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Social media and its online communities and various platforms are actively used by hobby craft makers. Previous research has shown, that social media offers its users a place to meet people with similar intrests, an opportunity to share and receive information, and to showcase and receive feedback on their own crafts. Social media is also a place to find new inspiration ja ideas for future craft projects and serves as a virtual diary. The aim of this study was to find out how sewing-focused Facebook groups are used as part of the different stages of the sewing craft process; creating ideas, planning, makeing and evaluation, what kind of information, help or feedback is received from Facebook groups, and how this information is used in the sewing hobby. I was also interested in what kind of things is find to be meaningful in Facebook sewing groups. My research questions are 1) How are sewing-themed Facebook groups used at different stages of the sewing process, and 2) What issues group members find to be important in Facebook sewing groups. The data was collect througe semi-structural online survey, that included a call for volunteers to write about their experiences of how they use facebook groups during their sewing craft process. A link to the survey was shared in five Finnish Facebook sewing groups. There were 73 respondents. The writings were analyzed qualitatively, by means of content analysis. According to the research results, the groups are utilized in different ways in different stages of the sewing process, but the aims behind these different ways are very similar between the different stages: The groups are utilized to support progress in craft process, increase knowledge and as a helpt to clarify vision. In addition, a deliberate retrieval of feedback is identifiable in the evaluation phase. In the sewing groups, it was find to be importat to find new ideas and inspiration, learn new skills and develop oneself, seek information, meet people with similar intrests, and share information and help others.

Alcohol use during pregnancy might have serious consequences. Alcohol causes variable amount of damages to the growing fetus. The ones that are most damaged can be deeply handicapped, milder exposure might cause different kinds of cognitive problems. The whole spectrum caused by alcohol use during pregnancy is called FASD (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder). The purpose of this study is to describe the process of diagnosing individuals who are exposed to alcohol in uterus, their rehabilitation and upcoming challenges. The aim was also to determine what happens if the diagnosis is not right or if the individual doesn't get diagnosed at all. The research was made as a literature review. Data was collected manually by using several different databases. After screening and processing the material 9 articles and 11 books were included to the research. The method of analysis in use was inductive content analysis. The endeavour was to describe all the changes, conditions, functions and evolution that involve to this phenomenon. The research indicated that making a diagnosis under the FASD-umbrella was challenging. Various methods of diagnosing, certification of alcohol use during pregnancy and individualised symptoms complicated the process. Often a more socially acceptable diagnose ADHD was given instead of FAS. It increased the possibility of secondary symptoms to appear. When diagnosis FAS was given, the course of life often became challenging. Actions by child welfare, rehabilitation and support measures dominated persons life even in adulthood. Early diagnosis and custody appeared to be most relevant factors in improving the quality of life for individuals exposed to alcohol in uterus.

Horse enthusiasts have insufficient knowledge about horse behaviour and welfare (BW) and learning and human-horse communication (LC), which poses a risk for both human safety and horse welfare. The main objective of this study was to investigate why riding school pupils participate or do not participate in non-riding education in BW and LC, using Self-determination theory (SDT). SDT posits that the quality of motivation is related to the individual’s basic psychological needs. A convenience sample of 568 riding school pupils from Finland and Sweden completed an online questionnaire. The results show that forty percent of the riding schools offered education in BW, and thirty-two in LC. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents had participated in education in BW, and twenty-five in LC at the riding school. The respondents were autonomously motivated to participate in education, i.e., they would participate because it is interesting and personally important. Perceived needs satisfaction at the riding school predicted autonomous motivation to participate. Education was offered to a greater extent in Swedish riding schools and Swedish participants participated more, experienced more autonomous motivation, and relatedness and competence satisfaction. To our knowledge, this study is the first to explore riding school pupils’ motivation towards non-riding education.

Aims. There is a growing body of research indicating that childhood experiences interact with genetic vulnerabilities in the development of depression. Parent-child relationship quality has been shown to have a critical role in the development of depression later in life. Moreover, research has shown that the quality of parenting can also have long-term and persistent effects on various neurobiological systems, such as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Indeed, the impaired function of HPA axis has been the most consistently found association with depression. This makes genes related to HPA axis regulation of particular interest to researchers. One possible candidate gene is FK506 binding protein 51 (FKBP5) gene, which has been shown to interact with adverse childhood experiences in predicting future risk of depression. This study examines whether perceived quality of parent-child relationship predicts depressive symptoms in adulthood and whether this association is moderated by the FKBP5 polymorphisms. Methods. This study is part of The Helsinki Birth Cohort Study. Total of 1 667 subjects completed a psychological questionnaire in 2004, including the Beck Depression Inventory (21 item, BDI) and the Parental Bonding Instrument (25 item, PBI). This study utilised the three factor structure of PBI; care, denial of psychological autonomy and encouragement of behavioral freedom, which were measured separately for mother and father. The study looked at three FKBP5 gene polymorphisms: rs1360780, rs9394309 and rs9470080 extracted from the genome-wide data genotyped with modified Illumina 610k array. The study utilised two models 1 and 2; model 1 adjusted for age and gender and additionally model 2 adjusted for childhood and adulthood socioeconomic status (SES) as well as separation experiences. Results and conclusions. As hypothesised and in line with previous studies the quality of parenting predicted depressive symptoms in adulthood. Participants, who perceived having received more care and encouragement of behavioral freedom reported fewer depressive symptoms. Whereas denial of psychological autonomy resulted in reporting more depressive symptoms. None of the polymorphisms predicted depressive symptoms. More importantly, this is the first study to show that FKBP5 polymorphisms modify the relationship between perceived mother-child relationship and depressive symptoms. Among participants with two minor alleles, perceived lack of maternal care and maternal denial of psychological autonomy were most strongly associated with more depressive symptoms. Participants with one minor allele had similar results. Whereas among participants with two major alleles, perceived parenting had a smaller effect on the amount of depressive symptoms. These findings indicate that in addition to adverse experiences and traumas, also deficiencies in parenting can predispose to depression depending on the amount of minor alleles in FKBP5 polymorphisms.

