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This study examines and describes sense of belonging of seventeen preschoolers in groups where art education is the main support for children with special educational needs to support their learning and developing. Children were interviewed twice in autumn and in spring. Preschool groups were part of Taikava-project and in all groups art educators were working every weekday in early childhood education instead of group assistants. Art educators were working with other early childhood educators. This study examines possibilities to support children with art education and especially in sense of belonging. The theoretic part of this study is about the possibilities of art education to support children with special needs. In Vantaa there has been quite similar project before, TaikaVoima, but the art educators did not work fulltime in day care centers in that project. TaikaVoima- projects results proved to encourage children with special needs and affirm the sense of belonging in their groups. This study has both qualitative and quantitative data and results. In this study there were 17 preschoolers interviewed twice in a year. Seven of these children were having special educational needs. Additionally it was examined kindergarten teachers perceptions of children's behavior and art educators and kindergarten teachers group work about the challenges and the targets for the first year of the project. Children's experiences were scrutinized with three different material by method of triangulation. This qualitative research has phenomenological and hermeneutical features. It is researching the world in which preschoolers are living in, and their experiences in their groups and the meaning of their experiences. The awareness and knowledge of preschoolers about their own skills and abilities and challenges did deepen during the interviews. Children had learned new social skills and skills to express themselves with art educators. Children need more support from educators to understand the needs of other children and to learn to help and take others in to account. Children were positive surprised of the help that other children gave them. They were also surprised of the new friends and games that came out if educators decided playmates.

Value research has previously focused on adults and young people, because either the children's value world is thought to be an unfinished process or the development of a suitable measurement has been too challenging. Research on children's values has, however, attracts an increasing amount of interest. Earlier studies have shown that the value structures and preferences of children and adults resemble each other without regard to culture. This research will help to create an initial review of the values and preferences of Finnish, more specifically, Espoo primary school children. The theoretical reference framework for the research is the theory of universal values by Shalom Schwartz (1992). The study was conducted with 228 Espoo primary school students. The material was collected from two test schools with Picture Based Values Survey for Children (PBVS-C) that was modified to the Finnish context. Data collected on four different test days were analyzed using the SPSS program. Value variables and their mutual structure were studied using Spearman's correlation and multidimensional scaling (MDS). The gender and age differences of the value preferences were analyzed with MANOVA. The values of the Espoo primary schools students are in sync with previous research results, both in terms of structures and preferences, with a few exceptions. In the future, it would be appropriate to examine the values with a more comprehensive sampling.

Technology is constantly becoming a more significant part of society and schools. This trend is also reflected in the Finnish curriculum for primary and secondary schools (2014) where technological proficiency is identified as one of the greater goals for education. Online education in COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 brought significant changes in the use of technology in education. Teachers were required to adapt quickly and enhance their technological skills. This study examines the attitudes of primary school teachers towards the use of technology in education and whether online education has had an impact on teachers' attitudes. Furthermore, the research explores the factors that impact the utilization of technology by elementary school teachers. The research data was collected through interviews with six primary school teachers. The interviews were conducted as semi-structured interviews, incorporating elements of narrative interviewing to formulate questions. The collected data was analysed using narrative and qualitative content analysis methods. The attitudes of all the interviewed primary school teachers appear to be more positive after online education. Two teachers with previous negative attitudes now exhibit much more positive outlooks than before, while three teachers with neutral attitudes appear slightly more positive, and one teacher who already had a positive attitude seems even more optimistic. Online education also improved the teachers' technological skills, expanding their understanding of the new possibilities that technology offers in education. This enhancement of skills likely contributed to the improved attitudes. Using technology in education poses challenges. Technological devices and software used in schools are continuously evolving, necessitating ongoing efforts from teachers to adapt to new technologies. There also appears to be a shortage of further training and other assistance for using technologies. Previous research supports the need for additional training. According to earlier studies, some schools have deficiencies in their equipment, which raises concerns about inequality in education. The teachers I interviewed stated that support from colleagues is crucial. This aligns with findings in previous studies.

The aim of this study was to describe how managers establish relational leadership with remote employees and to investigate the special characteristics that remote work brings to managers' leadership. The study applies the leader-member exchange – theory (LMX) which is founded on the principles of trust and reciprocity. Technological and economical changes in people's working lives have made remote work a very topical and widely researched issue. However, up to now, few studies have focused on management of remote employees. This study will offer an insight into the subject of relational leadership in the context of leadership from a distance. The target group of the study consists of 12 managers from the capital region of Finland who are currently working as managers of partially remote employees. These managers work in companies, in the public sector or in associations. The data was gathered through theme interviews with the managers towards the end of the year 2015. The interview themes related specifically to the research questions, centering on the special characteristics of remote leadership and manager-employee interaction in the remote work context. The interviews were held in the interviewees' offices and the data was analyzed through content analysis. The study results indicated that relationships between managers and subordinates in remote work vary but were mainly positive. In addition, the study supports the theory that the manager plays an important role in building relational leadership with remote workers. Managers' ability to build and maintain trust was seen as important particularly in high-quality exchange relationships. The special characteristics of remote leadership primarily include technology-mediated communication, the need to adapt mentally to situations and the possibilities afforded to both employees and employers by remote work. In general, managers of remote employees need to have the ability to communicate effectively via technology, to build trust relationships with their subordinates, and to strengthen their team's sense of togetherness. This research highlights that while managing remote subordinates is a challenging form of leadership, it can be rewarding for the managers if successful, and is likely to enhance subordinates' well-being and efficiency at work.

