources and answering the questions. The assessment task was then re-designed based on the answers given by the pupils. The final version of the task was tested again in another class of 21 pupils. The assessment criteria were re-designed based on the second testing. In order to gain information about the reliability of the task, a teacher was asked to assess the open ended questions using the assessment instructions. Conclusions. Testing the artefact for the first time it became evident that certain concepts used in the task, such as reliability of sources, were too difficult for the pupils. In addition, the phrasing of some questions was unclear, which resulted in misunderstandings. In the re-designed version of the artefact these issues were addressed and the problems did not re-occur in the second testing. It seems that the task was not too exhausting as 75 percent of all the the pupils answered an extra question as well. Most pupils were able to use the sources given in the task and base their answers on them. However, the sources were used by many for information and not for evidence. Thus evidence-based conclusions were rare. Critical evaluation of the primary and secondary sources was not common among the pupils.