Multilingualism and multiculturalism are very common phenomena in the global world of today. People move into other countries and integrate in other cultures more than ever before. This Master's Thesis is a qualitative study on how multilingual people describe their linguistic and cultural identity and how it is to be a minority within the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. The aim of this study is to increase the knowledge and understanding on people who represent a linguistic minority in the Swedish-speaking linguistic minority in Finland and how they describe their linguistic and cultural identity. The scientific approach of the study is phenomenological, which means that the study aims to describe the phenomenon of multilingualism, multiculturalism and integration based on informants' subjective experiences. Nine people were interviewed for this study, and the collected data were analysed using content analysis. All nine informants were living in the capital area of Finland when the interviews were done, but are born in another country. The results of this study demonstrate the significance of language and culture for a person's identity. The linguistic and cultural identities form during the entire course of life and can be seen as a lifelong process.

Aim. According to the law, every finish child has the right to a safe school environment. Research indicates that schools play a vital role in preventing cyberbullying. For efficient prevention of cyberbullying in schools, schools need for example a carefully planned anti-bullying policies with correct definitions of both bullying and cyberbullying. The plans should also contain methods for prevention and intervention. The supply of research on cyberbullying in elementary schools is limited, and thus this study will examine the guidelines elementary schools have against cyberbullying, how schools actively are preventing cyberbullying and how school personnel perceive the current work done against cyberbullying. Methods. The data for this study was collected qualitatively, through semi-structured interviews with a phenomenographic research approach. The seven interviewees who participated consisted of principals, school counsellors and class teachers in two Swedish speaking schools. The data was analysed using a thematic analysis in the program Atlas.ti 8. Results and conclusions. The results of this study shows that the schools do not have an extensive definition of cyberbullying nor have they included preventive measures against cyberbullying in their anti-bullying policies. The schools do however prevent cyberbullying for example through scheduled discussions with the pupils. According to the participants the schools work against cyberbullying works relatively well. The majority of the participants thought that the schools could have clearer and more comprehensive guidelines against cyberbullying in their policies. The schools anti-bullying policies do not include how the schools will act in case cyberbullying occurs outside school but among the schools pupils. Based on the results the schools could review their policies and clarify the responsibility among school personnel. This would lead to a more consistent approach and have long-lasting effects.

The Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014 stresses the role of formative assessment in student assessment in basic education. The national curriculum offers some guidelines for how to work with formative assessment, but a lot is left unsaid. The aim of this thesis was to describe how teachers in secondary school view formative assessment and how they experience working with it. The research questions were; 1. What kind of profit do subject teachers feel the formative assessment has? 2. Which methods do subject teachers use in working with formative assessment and how do they experience this work? 3. Which challenges do subject teachers experience in connection to formative assessment? A qualitative research approach was used in this study and the data material was collected through semi-structured research interviews with eight subject teachers working in secondary school. The data sample was a selective one, consisting of teachers that felt that they were to some level working with formative assessment, even if the new national curriculum was not yet put in to effect in secondary school when the material was collected (spring 2017). The data material was analyzed trough content analysis. The results showed that subject teachers considered the profit of formative assessment to have various aspects, they felt that formative assessment functioned as a support tool for instruction and as a way to motivate and activate students. Formative assessment functioned as a support for instruction in providing the teacher with information about the students' progress and offering the students more feedback and there for helping them perform better. Working with formative assessment was also seen as a chance to motivate students by steering the instruction towards their interest and skills and making sure that everybody received some sort of positive feedback. The teachers also felt that one aim for formative assessment was to activate students and make them understand and take responsibility for their learning. All teachers had worked with self- and peer assessment as methods for formative assessment. They considered peer assessment to be easier to work with because it was easier for the students to give feedback on somebody else's work than to evaluate their own. Both self- and peer assessment required that the students had some sort of understanding of the criteria for the task they were supposed to give feedback on. The teachers had also worked on making learning intensions and criteria more explicit. This work was appreciated by both teachers and students but the challenge was to find enough time, especially when this required planning together with colleagues. Another method for working with formative assessment was discussing with the students, the discussions could be between teacher and student or a classroom dialog. The teachers experienced general challenges in working with formative assessment to be a lack of time and the need to flexible as a teacher.