The aim of this study is to find out how high school -aged adolescents are involved in home cleaning, what kind of cleaning tasks the parents require them to do, and how they are motivated to do home cleaning. Additionally, this study aims to find out what kind of cleaning practices exist in the families of adolescents and how the cleaning practices in a childhood home affect parents’ cleaning habits. This is related to how and where cleaning skills are learned. This study is qualitative by its nature, and the data were collected by interviewing six mothers of high school adolescents in the metropolitan area. The interviews were conducted in late autumn 2019, and the interviews followed the theme interview pattern where the interview proceeded according to predefined themes and related refinement questions. The interviews were transcribed and the data was analysed using a method of qualitative content analysis. The importance of home economics education at schools in learning cleaning skills was nearly insignificant. Cleaning skills were taught to children alongside their everyday household activities, without realizing it as a teaching or educational task. It seems that the primary responsibility for teaching cleaning skills to adolescents lies with the parents. The adolescents took part in the cleaning of the home by performing daily cleaning and organizing work, and they also kept their own room clean. Organising the cleaning work was the responsibility of the parents. A clear and balanced division of labor helped to involve the children in the cleaning and housework. In addition, the clear division of domestic tasks between parents affected couples' satisfaction with the division of homework.

Objectives. The thesis objective was to analyze how person-centred planning is applied to develop short term care in interaction between the disabled children, their families and the workers of the family service centre of Eteva Järvenpää. The thesis contributes to developing the methods of person-centred planning. I applied theoretical frameworks of activity theory and developmental work research, family-based work framework and disability phenomenon. The research questions were: What development needs did the families of disabled children have for the services? How were viewpoints of disabled children, their families and Eteva workers noticed in person-centred planning in the interaction between the disabled children, their families and Eteva workers? What disturbances and development challenges emerged during the person-centred planning? Methods. I first analysed the local history of the disability sector and the short term care to analyse challenges arising from the local history. The actual research material consisted of interviews with four families, two person-centred planning discussions and two discussions where the person-centred planning was reflected by the families.I used interaction voice analysis as defined by the activity theory and developmental work research. From the recorded interviews and discussions I analysed scripts, disturbances, innovation attempts and innovations. From the discussions I analysed also the interaction types (cooperation, coordination and communication). Results and conclusions. As problems, the families considered the scarce resources and the inflexibility of services. The challenges of developing the short term care were how to transfer information from short term care to home, how to develop activities for the children and how to take into account the individual needs of the children in the short term care. Both from the local history analysis and from the family interviews arised the conflict between caring and fulfilling the individual needs. In person-centred planning, the voice of the child was either interpreted by other family members or guided by family members or workers. I modelled the progress of person-centred planning in a two-dimensional coordination. Person-centred planning should be deepened in cooperation between the child, the family and the workers in everyday situations at home and during the short term care. The challenge is to expand person-centred planning to become cross-organizational cooperation connecting the actors of the child's service network in everyday life.

Aims. The aim of this study was to examine the experiences of classroom teachers in the metropolitan area about the realization of freedom of belief in school. The topic is topical, as the pluralism of society has sparked much debate regarding the organization of spectacle teaching, the school’s festive traditions, and student equality. There has been little educational research on freedom of religion and conscience, but there is some jurisprudence research on the subject. However, little research has been done on teachers experiences. This study seeks to examine the topic from the perspective of educational science and legislation. The research questions are: In what ways is the freedom of belief of students realized in school? How are teachers' freedom of belief realized in school? Methods. My research was qualitative in nature, which I conducted as an interview. Interviews with seven classroom teachers took place between November 2019 and February 2020. I selected classroom teachers from the Helsinki metropolitan area for interviews. I collected my material from classroom teachers in the Helsinki metropolitan area because the area is different from the rest of Finland. Qualitative research does not aim for generalizability and the aim of my research was to obtain information about teachers ’experiences. The material was analyzed using content analysis. Results and conclusions. Based on the results of the study, the student's freedom of belief was implemented quite well in school. The student's positive freedom of belief was supported by the opportunity to teach according to one's own religious beliefs and the opportunity to express one's own beliefs at school. Negative freedom of belief, in turn, was realized as an exemption from teaching and opportunities in accordance with the recognition of a foreign religion. Based on the results, the teachers' negative freedom of belief did not materialize. In addition to religious occasions, the teaching of religion could conflict with the realization of freedom of belief. Based on the research, teachers are aware of the challenges associated with a student’s religious beliefs at school.

