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Goals. The aim of the study was to determine whether the classteachers’ relatedness was protectively associated with burnout during the phases of the corona pandemic. The aim was to examine whether the association between classteachers' relatedness and burnout varied according to the way of working or the stages of a corona pandemic. Relatedness was examined through the communal dimension of the self-determination theory. Relatedness was examined through the dimensions of satisfaction and frustration. Classteachers’ relatedness is associated with lower levels of burnout. The corona pandemic has brought new challenges and demands to teaching example new learning environments. The uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and the adaptation to new ways of working have increased the workload of classteachers. It is important to look at the links between relatedness, burnout, and way of working in order to protect classteachers’ well-being even in exceptional times. Methods. The data (N = 1286) was collected in cooperation with the OAJ at three measurement times in spring 2020, autumn 2020, and spring of 2021. Measurement times examined the different phases of the corona pandemic. Teachers filled out a questionnaire that measured relatedness, burnout, and way of working. Remote work percentage was divided into ways of working, which were classified as remote work, hybrid work, and face-to-face work. The relationship between relatedness and burnout was examined using hierarchical regression analysis. In addition, the interaction terms examined whether there was a variation according to the way of working or the phases of the corona pandemic. Results and conclusion. The relationship between classteachers' relatedness and burnout was protective during the corona pandemic. In addition, there was variation in the relationship between relatedness and burnout according to the way of working and the different stages of the corona pandemic. Hybrid work was associated with greater level of exhaustion than face-to-face work. In the spring of 2021, classteachers with high levels of relatedness satisfaction expected less exhaustion than in spring 2020. According to previous studies, the study confirms the importance of relatedness in protecting classteachers' from burnout. It would be important to continue to examine the effects of the corona pandemic on the well-being of teachers to better safeguard the well-being of teachers in similar exceptional times in the future.

The purpose of this study was to find the methods of co-teaching between a craft teacher and a class teacher and the benefits and challenges for joint planning and evaluation. Co-teaching is increasing all the time, and with each use, the school wants the teacher to be ready for co-teaching with another teacher. According to the curriculum (Pops 2014), school operations should be multidisciplinary and, in accordance with the students' interests, teaching should be communal. The co-teaching of a classroom teacher and a craft teacher has not been researched terribly yet, I see that a pilot study like this is important so that the possibility of different kinds of joint work can be seen as part of everyday school life. Previous studies related to co-teaching have shown that co-teaching diversifies planning and eases the teacher's workload in challenging conditions. Studies have also shown that the strengths of both teachers add to the teaching, which would not be there when teaching alone. Teachers can share responsibility for teaching according to their own strengths. Two teachers are participating in my research, one was a craft teacher, and the other was a class teacher, a craft teacher, who work as co-teachers in the elementary school in Uusimaa in the school year 2021-2022. The interview was conducted remotely in early 2022. The interviewees were interviewed together, and they answered together. The small amount of data is justified by the pilot nature of the study. The research showed that co-teaching is perceived as a way of working as a teacher that makes one's own work easier. In particular, the workload related to planning work and evaluation was eased by working together. More insight into issues supported in their tasks both in planning and in evaluating challenging student situations. The cooperation between the classroom teacher and the craft teacher is seen as a fact and as a way of working that eases the teacher's workload. The support of a colleague and solving the issue together increases the teacher's ability to cope and brings the strengths of both teachers to the teaching.

