Browsing by Subject "haastattelututkimus"

Aim and background. This research aims to give a voice for children in the field that studies children's participation. Many studies have primarily used adult's views on participation and studied how this kind of participation is practiced in children's communities. These assumptions often miss children's complex and variable views of participation in their different environments. The aim of this research is to create a better understanding of the phenomenon of children's participation in school and scouting and guiding. By studying two environments this research tries to open children's views about participation as a phenomenon that children experience differently in their diverse social contexts. In this way the phenomenon is studied more widely and attempted to understand it as a part of children's lifes everywhere, not just at school. By creating the phenomenon of participation as children see it aims also to give better understanding about how to evolve children's participation both in school and scouts and also in the educational research. Methods. The research material was collected in the spring of 2017 in semi-structured interviews with five 5th graders who were also scouts. Every interviewee was interviewed twice: once at the scouts meeting place about scouting environment and once at school about school environment. Before the interview the children filled out a short sheet about how they feel about the interview and how much they know about certain concepts (for example local group or student council) they were to be asked about in the interviews. Every interview included a storycrafting assignment aimed to make the social encounter more equal between the researcher and the child. The research was carried out as a phenomenographic analysis. Conclusions. According to the results children experience both scouts and the school environment to be child centered communities, though are in fact separated from the decision-making processes. In both environments children participated in the decision-making only in certain places that were specifically meant for them. These places do not penetrate the decision-making of the communities but only include a part of it. Based on the analysis children saw their role in the decision-making and participating mainly to be sufficient and fair. They did not see that children could nor needed to have a bigger role as members of studied communities. Whereas children had some expectations towards school as an enabler of children's participation in society, scouting was not seen to have a similar role. Scouting was seen as a friendlier environment that allows children more freedom than school or other environments. The results show that there is a need for qualitative research about participation of children also in other environments than schools. Studies about participation of children also need more understanding about how children themselves experience participation so that the results would be more compatible in the light of the theoretical understanding of participation

This study researches the pedagogic methods used by visually impaired handicraft instructors. The aim of the study was to research what visually impaired handicraft instructors’ work is like when instructing adults, how their own visual impairment affects their work as a handicraft instructor and what is the role of the assistant in the work of the handicraft instructor. Even though there is a lot of research on the visually impaired and their handicrafts, the work of the visually impaired handicraft instructors hasn’t been researched that much. However, teaching of the visually impaired children has been studied quite a lot, so based on those researches, some examples of the pedagogic methods can be adapted to teach handicraft to adults, such as hand-on-hand guidance or drawing on one’s body. This study was a qualitative case study, and semi-structured theme interviews were used as the method of collecting data. The study had six informants that were invited to participate personally or via Näkövammaiset Käsityöntekijät ry (Finnish association of visually impaired craftsmen). The interviews were made as individual interviews in the Uusimaa region. The collected data was organized with qualitative content analysis, which helped forming different categories from topics arisen from the transcribed data. The most important result of this study was that the most important pedagogic areas of work of the visually impaired handicraft instructors were personal guidance and building one’s own personal identity as a handicraft instructor. Also assistance and assistive devices are an im-portant part of using pedagogic material and to help learning. In fact, assistive devices are being seen part of pedagogic methods, and trying to separate one from another would be ar-tificial. The most essential effect of visual impairment to one’s work as a handicraft instructor was the lack of visual information and the consequently need of help in certain areas of work. However, the informants do not see this as a big problem since they have a great amount of assistance around them. The assistants were considered as the most important assistance for the visually impaired handicraft instructors, since they help instructors to see by bringing them visual information they lack. The assistants act as the instructors’ eyes in a very tight collaboration.

Objectives. Feeding disorders affect families in many ways, like causing challenges for parenthood and daily routines. Parents' perspectives on their children's feeding disorder and its rehabilitation has not been investigated thoroughly. It is according to clinical practice guidelines to take parents' view into account for parents being in essential position in their children's rehabilitation. Parents' experience can also help speech-language pathologists to improve their practices. The objective of this study was to describe parents' perspectives on their children' feeding disorder and its rehabilitation in speech-language therapy. Also the impact of the therapy to the family was examined. Method. Nine parents were interviewed for the study, whose children with feeding disorder had been evaluated by speech-language pathologist in the specialized medical care. Children were under 2.5-year-old and their rehabilitation had ended less than a year earlier. Children's etiologic background differed significantly of each other. Parents were interviewed using a semi-structured theme interview. The themes were formulated using previous research literature and clinical expertize. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the data were analysed using inductive content analysis. The categorisation was made from the content into themes. The themes were analysed and complemented using previous research literature. Results and conclusions. The feeding disorder manifested in children's eating and behaviour in various ways. The feeding disorder caused mental, physical and social burden for the family. It had caused a lot of negative emotions, stress and daily challenges to the parents. Thus an early intervention could be beneficial for the family. The parents found the rehabilitation positive and beneficial. The rehabilitation took parents' expertize and daily concerns into account, increased parents' understanding and emotionally encountered them. The therapy methods were diverse and interdisciplinary team approach was used. The rehabilitation had changed parents' behaviour and attitude, which was seen for example in feeding practises, parents' emotions and competence. The effect of the rehabilitation appeared in children' oral sensorimotoric functions and in feeding behaviour. Children were more active, self-regulated and their reaction to feeding were eased in many ways. The feeding rehabilitation can affect positively both to parents' competence and children's feeding disorder. In future it would be beneficial to study what kind of feeding intervention services families undergo outside specialized medical care.