Aim and background. This research aims to give a voice for children in the field that studies children's participation. Many studies have primarily used adult's views on participation and studied how this kind of participation is practiced in children's communities. These assumptions often miss children's complex and variable views of participation in their different environments. The aim of this research is to create a better understanding of the phenomenon of children's participation in school and scouting and guiding. By studying two environments this research tries to open children's views about participation as a phenomenon that children experience differently in their diverse social contexts. In this way the phenomenon is studied more widely and attempted to understand it as a part of children's lifes everywhere, not just at school. By creating the phenomenon of participation as children see it aims also to give better understanding about how to evolve children's participation both in school and scouts and also in the educational research. Methods. The research material was collected in the spring of 2017 in semi-structured interviews with five 5th graders who were also scouts. Every interviewee was interviewed twice: once at the scouts meeting place about scouting environment and once at school about school environment. Before the interview the children filled out a short sheet about how they feel about the interview and how much they know about certain concepts (for example local group or student council) they were to be asked about in the interviews. Every interview included a storycrafting assignment aimed to make the social encounter more equal between the researcher and the child. The research was carried out as a phenomenographic analysis. Conclusions. According to the results children experience both scouts and the school environment to be child centered communities, though are in fact separated from the decision-making processes. In both environments children participated in the decision-making only in certain places that were specifically meant for them. These places do not penetrate the decision-making of the communities but only include a part of it. Based on the analysis children saw their role in the decision-making and participating mainly to be sufficient and fair. They did not see that children could nor needed to have a bigger role as members of studied communities. Whereas children had some expectations towards school as an enabler of children's participation in society, scouting was not seen to have a similar role. Scouting was seen as a friendlier environment that allows children more freedom than school or other environments. The results show that there is a need for qualitative research about participation of children also in other environments than schools. Studies about participation of children also need more understanding about how children themselves experience participation so that the results would be more compatible in the light of the theoretical understanding of participation

This master’s thesis focuses on the experiences of girls with immigrant background in general upper secondary school and preparatory programme for general upper secondary school focusing on foreign languages, support practices and study counselling. Previous research suggest that students with im-migrant background apply for upper secondary schools with lower grades and have a higher probability of dropping out of education than the majority (eg. Kilpi-Jakonen 2011, Valtiontalouden tarkastusvi-rasto 2015). Also in spite of academic orientation young people with immigrant backgrounds have been guided to vocational schools instead of general schools - especially girls with immigrant back-grounds (e.g. Kurki 2008a & 2008b, Souto 2016, Kurki & Brunila 2014). Finnish education system and the current educational policy discourses creates the frame of reference for this study. This study aims at producing fresh data and findings from the field about support practices and education of girls with immigrant backgrounds in the upper secondary school. This study is educational ethnography contextualized to the current educational policies (Troman, Jeffrey & Beach 2006). The analytical interest is in the structural factors defining general upper secondary schools as well as in the everyday life and how people make sense of it. The data for this study has been produced in one general upper secondary school and in one group of preparatory programme for general upper secondary education in the spring term of 2017. Data consists of field notes, interviews (n=23) and educational policy documents. The study is part of EMED-research project. The structure of Finnish school system, support practices and study counselling were important factors that affected student’s educational choice making. Experiences of given counselling, need of support and language proficiency varied. The current educational policy discourse highlights freedom of choice and possibilities. This was also emphasized in the girl’s narratives. In reality educational educational transitions constructs in relation to given counselling, Finnish language proficiency and in relation to structures of the school system and what seems realistic.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine classroom teacher’s views on participation and agency in primary school’s visual arts education. The study aims to find out how classroom teachers define the concepts of participation and agency and in what ways it is found possible to promote these things in school in general, and visual arts classes in particular. The theoretical framework of participation and agency is based on the socio-pedagogical approach of participation. The promotion of participation and agency is viewed in social and political contexts and examined through the concept of engaged pedagogy. The study was conducted as a qualitative interview survey. A total of six people were interviewed for the study and the interviews were conducted as semi-structured thematic interviews. Interviews were conducted both by using online connections and in person. All the interviewees were working as classroom teachers or special class teachers that had taught visual arts to primary school students. According to the study, classroom teacher’s views in participation and agency could be categorized as opportunities to influence, personal experiences of meaningfulness and active acts. The views in promoting participation and agency in school and in visual arts education adapted the above-mentioned categories. Participation and agency were promoted via social and political means. The opportunities to impact were associated to both political and everyday decision-making. Promoting student’s identities and internal motivation were emphasized in the personal experiences of meaningfulness. Active acts consisted of dialogical and interactive working methods that emphasized responsibility among students.