Browsing by Subject "Nyutexaminerade lärare"

The goal with this research is to map out how newly graduated teachers in the Swedish schools in Finland experiences forms of and access to social support. The work as a teacher is regarding to Gavish & Friedman (2010) one of the most demanding social professions and more and more teachers become burned out. Teachers are fronting more and larger challenges and as a newly graduated teacher it might become overwhelming as teachers often work independently. What happens if a newly graduated teacher experiences social support and what happens if a newly graduated teacher doesn’t experience social support? This thesis’ theoretical ground for mapping out how the social support is accessed in the Swedish schools in Finlands stems from the social support model from research by Pyhältö (2018). Previous studies have shown that social support is an essential part of an individuals’ ability to prosperand that is especially true for teachers. (Cornér et al., 2017; Gavish & Friedman, 2010; Heikkinen et al., 2020; Pyhältö, 2018; Larrivee, 2012) Seven newly graduated teachers have been interviewed based on a pre-made interview material in this thesis. This thesis has been made in co-operation with the SAMS-samverkan och social stöd I den finlandssvenska skolan-project. The interviews have been analyzed through thematic analysis. The newly graduated teachers experience a broad variation of different support forms. Informative, instrumental, and emotional support is available in the schools the teachers have experience from. The newly graduated teachers are also experiencing that they have a broad access to sources of social support. The results of this research showed that there are quite a lot of themes where the forms of social support have shortages. For example, shortage of support at communication and information flow in the college, shortage of support in administrative tasks and shortage of support in self-criticalness and creating of a teacher identity. The results showed that teachers experienced grade colleagues and the colleagues as an important source of social support. To avoid shortage of social support in the future could mentorship and mentor teacher programs develop in the Swedish schools in Finland. The social support model could be a part of the teacher education. The newly graduated teacher would then have the tools to identify shortages and when needed, search for the social support at the right time. Focus from the professional development during the studies to become a teacher could be integrated later in the teacher’s career.