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Finnish teachers’ workload has been high for a long time and because of the Covid- 19 pandemic their workload has further grown (Eskonen, 2018; FSL, 2019; Korkeakivi, 2018; Kröger, 2020; OAJ, 2018a; OAJ, 2018b; OAJ, 2020; Råholm, 2020). Which means that the Finnish teachers’ heavy workload is an issue that needs to be solved. Previous studies have shown that co- teaching can have a positive impact on teachers’ workload (Ahtiainen et al., 2011, s. 36–37; Pulkkinen & Rytivaara, 2015, s. 9; Walther-Thomas, 1997, s. 401). Therefore, the aim of this study is to form an understanding of teachers’ experiences of co- teaching and its impact on their workload in basic education. The participants of the study consisted of 24 teachers in basic education in Swedish speaking schools in Finland. The data collection was done through qualitative surveys in an electronic format. The data was analyzed by using thematic analysis. The teachers in the study experienced that they, through the co- teaching partnership, had more social support, could share their work responsibilities and learn from each other. In addition to this, the participants experienced that they had better opportunities to form an inclusive and differentiated classroom through co-teaching. Therefore, co- teaching can lessen teachers’ workload. Although, the participants of the study also experienced lack of resources, as well as conflicts and an unfair work distribution in the co-teaching partnership. Through this, co- teaching can also lead to a greater workload. Lastly, the teachers in the study also experienced that resources, good collaboration and positive attitudes towards co-teaching promotes the use of co- teaching. Consequently, lack of recourses, poor collaboration and negative attitudes hinders the use of successful co- teaching. However, some teachers experienced that there is nothing that hinders the use of co- teaching.

Objectives. In primary education the pupils form a basis for their writing skills. By assessing pupils' writing skills the teacher gathers information about the development of their skills and notices possible learning disabilities. The assessment of writing skills requires both knowledge of different evaluation methods and the phonological system in Finnish language. The purpose of this study is to analyze the pupils' writing skills and different assessment methods that help the teacher in writing evaluation. The pupils' writing skills are viewed from spelling, composing and writing motivation's point of view. Methods. The research material consists of dictation exercises, written stories and writing motivation self-assessments of 19 pupils. Dictation exercises measured the spelling skills of pupils and they were written in the spring of the first grade and the autumn of the second grade. Dictation exercises were analyzed with two different methods: mistake analysis and word-structure analysis. Information of pupils spelling skills' development was gathered by comparing their performance in autumn's dictation exercise to spring's dictation. Composing skills were measured with stories that the pupils wrote. Both the stories and the writing motivation's self-assessment were made in the autumn of the second grade. Composing skills were analyzed according to assessment criteria formed for this study. Results. The spelling skill of most of the pupils had developed from the first grade's spring to the second grade's autumn. The spelling skills of half of the pupils (N=9) had improved significantly. The composing skills of the pupils varied largely. Strongest part of the pupils' composing skill was following instructions and the weakest part was the use of versatile vocabulary and clause structures. The girls outdid the boys in all segments of their composing skills. For most pupils their spelling skill reflected their composing skill: good spellers were also good story writers. The relation between writing motivation and general writing skill was not this simple: some pupils (N=5) writing motivation was much higher than what would have been expected based on their writing skills.

Gender is a culturally, socially and personally significant category which is produced, repeated and reformed constantly in different social and cultural contexts. Biography is a literary genre, in which the main character is often presented in the frame of hero story. Biographies convey different time and place dependent teachings and values to their readers – including gender. The aim of this study was to find out in which ways the heroism of today is built and simultaneously consider in which ways heroism is gendered. In other words how through discourses the behaviors and actions which guide norms are replicated, violated and rebuilt through stories. The study also examined how gender diversity is taken into account in the stories. Biographical literature aimed at children is a popular genre nowadays, but it has not been studied before. Biographies and their gendered nature are also important to be studied from the perspective of literary education because in accordance with the national core curriculum for basic education (POPS 2014), literature teaching should deal with diverse texts in a gender-conscious manner. The research data consisted of three biographical books in the Sankaritarinoita -book series (Hero Stories) published during the 2017–2019. There were total of 146 stories in the books. The research materials were themed and the themes were quantitatively compared. The heroism and gender norms of the stories were qualitatively explored through critical discourse analysis. The data found five discourses I named after their thematic focus: violators of gendered behavioral patterns, violators of gender expression, breakers of professional segregation, breakers of the heterofamily ideal and crossers of the gender boundary. Girls’ heroism was built from emacipatory goals, the need for which was justified in the stories of female heroines dealing with the history of gender equality and the segregation of work life. Boys’ heroism was built on sensibility and eccentricity that rose in the stories of male heroes dealing with emotional skills and the violation of gender norms. The gender minorities were in a marginal position (4 %) in the stories. Overall, themes related to the diversity of gender and sexuality were brought up in only a few hero stories.