Objectives. Finland has been moving towards an inclusive education policy for a long time and the new curriculum from 2016 requires the school to develop in line with the principle of inclusion. This means that special schools and classes will be abolished, and special education should be organised as part of general education. However, the heterogeneity of classes brings its own challenges to the classroom and teachers experience challenges in performing their work, which is reflected in the quality of teaching. It is therefore important to explore what different ways can be found to address these challenges, and one option could be co-teaching. In previous studies, teachers have found that co-teaching is a good way of working, supporting pupils’ learning, making teachers’ work more meaningful, and reducing workload. The aim of this study was to find out what pupils’ experiences of the benefits and challenges of co-teaching are, and what they consider requirements for effective co-teaching. Methods. I obtained my data by interviewing nine 6th grade pupils who were studying in a co-educational class. I conducted the interviews using the thematic interview method. My research was a qualitative study using a phenomenographic research analysis model to explore the different ways in which students experienced learning in a co-taught classroom. Results and conclusions. Students associated five different benefits with co-teaching: easier access to support, the possibility of small group teaching, good group management and working in peace, flexible working methods, and the combined expertise of two teachers. There were four challenges of co-teaching: disruption of teaching, becoming more alienated from the other teacher, scheduling challenges in teaching, and the pupils’ perceived resentment of being divided in a smaller group. In addition, pupils described effective co-teaching requiring teachers to be cooperative, have common ground rules and be equal. The results suggest that pupils perceive co-teaching as a way of working that supports their learning, but that it requires certain conditions to work. Although the results cannot be considered universal, they do suggest that co-teaching is a way of working that, if it works, can significantly facilitate pupils' learning and access to support.

Through the strengthening of the inclusive ideology, Finnish primary school general education classes have an increasing number of students, who have different learning related needs for support. Due to this, the cooperation between general and special education has increased and schools have developed many practices to teach inclusive classes. One of these practices that has been noticed effective is co-teaching, which has not yet been widely adapted in Finland. The basis of this study is, how co-teaching abilities of future teachers can be supported already in the student teachers’ education phase and teaching practice. The study examines general and special education co-teaching executed in teaching practice. The study investigates the experiences of special education, class and subject student teachers regarding co-teaching executed in teaching practice. Additionally, the possible future development points of co-teaching in teaching practice will be examined on the basis of the students’ experiences. The study is a qualitative case study, which material was collected through two methods of data collection: questionnaire forms and interviews. The material was collected from special, class and subject student teachers, who carried out co-teaching lessons in teaching practice at the Viikki Normaalikoulu of the University of Helsinki in November and December of 2018. The questionnaires were answered by fifteen (15) student teachers after which six (6) of these students were interviewed. Both, the responses of the questionnaire and the transcriptions of the interviews, were analyzed with a data directional content analysis approach. The study shows that a part of the students felt co-teaching in the teaching practice gave them good readiness to utilize co-teaching between general and special education after their studies in the working life. However, not all of the students felt that the teaching practice sufficiently supported their readiness for coteaching. The obscurity regarding the role of the special education student teacher in co-teaching lessons and the lack of utilizing the expertise related to special education in planning and execution of the lessons were considered as main challenges. In cases where the students did not plan the co-teaching lesson together, the role of the special education student teacher was to maintain a peaceful environment and to take on different assisting tasks. The study shows that the students had very different impressions on what co-teaching is. The conclusion regarding the development of teaching practice in this study is that the supervision concerning co-teaching should be developed especially in the part of the following fields: increasing knowledge regarding the students’ co-teaching, coaching for co-teaching lessons and the students’ equal possibilities for feedback after a co-teaching lesson. With these means, the fruitful execution of co-teaching could also be supported in the long run in Finnish primary schools.

The aim of this study was to find out the using of the co-operative methods in the phenomenon-based learning way at the comprehensive school. After the publishing of the finnish study curriculum (2014) it has been spoken a lot about the phenomenon-based learning. The researches about the phenomenon based learning has published still quite little. In this research it is analyzed the occurrence of the co-operative working methods in the lessons of three different subjects (craft, music and mother language). The purpose of the research is also to find out the differences about the using of the co-operative methods between the school subjects. The target of this research was the school class which consist of the pupils in the pre-school, the first and the second classes. There were 18 children in craft and music lessons. In the lesson of mother language studied 14 pupils. There were not the pupils of the pre-school. The adults were either one or two in every lessons and two trainees. The data for this study was collected by video during the lessons. The data was analyzed using by theory-based content analysis. The was the case study. The results indicated, that there were used the co-operative methods in every videotaped les-sons. Anyway the differences how much the methods were used could find out between the lessons. There were used the clearly most the co-operative methods at craft lesson. The least they were used at music lesson. The difference between music and mother language was rather small. The using of the co-operative methods were natural and functional in the phenomenon-based learning in this research. The atmosphere was trusting which is the good starting point to use the co-operative methods.