The objective of this research was to describe autoethnographically the intecration points on my personal history´s narrative identities. Material comprises of work plans and work diaries, and the resulting artworks. The scope of the study reference frame was set around narrative identity consepts, integrated with the narrative identity of personality psychologist Dan McAdams (1995) and narrative identity theories of hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1992). The reference frame concerning the craft science was practice-led research where artist acts as researcher of his/her own work. Maarit Mäkelä´s dessertation (2003) ” Memories on Clay” has influenced this work. Mäkelä studied representations of subjective creating process and gender, and verbally described the creative process and the resulting artworks. Research questions: 1. How integration points of my personal history´s narrative identity are materializing into textile art? What kind of process it is? 2. How this research process is shaping my narrative identity? Methods The research material was composed of autoethnographical processing of my personal history´s narrative identity integration points. The work plans and work diaries material comprised 85 pages and included photographs from different stages of the process. During my research process, I created five piece of textile art based on the fragments of my personal narrative identity. I interpreted and analysed the process in the course of it (reflection-in-action) and retrospectively (reflection-on-action) applying to the practice-led research. Results and conclusuions The outcome of this study were five textile art works.

The aim of the study was to investigate ideas and idea generation of designers in free improvisation tasks at conceptual level in the experiment, planned primarily for the physiological and neurological measurements. My study was a part of the multidisciplinary research project Handling Mind: Embodiment, Creativity and Design which concentrated on studying relations between mind, body and materials combining the fields of psychology, neuroscience and creativity. The neurological study did not reveal what and how participants felt, thought and experienced during the experiment which was the main interest in my study. Previous research has focused on investigating various fields of the design process, as well as the ideation phase, but investigating idea generation in the context of neuroscientific research is a new and interesting chance for the research. The ideation phase represents an iterative and vibrant nature of the design process. Previous studies have brought out the meaning of available sources of inspiration, and designers' competence to adapt the essential parts of the original sources and transform them into design outputs regarding the aspects of novelty and functionality. Therefore, I developed my research questions concerning ideas and idea development in freely improvising tasks in a new design situation. The 30 participants participated in the study as volunteers from the School of Art, Design and Architecture in Aalto University from November 2014 to March 2015. They performed copying, designing or free improvising tasks by drawing or forming clay. I organized the Stimulated Recall (SR) interviews with my colleague to collect data. We selected the 15 out of 30 interviews to represent the data in our studies. I analyzed the transcript data by qualitative content analysis: the classification scheme was both data and theory driven. The analysis revealed that designers had different ideas emerging from internal stimuli, for example, from their mental library or they were impressed by external stimuli, for instance, material, tools and cup images from the experiment. The experiment represented an external design constraint: it confined the problem space and narrowed down the alternative solutions. Designers had concrete and abstract ideas, but also the abstractions of ideas were developed. They relied on familiar topic choices but also were capable of creating analogies. Even this minimalistic design experiment revealed that designers are able to use their mental sources of inspiration and capable of picking profitable stimuli from their surroundings in new and uncertain situations for adapting and developing ideas further. Designers sought meaning for their sketching and experimenting as well.

Objectives. The schooling system is in great turmoil in Finland at the moment. More effective knowledge creation and sharing among teachers are needed in order to develop the Finnish schooling system and to increase the study results of the students. Previous literature agrees that sharing and acquiring knowledge function as precondition for innovation and value creation in organizational and network contexts and thus makes knowledge vital for contemporary organizations. The transition between an individual's and a collective's knowledge creation, however, has not been widely studied. This study explores the development of a new "Compass Model for Shared Pedagogical Leadership in an activity-theoretical Change Laboratory intervention in the Finnish Viikki Teacher Training School from a knowledge creation perspective. The thesis examines how the transition from individually held knowledge of teaching transform into collective knowledge and a collaborative model of practicing. Further, it combines knowledge creation literature with the theory of expansive learning, which has not yet been done in detail. Methods. The interventionist and ethnographic methodology of the study draws on theoretical concepts, models, and methods from Cultural Historical Activity Theory and from the studies of individual and collective knowledge creation. The data analysed in this study consisted of six meetings carried out in the Viikki Teacher Training School by using the Change Laboratory method. The methodology of the study consists of a thematic analysis and analysis of transitions in knowledge creation during the Change Laboratory process. The analysis of transitions is a new qualitative method developed for this study based on findings in the data. Results and conclusions. The study shows that the knowledge creation of the teachers transitioned on a rough timeline from individually held knowledge of teaching to collaborative practice through multiple small cycles of expansive learning and social processes of knowledge building. Decrease in organizational tensions, creation of shared understanding and increased collaboration enabled the transition of knowledge creation from individual to collective. The collectively created model for shared pedagogical leadership promoted collaboration.