The target of this research was to find out experience of students in vocational education concerning early school leaving among students who has dropped out. Other target was to find out underlying reasons for early leaving the school. I also was interested in life stories and current life situation of those early school leavers. Drop out phenomenon has perceived as a problem in terms of the waist of appropriations and the delay in the transition from school to working life. Early school leaving in secondary education has considered as remarkable risk of eventual exclusion. Previous studies show that the risk to become school dropout already arises during primary school. Academic success and school satisfaction in primary school has a great effect on one's studies and how much they enjoy to study in that school. Also puberty, home conditions in general and motivation have an impact on eventual school dropout. The research questions were: What kind of experience lead to student's decision to quit studies in Ypäjä Hevosopisto? How did the students experience dropping out? What were the reasons why a student applied for studies in Ypäjä Hevosopisto? What is the life situation of each student like nowadays? This study was a case study with three drop outs. I interviewed every dropout student separately by thematic interview. The cases had started their studies after year 2010 in Ypäjän Hevosopisto and then, eventually, dropped out. Everybody studied in triple decree. I also interviewed the current study advisor in Ypäjä Hevosopisto in order to get another viewpoint. First I transcribed all interviews and then analyzed them by using theory based content analysis. I categorized the answers first to upper and then to subordinate concepts. The result of the study was that any case was not dropping due to factors that appeared in earlier studies. All the cases were students with success and high motivation. The most important reason for dropping out was some sad and unexpected coincidence. Two students quitted because of injuries and one student was distressed due to life in the student dormitory.

According to some models of working memory, verbal and spatial material is processed in separate systems. However, there are task environments, such as multimedia, which typically contains both verbal and spatial material. An interesting question is how these two separate systems co-operate during the use of multimedia. In this experiment, recall of words and locations was studied. Twelve participants were presented with five different conditions, of which two were verbal, two were spatial and one was a combined task. The verbal tasks were serial recall of nine words. The words were either presented in the center of the screen or in different spatial locations. The spatial task was a computerized version of the Corsi Blocks Task, in which serial recall of nine spatial locations was required. The locations were marked with a string of the letter “X”, or with a word. In the combined task participants had to recall a series of nine words and their spatial locations in the correct order. The results showed that words were recalled equally well whether presented in the center of the screen, or in different spatial locations or whether recall of their spatial locations was required. On the contrary, recall of the spatial locations was impaired if verbal material had to be recalled simultaneously. These results imply that verbal and spatial materials are processed separately and the maintenance of spatial material is more sensitive to disruption than the maintenance of verbal material. The research method and the results can be applied when navigation in web-based environments is studied. In complex web-based environments, too heavy a load on the user’s working memory may cause spatial confusion, which leads to the problem of getting lost in the web-based environment.

Goals. The aim of the study is to find ways to support the execution of complete craft process by examining craft teachers' understandings of the concept of complete craft process and their ways to put it into practice in craft teaching. To find these ways and to assimilate the concept of complete craft process is topical issue at the moment, because craft teaching should instruct pupils to master the complete craft process according to the aims in the becoming Finnish National Curriculum (POPS 2014). Methodology. The study is qualitative case study. It was implemented by interviewing six craft teachers, which had worked in secondary school. The themes in this focused interview were structured on the strength of the previous surveys, which have defined the concept of complete craft process and suggested ways to support the phases of the complete craft process. These definitions and ways instructed also the content analysis of the transcribed data. There were also used the ways of phenomenology analysis in the examining of teachers' understandings. Results and conclusions. The teachers defined the complete craft process as pupil-oriented way of making crafts. In their opinion the phases of creation, design, making and reflection can be executed in the same time and repeated during the craft process. The phases can also get different kind of emphasis. Even though all interviewed teachers told a lot of reasons for the execution of complete craft process from the view of learning, some of them found reasons for craft teaching partially for example in teaching craft techniques. The teachers' ways of support the phases of complete craft process surrounded the themes of pupil-orientation, interactive learning, personal instructing and conceptualization of the complete craft process by documenting the phases. The supporting ways of execution of complete craft process can be divided to teacher's skills, attitudes ja pedagogic decisions. Pupil-oriented teaching requires that teacher has knowledge about pupils and openness for pupils' ideas. The teaching should also be done according to the pupils' skills. The assignments should instruct pupils to master the complete craft process within the limits of the using resources. The formulating of this kind of assignments presumes that teacher acquires the concept of complete craft process as the foundation of craft teaching and motivates pupils by engaging and encouraging them in the craft process.