Class teachers collaborate substantially with classroom assistants. However, teacher education does not include information about this kind of collaboration, and whether the students gain this type of collaboration experience is up to their own work life experiences. Yet collaboration with class assistants can be extremely helpful, both at the beginning of a teacher’s career and later on. There is little research on collaboration between class teachers and classroom assistants. In Finland Marjatta Takala has done the most research on this collaboration form. There is no research on collaboration between class teachers and classroom assistants in the context of primary education. The objective of this master’s thesis is to discover what kinds of views class teachers and classroom assistants have on collaboration in primary education. Additionally, this thesis’ objective is to discover how class teachers and classroom assistants would develop this collaboration in primary education. The objective of this thesis is to produce new information and thus support the researcher’s own teacherhood and the collaboration that will take place in work life. This thesis was conducted between March and August in 2021 by using qualitative methods. Five class teachers and five classroom assistants were interviewed as part of the thesis by using semi-structured interview method. The interviews were carried out remotely through Zoom. The data from the interviews was analysed with data based content analysis method. Class teachers and classroom assistants interpret collaboration in primary education as an extensive entity that consists of the class assistants’ role in primary education, factors that enable the collaboration and the specific qualities of collaboration in primary education. The issues needing further development in primary education’s collaboration are the time required for collaboration, education, working culture and the class assistants’ competence. According to this thesis’ results collaboration in primary education is multiprofessional collaboration with indications of shared expertise. It is possible to elaborate the study of collaboration with ethnographic methods by studying the significance of different grades or how shared expertise manifests itself in collaboration.

The aim of the research was to determine how educational convictions differ between teachers of different age groups and between teachers in six Finnish cities. The study focused on teachers teaching in the unified comprehensive schools. Previous studies on educational convictions of pre-school teachers indicated that pre-school teachers in Helsinki have put emphasis on child-centered pedagogy and community-oriented pedagogy. In the same research there was not found statistically significant differences between teachers on society-oriented pedagogy, curriculum-oriented pedagogy and on the pedagogy that emphasizes capable individuals' development. In my research I will try to find possible factors that may affect the teacher's educational convictions. The factors that concerned a teacher's background were gender, working environment, age, years of office, even the place of residence and finally the school size measured by number of pupils. The following three questions formed the research questions: How teacher's educational convictions differ in general? What kind of effect the teacher's working environment has on the conviction? Is it possible to find any other factors related to the teacher's background or experience, which will explain possible differences in convictions? The study was a quantitative survey. The survey was directed to teachers teaching in the comprehensive schools in six large cities that were chosen on a discretionary basis. The cities were Espoo, Helsinki, Vantaa, Turku, Tampere and Oulu. Due to difficulties in Research Permit applications, normal sampling methods could not be used, so the research took the form of a discretionary sample. The number of respondents could not be pre-determined because decisions of participation took place in two phases, first schools headmasters had to approve and only then the individual teachers could make their own decisions. As a result, the non-response study was impossible. The study involved 443 primary education teachers. In the analysis I used factor analysis and multivariate statistical methods. The results showed that a teacher's gender created statistically significant differences in four of the seven measured convictions. Female teachers appreciated more than their male colleagues the pedagogy that emphasizes altruistic and empathy showing pupil. The teacher's working environment, a primary or a secondary school, separated respondents convictions more often than the gender. The two pupil-centered pedagogies, which emphasize the meaningfulness of teaching content and on the other hand altruistic and empathy showing pupil was favoured more by primary school teachers than the other teacher groups. The conviction, where emphasis was put on pupil's capability social interactions was chosen by elderly teachers more often than by the other age groups. There was a statistically significant difference for the benefit of the more adept teachers in comparison with their younger colleagues as to underscoring the pedagogy emphasizing altruism and empathy in the pupil. Similarly they appreciated the conviction, where emphasis was on pupil's capability social interactions.

