Browsing by Author "Stenberg, Auli"

At my Master's Thesis I have researched praises provided by educators at nursery school. I've sorted out how educators praise children and in what kind of situations. I've also tried to sort out how gender of child reflects the amount and quality of praises. In addition I wanted to know how the educators rationalize their actions at situation they're providing praises. Praising children at education situation is discussed a lot at media but there have been quite a few researches about this topic. My research is qualitative and I've analyzed the material by using content analysis method. I've collected the research material from one nursery school at Helsinki by videotaping three mornings and three hours at time. In addition I interviewed the educators by exploiting so called stimulated recall -method so that educators had opportunity to comment their actions from the basis of video clips that I found interesting. From the filmed material I've picked up the praises that educators have directed towards children and analyzed those especially in gender point of view. Results of the research showed that educators praise children mostly with short nonverbal characterizations. Especially using adjective "good". Children were mostly praised at situations where they moved from activity or place to another. I've compared my results to another Master's Thesis (Teräs 2010) and got opposite results regarding deviation of praises between boys and girls. At my research girls got 64 % of all the praises and boys 36 %. At various range of praises (performance, looks/clothes/toy & personality) girls got considerably more praises than boys. Cognitive skills were most praised among performance-linked praises. Looks and Clothes were praised second most. Girls got 73 % and boys 27 % of the praises which were linked to looks and clothes. Educators didn't see that gender would be significant factor when directing the praises. They concentrated to comment the interaction between their self and child and rationalizing their actions at situation they're providing praises.