This study is a part of Learning to be (L2B) project evaluation. L2B project is Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and it is providing practices and methodologies for assessing social emotional and health (SHE) skills at schools. This study is concentrated on the project’s pre-test questionnaire’s section that was used to measure students’ social emotional competence (SEC). The instrument that was used to measure students’ SEC, was the Social and Emotional Competence Questionnaire (SECQ), that is based on the CASEL (as cited in Zhou & Ee, 2012, p. 28) model of social emotional learning (SEL). In the CASEL (2019) model, SEL is used to improve students’ SEC. In a previous study, the SECQ meter has been noticed to be potential instrument to measure SEC, but a follow up research with more versatile sample of respondents from various cultural backgrounds is needed, as well as examining the validity of the meter (Zhou & Ee, 2012). This study is responding to these needs as Learning to be project is examining students’ SEC in five European countries. Additionally, previous study has shown, that the SECQ might not function as well with younger as with older students (Zhou & Ee, 2012). Therefore, in this study, the students’ perceptions of their SEC will be compared between younger and older students. The functionality of the SECQ in both age groups will also be compared. The purpose of this study was to examine, how the students participating in L2B project perceived their SEC in the pre-test phase of the project, how well did the SECQ measure SEC, were there any differences between younger and older students in perceptions of their SEC and whether the SECQ functioned equally in both age groups. In L2B the data was collected from nearly 1500 students aged 8–15 from 20 different schools from each of the five participating countries. In SECQ students responded on a scale 1–6 (1 = completely false, 6 = completely true) to claims describing good social emotional skills. From the descriptive statistics of the SECQ data, conclusions about students’ perceptions of their SEC were made. With the same data, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to investigate the functionality of the SECQ and if the different subscales factored complying with an original scale. To compare different age groups, the students were divided into two groups: aged 8–11 and aged 12–15. The perceptions of students’ SEC in these two age groups were compared with independent-samples testing and the functionality of the SECQ with reliability analyses by comparing the SECQ data’s Cronbach’s alpha (α) values in different age groups. In the pre-test phase of L2B project, the students perceived their SEC to be fairly good on average. Consequently, there still is room for improving students’ SEC and it is possible to expect, that the SEL intervention in L2B project will improve students’ SEC. In this study, the SECQ turned out to function quite well and the factoring did comply mostly with the original scale. The result indicates that the SECQ can be used as a valid instrument for measuring SEC. Younger and older students seemed to have somewhat differing perceptions of their SEC, but in this study, it is left unclear, whether the differences were due to the age per se or merely the large sample size. This should be examined with more versatile and accurate methods. The functionality of SECQ measure seemed also to have differences between age groups, in order that the SECQ seemed to function slightly poorer with younger than with older students. Altogether, the measure turned out to be functionable for examining SEC, regardless of the respondents’ age.

