Browsing by Subject "monikulttuurisuus"
Now showing items 1-20 of 20
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(2019)This study aims to compare the two most recent national core curriculums (POPS 2004 and POPS 2014) of the Finnish school system with the help of critical discourse analysis. The goal of the comparison is to find ideological differences within the national core curriculums from a multicultural/intercultural point of view. The final purpose of this study is to then compare the same ideological differences in the content of geography textbooks. Previous studies have shown that school textbooks adapt always in some level to the contents of the national core curriculums. But on the other hand, some previous studies have shown that textbooks may posses the values and ideologies of the people who have ratified the textbook. Our study tries also to find an answer to this problematic question. The data of the research composed of two national core curriculums published in 2004 and 2014 respectively. The text was analysed using the critical discourse analysis from a multicultural point of view. The textbooks used in this study were made by the same Finnish publishing company (Sanoma Pro Oy) : Avara (which followed the national core curriculum of the year 2004) and Geoidi (of the year 2014). The textbooks were analysed from the themes created by the differences that were found in the national codes of education. The results found out that people tend to be the foundation of the concept of culture in both national core curriculums. The previous national core curriculum took culture as a static and stable concept, of which the borderlines were easily defined in accordance with the fundamentalist interpretation of culture. As for the current national core curriculum, it saw culture as a more unstable entity, being constantly in a process. There was no longer discussion of multiculturality, however it was replaced by the concept of cultural diversity. The textbook series that followed the previous national core curriculum (Avara) shared the values of creating borders between cultures and creating more prejudices. The current textbook series (Geoidi) saw culture being constantly in a process, like the current national core curriculum, even though it sometimes depicted a stable view of the culture.
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(2020)Goals This qualitative thesis researches the linguistically responsible home economics counseling. The purpose is to describe, define and interpret how the home economics counseling could be developed, so that it reaches the immigrants who have just started learning Finnish. moreover, the thesis focuses on in what kind of means can be used to improve the comprehensibility of communication. Home economics pedagogy outside the formal education has rarely been studied from the perspective of linguistic responsibility in Finland. The data were collected from two nature excursions by voice recordings and applying a method of linguistic responsive observation (Ahlholm, 2017). From both excursions, the communication of two home economics teachers, two participants and myself, were audiorecorded. The data consists of 10 recordings, varying from 1 hour 47 minutes to 2 hours 13 minutes in length. In addition, written field notes of observations were gathered from both excursions. The data were analysed and thematized with a qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions. Various situations linked to linguistic awareness and communication arose from the material, including translanguaging, solving situations where figures of speech are misunderstood, decoding difficult concepts, interpreting experiences through culture and challenging situations for teachers. Clear and understandable home economics counseling is based on seven different aspects: simplified language, clarifying by demonstrating, clarifying by repetition, the use of metaphors, utilising tools, teacher’s interaction and counseling situations which are pedagogically responsibly designed. In the light of this research, the development of home economics counseling towards a more linguistically aware approach seems to require, in addition to professionalism and will, all actors’ interest in linguistic interaction.
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(2020)Objectives. The objective of this study is to find out what kind of conflicts occur in an multicultural school environment and what kind of means do the pupils have to solve these conflicts. This study also focuses on the ways in which pupils speak about multiculturalism. Previous studies has proven that the concept of otherness is essentially associated with the concept of multiculturalism. The concept of otherness is the backbone of the theory part of this study. The theoretical framework of this study is formed by concepts and theories associated with multiculturalism, otherness and social categories and by previous studies that covers minorities. The research questions of this study are: What kind of conflicts occur in an multicultural school environment? What kind of means do the pupils have to solve these conflicts? Methods. This is a qualitative case study. The case was a sixth grade class of a school located in the eastern part of Helsinki. The research data was collected with theme interviews. Fifteen pupils from the class had the permission to participate in the study. The interviews were held in three groups of five pupils. The data was analysed with content analysis method by looking for comments that fit certain themes. The content analysis was data driven. Results and conclusions. According to the data the different backgrounds of pupils are not emphasized in an multicultural school environment. Deeper analysis of the discussion around conflicts however highlighted discriminatory and racist behaviour towards pupils of minority groups. The interviewees had an positive attitude towards multiculturalism however there was features that generate and maintain otherness in the discourse of some of the interviewees. The conflicts that occur in an multicultural school environment seem to be affected by the pupils different backgrounds. The most worrying finding was that how many of these conflicts escalated to a fistfight. This is a interpretative case study so if these results were applied to practise the study should have a different manner of an approach.