Work has become more and more expertised and complex, leading to a situation where best knowledge of the issues is dispersed wider in the organization. Implementation of work has changed towards more versatile, emphasazing individual's agency at work and learning. Thereby, the transition of power and responsibility for each employee is seen as important. These changes at work requires examining work-based learning in a new light. Need for this research arose from organizational change towards self-directing operating model. This demands to think individual's role and responsibility about their own learning and development. Research problem consisted of how experts learn in their work and what is the role of agency in learning. Results will help to better understand the development of organizational knowledge processes and expert work. Theoretical framework examines key theoretical concepts of learning, understanding impact of changes in the work and agency's role for learning. The study was conducted using a theme interview for ten employees, who operate in hybrid expertise roles in the organization. The data was collected at the turn of the year 2015-2016 and analyzed with content analysis. The units of analysis consisted from the nature of the job, learning practices and agency in professional development. The results showed that the working environment has a strong orientation to learning and informal learning played an important role. In addition, the results showed a different agency in relation to professional development. Others defined their learning objectives very actively and others were more adjusted to the possibilities offered by the organisation. Learning, however, was more individual than shared. The results demonstrate the need to modify the learning environment in the way it takes into account the different individuals from the perspective of learning. In practice, change to self-directing model requires that everyone takes responsibility to de-fine the shared and individual learning needs. As a conclusion the organization should provide a wide range of learning and influence channels, to support both individual and shared agency in learning and professional development.

The purpose of this user-centred design-based research was to design trousers individually for a young woman who has special needs for trouser's functional considerations due to a spinal cord injury. In addition to the functionality of the product, the trousers also had to respond to the user needs for her expressive and aesthetic preferences. Earlier studies show that there are not enough fitting, functional and at the same time aesthetically pleasing clothes for physically disabled people. The framework for user needs was based on the FEA consumer needs model developed by Lamb and Kallal (1992), which focuses all functional, expressive and aesthetic considerations to recognize consumer needs and wishes for apparel design. From the user data collection, qualitative content analysis gathered the essential issues and themes to identify the user profile, the context of a use-situation and the needs of the user for the design of the trousers. The gathered material showed the user's need for two different types of trousers: classic and timeless jeans and sporty trousers for casual use. Based on the results and interpretations of the design analysis, the trousers were developed in three different versions: the first jeans, the further developed jeans and the sporty trousers for casual use. The user evaluated the usability of three trousers by Nielsen's (1993) five-point grading scale in each stage of the development process. The comparative starting point for the evaluation was user's everyday trousers used before her disability. According to the evaluation, development on the trousers occurred, when the further jeans and the sporty trousers for casual use corresponded to all the functional, expressive and aesthetic needs of the user. This research provides concrete practical implementation solutions for the functional considerations of an individually designed trousers, but also provides a perspective on the aesthetic and expressive aspects of apparel design. The results of the study confirm Lamb's and Kallal's (1992) view that the functionality, expressiveness and aesthetics of the apparel are not mutually exclusive, as the individually designed adaptive apparel can also be of one's own style.

The aim and the purpose of this design -based study was to develop craft education from the point of view of critical pedagogy. The study was based on finding theoretic perspective from critical pedagogy to craft education and then apply it to the practice in the topic of clothing culture and making of cloths. The reason and needs behind the developing process was the beginner teacher's own interest to find ways to create that kind of craft education which aims to develop people's critical consciousness about social and ecological phenomena that includes to the craft and specially to clothing. The design-based study is based on four phases. First phase was constructing of theoretical frame from the theoretical literature of craft education and critical pedagogy. Then, based on the theoretical conversation between both themes the point of views for the developing was determined. After that, the determined point of views were applied one step nearer to the practice and some kind of educational plan for the topic of clothing was created. Little part of the plan was tested in Helsingin normaalilyseo with the pupils on seventh degree. The last phase of the study was to reflect the practice in the light of used theories based on the notes and feedback made during it. Critical pedagogy offered something to develop both for the pedagogy and the content of craft education. The most important point of views for the pedagogy were dialogic, problem-based, multi-perspective and emansipatoric educational practices where the main issues are to advance people's experimental and autonomous subjectivity, own voice and socio-political consciousness. The main points of view to develop the contents of craft education are self-reflection with sociopolitical knowledge, ecosocial consciousness, critical consciousness toward capitalism and critical multiculturalism. The educational plan for the topic of clothing was made based on those previous issues. The main problems occurred during the practice were the lack of time and unexperienced teacher.