Browsing by Author "Rantala, Sirpa"

This qualitative Master's thesis is a narrative case study which examines life of an elementary school teacher who worked for 42 years in the same school in a municipality located in Uusimaa region in the early 20th century. The study began from the researcher's interest in village school teacher's role, status and long work history in the same village school where the researcher herself was working on the end of the same century for 27 years. The investigation determines who Kaarlo Juho Vitalis Ollila was and what he was like as a teacher and educator. The study aims to answer what kind meaning Ollila's teaching had to his students and their parents. It is also being pointed out how teacher Ollila's life and development of the village could be seen and experienced in the village, and what role teacher Ollila's family had in the development of the school and village. Previous studies show that the village school teacher has been quite alone and separate from the villagers when entering teacher's position in the village community and the villagers were expecting good teacher's signs from the new teacher. Villagers also required the teacher to participate in the development of the village. 16 villagers born in the years 1908 – 1941 were interviewed in this study. Nine of the interviewees were men and seven were women. All the interviewees were lively older people motivated to interviewing. Data was gathered as theme interviews which took place mainly in the interviewees' homes. Data were transcribed by the theme.