Browsing by Author "Alatalo, Niko"

A goal of this study was to find out what motivates children and youth to take part on participation activities. Interviews of this study based on active members of school council and a supervising teacher from fairly large comprehensive school in Helsinki. The goal of this study was to find out how participation of active members comes true and interviewees motivation on participation actions in school. Lack of motivation on participation around youth and children are widely known and there’s also some research about passive youth. However, there are quite few studies about active youth and children on participation context. According to studies Finnish youth have great resources about how to participate and influence but most of them react passive on participation. It seems that there are many different places to practice participation for example school and youth councils but only few children want to take part of an action. This study explained what has motivated active school council’s members to take a part on influencing actions. Research material was collected by interviewing five highly motivated pupils from elementary and junior high school and the school council’s supervising teacher. The interviews were transcribed and content were analyzed with classification of different themes which were decoded and interpret findings. The pupils were part of a highly motivated group of the school council so hypothesis was that they would be active and interested about participation which was certified by the interviews. The group of motivated pupils on school council seemed to have high participation levels. When the participation level rises it comes with responsibility and a representing nature of the action emphasizes. The highly motivated group operating gave stability for projects and for the whole operations but at the same it took piece of the idea of democracy with it. The interviews revealed that pupils experience influencing on participation actions important. The pupils felt generating common good, appreciation of others and an access to information motivates them to take an action. The significance of being a part of school council was explained by learning new skills as well. An effort on information makes it possible to cut misconceptions around the operations. The school council should take notice of pupils’ point of interests and offer them positive experience on influence actions.