Browsing by Author "Värtö, Saara"

Aims. The aim of my research was to study those teachers who have not undergone any teacher education and their thinking about teacher's work. This phenomenon was chosen as the research subject because it has been studied very little compared to the research on regular teachers in Finnish schools. My research task was to study the thoughts on and experiences of working as a teacher and formal qualifications of teachers without teacher education. Moreover, the aim was to outline the teaching career of these teachers as well as their thoughts on and experiences of teacher education and professional development. Methods. The research was conducted through literature and through the narratives of six people who either are working or have been working as teachers without any teacher education. Three of these people worked as teachers without any teacher education at the time of the research whereas the other three had applied and been accepted into teacher education after having already worked as teachers. One of the latter had also already graduated with a certificate of education. This was a qualitative study and the data was gathered by doing theme interviews and analysed by using inductive qualitative analysis. Results and conclusions. Many similarities were found in the narratives of the interviewees and a more detailed examination of the themes revealed some outliers. The ways the interviewees had ended up working as teachers were very similar but their plans for the future differed. The thoughts on and experiences of working as a teacher were quite similar whereas formal qualifications elicited contradictory thoughts among the interviewees. Teacher education also divided their opinions. The interviewees who had undergone teacher education evaluated the effectiveness of the education in a similar manner. Nearly all the interviewees also criticised teacher education widely. The interviewees felt they had progressed in different areas during their career, even though most of them had not actively sought personal or professional development. Overall, the research elucidated a phenomenon that had been studied very little beforehand. It also revealed some important themes in education policy, which merit further study.