Browsing by Author "Äärilä, Anni"

Aims. Mild disturbances to a calm working environment are part of the everyday life in school. These disturbances can emerge through a wide variety of reasons, and often either the teacher or the teaching assistant will need to intervene to address disruptive behaviour. The teacher or the teaching assistant may intervene in the disruptive behaviour by verbal or non-verbal means. One of the means of non-verbal communication is physical touch. Physical touch is a natural element of multimodal interactions between people and has been found to have various developmental benefits as well as positive effects on well-being. The aim of this thesis was to examine situations where the calm working environment is disturbed and the teaching assistant intervenes by using physical touch. What are the multimodal elements that constitute these situations, how can these elements be grouped, and how does the teaching assistant’s intervention take shape? Methods. The thesis was a qualitative case study based on a data set of 13 lessons that had been video recorded and pre-transcribed for the ‘Long Second’ research project. The data was categorized and five video clips (in total 47s) were selected from the data for closer examination. These clips were selected as they featured specific instances, interpreted as situations where the calm working environment was disturbed and the teaching assistant intervened by using physical touch. The videos were viewed multiple times and the events that unfolded were narrated and recorded with a neutral voice. The events in the videos were then studied by means of microethnography, reflecting back to existing research. Results and conclusions. The thesis puts forward a new nine-dimensional classification of disturbances to calm working environment, extending from the classification developed by Madsen et al. (1968). The situations, interpreted as instances where the calm working environment was disturbed, and where the teaching assistant intervened by using physical touch, consisted of various multimodal elements, such as speech, bodily movement, and fiddling with an object. The teaching assistant’ interventions that employed physical touch comprised two or three distinct parts, and the intervention had an either activating or deactivating effect on the pupil. As the thesis is a case study its findings are not generalizable. However, the findings significantly enhance our understanding of those specific situations where the calm working environment is interpreted to be disturbed and the teaching assistant intervenes by using physical touch.