Browsing by Subject "humanistiset tieteet"

The aim of this study is to show how university students in humanities talk about their interest in disciplinary choices and studies at their first academic year. The research questions examine which narratives university students in humanities use in talking about their choices. Also, the role of the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in three identified narratives of 1) interestingness 2) self-regulation and 3) profession is investigated. This study shows how students used these narratives in terms of time perspective: past, presence and future when talking about their interest in their discipline. By recognizing the power of interest of humanities students it is possible to see what we can learn from academically motivated students. As a result of these three identified narratives and their temporal aspect, we can note that the interest development of humanities students often seems to have a long history in the past before they entered their academic studies. Humanities students seem to own strong interpersonal skills and they use their strong intrinsic motivation and interest as a resource to proceed in their studies despite the uncertain future employment goals. The results also show that these students operate in the middle of the academic freedom with multiple choices and often lack a clear view about the future employment of their field after graduation. Also extrinsic motivation in disciplinary choices was used to ensure a safer path into the labour market. A strong personal strong trust to future and personal interest experience was found to be a key resource in the students with well -developed interes. These narratives of student interests give tools to the student guidance to understand humanities students who often seem to have well developed individual interest about their disciplinary choice already in the beginning of their academic studies. This study also agrees with the previous result about the importance of student guidance and student support throughout the university studies. Qualitative content analysis was applied in the study. Instead of using narrative analysis in the traditional way, the “mini-narratives” were identified and explored to capture qualitative understanding about the role of interest in the first year. Temporality in relation to identified narratives of interest offers wider understanding about the interest development during the university studies The data collection was executed by Dr. Johanna Mikkonen in 2006 as she interviewed university students in humanities as part of her doctoral dissertation “Interest in university studies. Its role and relation to motivational variables”. In the future it would be interesting to examine whether these identified narratives change or develop within the university studies and how after intervention to improve student support services.