Browsing by Author "Alcorn, Sini"

The purpose of this study was to examine two informal interaction situations that students encounter during the breaks in between classes in school; encounters among peers and the encounters between a student and a teacher. To further understand how students behave in these situations, how they see others behave and how they attribute these beaviours. Main idea was to understand these situations through the student's point of view. Are the situations described as positive or negative encounters, what are the different topics of the situations and to find out how 6th grade students in Finland understand the situations they describe themselves. Methods. The study gathered picturetask projections from 82 6th grade students, from 3 different schools located around Finland. Picturetask projections had 2 pictures, one from a school yard with peers on it and the other one from the school yard with a student-teacher encounter. Both pictures had assisting questions for the participants. The answers were analysed by using content analysis. They were first divided between negative and positive descriptions, then categorised into themes that rouse from the data. And finally categorised by using the 3 main attributional theory classifications; locus of control, controllability and stability, to understand how the 6th graders attributed the situations they described. Results and conclusions. Most of the descriptions were negative, more so in the student-teacher encounters. In these two informal situations there were some themes found in both, like school bullying and nice chats, but there were also some themes that were only found in one or the other. In descriptions from peer situations themes of tough guys were found, whereas in student-teacher descriptions had themes of telling the students off when behaved badly. In regard to attributions the results were very similar in both projections. Most of the situations were described as momentarily and attributed to external causes. In half of the peer situations and in over half of the student-teacher situations students felt able to control the situation.