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(2017)OBJECTIVE. In the past, there has been lots of research focusing on both pupils with immigrant backgrounds and cultural diversity in schools. However, there is a lack of studies that focus on particular school subjects. Although, there is earlier research about studying geography and cultural diversity from the point of view of a teacher. The aim of this thesis is to expand the point of view to the everyday life inside the culturally diverse geography classroom. In my thesis, I examine geography lessons in the view point of foreign-language. My goal is to illustrate and understand the opportunities and challenges that foreign-language and the limited knowledge of Finnish can lead to, and how the poor Finnish language skills reveal themselves on geography lessons. Furthermore, my aim is to illustrate the pedagogical solutions used by the teachers in classes with foreign-language pupils. METHODOLOGY. Qualitative method was used in this study. The research data was collected by observing 58 geography lessons in four different secondary schools, that have a high percentage of foreign-language pupils. The collection of the rich dataset was made possible by the unstructured observation method. I used data content analysis method to analyse the dataset. First, I produced the upper-classes from my observations, from which I lead the themes. Finally, I organized the material on the top of the Didactic Triangle, because it represents clearly the teaching-learning -process, and also emphasizes the importance of interaction in teaching and learning. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS. The limited knowledge of Finnish causes challenges for the foreign-language pupils and the teachers in the geography lessons. The pedagogical skills of the four observed teachers varied in the point of view of foreign-language. The linguistic challenges, especially the difficult and specific concepts of geography, caused misunderstandings and frustration both for the teachers and the pupils.
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(2007)The main idea of this study was to find out how immigrants understand and define successful co-operation and professional partnership in early childhood education. Another target of this research was to think over how the parents see professional partnership from their viewpoint, and how willing / ready the they are in engaging in the professional partnership with the day care personnel. The theoretical part of this research is based on theories of immigration and theories of it's different forms, theories of cultural varieties and theory of modernizing co-operation through using professional partnership. Also guidelines and policies for day care and early childhood education play a part in the theory section. Theory part is written to support research problems. The research method used in this study is peer interview. The interviewed are both immigrants and customers of day care services. The data collected is comprised of materials from peer interviews and personal background information. The interviewed were of Somalia and Russian ethnic groups. Interview were carried out in each group in the participants own mother tongue. These peer interviews showed that parents were interested and willing to discuss professional partnership. From this research one can conclude that the term professional partnership is seen as a complex term, and as a term difficult to understand. From the results it is seen that quite often the principles of professional partnership are not carried out in practise. According to the material gathered, the parents feel that lack of common language and prejudice against immigrants effectively prevents the professional partnership from being formed. The cultural differences can become challenging in a professional partnership. Based on this research, one can conclude that when different cultures meet, there has to be mutual will to understand and to be understood in order to make sure that the children's development, both educational and physical, is supported in a best possible way.
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(2013)The aim of this study is to describe the expectations and experiences related to the promotion of the pedagogical competence of kindergarten teachers in multilingual and multicultural day-care centres, the operations of which have been supported by raising the number of kindergarten teachers from one to two in the care groups. This was enabled by the "positive discrimination funding" offered to those City of Helsinki day-care centres where the number of multilingual and -cultural children exceeds 30%. Three main questions emerged as the research questions. 1. What kind of expectations do kindergarten teachers in a multilingual and multicultural day-care centre have at the beginning of the enhancement of their pedagogical competence? 2. What kind of experiences have kindergarten teachers in a multilingual and multicultural day-care centre acquired during the enhancement of their pedagogical competence? 3. What similarities and differences exist between the expectations and experiences of kindergarten teachers with respect to the enhancement of their pedagogical competence? The sub-questions of the two main questions relate to the activities of the care group, collaboration with the work community, cooperation partners and parents, and any other expectations and later experiences. The study is qualitative, and interviews served as the method for collecting information. The informants included six kindergarten teachers working in three day-care centres of city. Theme interviews as a research method were carried out twice for each informant; one in the autumn and one in the spring. Results include such aspects as small-group pedagogy, the pedagogy of play, child observation, activities planning, teamwork and cooperation with the other kindergarten teacher working in a Finnish-as-a-second-language setting in the area. In contrast, the development of professional identity and the processing of professional and pedagogical competence are already mentioned as expectations by two kindergarten teachers, but identified as experiences by several of them.
