Browsing by Subject "Yhteinen tieto"

Aims. The focus of this study is to uncover a class teacher’s mental structures regarding the interaction between school and home. The main objective of the study is to describe, analyze and interpret how recently graduated class teachers determine themselves as part of the interaction between school and home, and how they build shared knowledge using relational expertise. This research holds a theoretical perspective. The research questions of the study are as follows: 1) How do common knowledge and object of activity evolve as theoretical concepts as they interpret newly graduated class teachers’ understanding of interaction between school and home? 2) How do the interviewees use their relational expertise as they expand the objects of activity between school and home? 3) What sort of dialectical dissonances do the interviewees understand in the interaction between school and home on the systemic level of school? Materials and methods. The material of the research consists of the transcriptions of thematic interviews of three class teachers, who have studied behavioral science, and their written views concerning the interaction between school and home. The study follows a phenomenographic approach as the methodology. At the first stage of the analysis different meanings are inductively charted from the interviews to determine how they understand interaction between school and home. At the second stage meanings are deductively merged into theoretical categories. Finally, the interrelated systems of theoretical categories are made. In this interrelated system the theoretical concepts of relational expertise, shared knowledge, object of activity and professional agency interact to form a new theoretical synthesis to describe interaction between school and home. Results. The interviewees build shared knowledge through contributing to finite and infinite objects of activity. The interviewees use relational expertise and professional agency to expand the objects of activity. The contribution of the interviewees to the infinite object of activity appears more future-oriented than to the finite object of activity. The school system did not encourage reciprocal communication between school and home for the interviewees. According to the interviewees, the agency of students during the interaction between school and home is not as clear as the agency of class teacher or parents. A potential follow-up research could address the agency of the student in communication between school and home.