Browsing by Author "Jorasmaa, Kimmo"

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.