Browsing by Subject "fyysinen passiivisuus"

The objective of this study was to discover the thoughts of Finnish classroom teachers on promoting the physical activity of their students. The study examines teachers' attitudes towards promoting physical activity, the challenges they face in promoting physical activity and how they see their own readiness in promoting physical activity. In addition to attitudes and thoughts, the study wanted to analyse the concrete actions classroom teachers have taken to promote the physical activity of their students. Finally, the study also aims at exploring the factors that affect teachers' attitudes, readiness and the actions they take. This study is a mixed methods study with convergent parallel design strategy meaning it utilises both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The quantitative data was gathered with an electronic form managed by the University of Helsinki. The data consisted of 186 responses from Finnish classroom teachers and it was gathered between May and June 2017. The qualitative data, which was collected simultaneously with the quantitative data, consisted of eight theme interviews. The quantitative data was analysed with SPSS-program and the qualitative data was analysed with content analysis, quantification and by forming themes and types of the data. The study showed that teachers' attitudes towards promoting physical activity at school are very positive. However, the qualitative part of the study found four different dimensions inside the positive attitude which were general level, school level, teacher level and personal level. The challenges teachers face when promoting physical activity differed a lot between schools and some schools have less possibilities and much fewer resources than others. The readiness of the teacher was affected strongly by the teacher's own relationship towards exercise. If the teacher had studied physical education as a minor was also of great influence. The study also showed that there are room for improvement when it comes to teachers' actions towards promoting physical activity at school. Teachers concrete actions were strongly affected by their relationship towards exercise, attitude and readiness to promote physical activity.