The aim of this study is to give a more nuanced understanding about neuroatypical youth and possible challenges attending school. There is little knowledge about the school situation and SAPs for neuropsychiatric conditions, and few empirical studies on the additive effects of holding several neuropsychiatric diagnoses, or a diagnosis in combination with other symptoms (e.g. anxiety, depression). The bio-ecological and multi-level framework of factors linked to school absence, which is an application of Bronfenbrenner´s bioecological systems model, has been used in this study. The SAPs are classified according to types: school refusal, truancy, school exclusion and school withdrawal. The cutoff for when the SAP is problematic is different in different countries. In this study we used, the commonly used measure, missing over 10 % of school classes for persistent absence. Guardians of 789 youth (mean age 12 years, 68% boys) with neuropsychiatric challenges reported school non-attendance and reasons for this (the School Non-Attendance ChecKlist SNACK) through an online survey. Most of the children in the sample had multiple diagnosis (45 %, N=356). The groups with only one diagnosis were the ADHD 32% (N=228), Autism 11 % (N=81), Sensory hypersensitivity 2% (N=15) and Tourette .6% (N=5). During the measurement period the youth on average missed 4 school days. 82 % of the sample had current or prior SAP and the problems were for most of the youth onset before 7th grade. Persistent absence (over 10 % absence) occurred in 42.8 % of the sample. The most common reason for absence was non-problematic absenteeism (46%). School refusal was the most common of the four non-attendance types (36 %). Truancy (3%) was not likely for this group of students. SAPs were most likely for youth with ASD and multiple diagnosis. Overall, the situation for students with more than one neuropsychiatric diagnosis was most challenging with most individuals suffering from anxiety and/or depression, sleeping difficulties, learning disability and behavioral difficulties. The relationships in school with teachers and peers were often challenging. The situation was most worrying for the autistic and multiple diagnosis groups, these youth more often than the other groups are lacking friends. More than half of the group had now or before been bullied in school or during free time. Findings suggested that the school situation for neuroatypical youth is challenging.

Aim. The aim of the study was to examine teacher’s perceptions of a smooth transition from pre-school to school during the covid-19 pandemic. The aim was also to examine especially how the cooperation between the pre-school and school has been during the pandemic. Previous research has shown that the transition from pre-school to school is a very critical and vulnerable stage in a child’s life. At the same time we know that everyday life has been very different due to the pandemic. In addition, the ecological theory highlights that the surrounding environment is meaningful for the child’s experience of the transition. Previous research about cross-sectoral relationships in turn illustrate the importance of the cooperation and connections between pre-school and school. This study therefore examines teachers perceptions of working towards a smooth transition from pre-school to grade one during the covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the study examines teachers perceptions of the cooperation between the pre-school and school concerning the transition, during the covid-19 pandemic. Methods. The data has been collected with semi structured interviews with five teachers, two pre-school teachers and three classroom teachers. The interviews have been analyzed by a thematic model. Results and conclusions. The perceptions of the transition are many and varying. Some experience that the changes and challenges haven’t been so vast, when others express that the pandemic has had an impact. Five themes were identified as significant for the smoothness of the transition. It appears that the role of the school and the contact with the caregivers have suffered the most due to the pandemic. The teachers however seem to have a more similar view regarding perceptions about the cooperation. Four themes were identified as significant. There has been less cooperation and the physical restrictions have especially had an impact on the joint activities with the children. By using alternative working methods the teachers have tried to compensate the loss. The cooperation between the staff has been quite similar. The results confirms the ecological perspective on transitions. The fact that it is work on many levels that is required for a successful transition has perhaps become clearer during the pandemic, when these different structures have been restricted and challenged in different ways.

In 2019 the new Upper Secondary School Act (714/2018) entered into force as a part of a larger upper secondary school reform. The Upper Secondary School Act obliges every upper secondary school to organize special education for all students who have challenges in learning. It was volyntary to organize special education before the reform, and special education was offered mainly in large cities. The purpose of this thesis is to describe the job description of special education teacher in upper secondary school and potential job description in the future. There is only a little previous research on special education in upper secondary schools. This thesis was conducted as a qualitative study. The material consisted of interviews with four special education teachers. At the time of the interview, the interviewees worked in upper secondary schools. The interviews were conducted as semi-structured thematic interviews and theory-driven content analysis was selected as the method of analysis. According to the results the job description of a special education teacher in upper secondary school can be divided into three themes which are student work, cooperation and developmental work. Work emphasizes individual work with students, and testing for difficulties in reading takes a lot of time. Cooperation is closest with student counsellor. Consultation is mostly informal (conversations in the corridors for example). Acting as a special education teacher in the upper secondary school requires continuous additional training. Encounters with students and the freedom to plan one’s schedule bring a lot of joy. Challenges encountered at work include difficulties in scheduling, insufficient resources and digitalization. The themes of the job will most likely remain fairly similar in the future. Teaching will change from individual work to more collaborative work. The cooperation is probably closer with all the personnel of the school. More resources for special education in all upper secondary schools in Finland is hoped. Special education teachers will hopefully have the opportunity to act as promoters of the general well-being of students. Materials should also be in print instead of digital materials.