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(2022)Previous research shows that multicultural and multilinguistic organizations can be more effective and creative than other organizations. Building trust in workplace strengthens commitment to work and eliminates conflicts and disagreements between colleagues. Organizational culture is partly impacted by how trust building materializes in practice in work community. The purpose of the study was to discover how international experts experience trust building and work commitment in a multicultural organization. The study was conducted in the IT organization that is part of a bigger Finnish organization. The study answered two research questions: (1) What should an organization guarantee to its employees to build trust and commitment? (2) What informal factors contribute to building trust in a multicultural work community? This study was conducted qualitatively, and semi-structured interview was used as a method to collect research material. In total, six people were interviewed for the study. They all work for the IT organization and do not speak Finnish as their mother tongue. Three of the interviewees had moved to Finland when they started working for the organization and three others work from their home countries as consultants for the organization. Theoretical content analysis was used as the analysis method. The results of the study suggest that international professional’s benefit from clear goals, roadmaps, and strategies that guide their work. These should be available in English. In addition, multicultural teams’ benefit from being able to build their own ways of working that takes multiculturalism and language barriers into account. Informal acquaintance is also useful in building trust. International colleagues had positive experiences of colleagues and supervisors who had helped them when they moved to Finland, for example. In addition, it has been important for the international experts to learn Finnish and learn about the Finnish culture. In order to build trust and commitment, it is important that the organizational culture supports the needs of multiculturalism and multilingualism, and the employees implements the culture in everyday life. The results of the study can be applied in building trust and commitment of multicultural teams.
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(2018)The focus of this research is to study the experiences that special class teachers have with students with immigrant backgrounds. The number of students with immigrant backgrounds has increased tremendously over the past few years. The statistics indicate that students that speak foreign languages end up getting special support more often than the students that are native speakers. This is especially significant, as the students with immigrant backgrounds that need special support represent a double minority, in which case their risk of exclusion is higher than in the case of the native Finns. The aim of this study is to find out what factors lie behind a student with immigrant background resulting in studying in the special class or in the flexible basic education, what is the support like and how the teachers feel in regards to its effectiveness. The goal is to also to evaluate how the teachers experience their own culture-sensitive evaluation- and behavioral patterns. The material for the research was collected by theme interviewing five special class teachers that work in the metropolitan area and the content was analyzed using content analysis. The results indicate that the reasons for studying in the special- or basic flexible education class didn’t lie only in language but that there were always other problems involved, such as problems regarding learning. The research also strengthened the idea that the students with immigrant backgrounds need special positive treatment, which for instance means differentiation and individual targeting of support. Studying in small groups was experienced as a good resource and it enabled the option of individual support. Also, the motivation of an individual student played a significant role in terms of the success of the support. Studying in special- or in the flexible basic education class might limit the student’s possibilities in second-degree postgraduate studies, as the students that study in special or JOPO-class usually continue attending a vocational school after primary school. The teacher’s experiences in their own multicultural skills varied and those teachers that felt that their skills and knowledge we good, saw that their skills came from their own personal lives rather than from their training.
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(2019)In my thesis I examined multiculturalism and how it is manifested in the work of kindergarten teachers and classroom teachers. My research questions are, firstly, how the teachers speak about multiculturalism when describing their work, and, secondly, how they describe their co-operation with multicultural families. As the surrounding society becomes increasingly multicultural, kindergartens and schools do the same. This requires teachers to be proficient in multicultural education, which puts their multicultural competence in an important role. Furthermore, multicultural education involves all children, not merely minorities. If there are structures that fail to support the multicultural kindergarten and school environment, and thereby equality on a more general level, changes should be made. For this thesis, I interviewed three kindergarten teachers and four classroom teachers. The method chosen was a narrative interview, in which the interviewees are asked to describe their experiences in a narrative form. In the narrative analysis I examine what has happened, who participated in the events, and what the speaker’s role was. The teachers experienced multiculturalism as such an integral part of their daily work that to separate it from other activities was occasionally challenging. Mainly, multiculturalism presented itself as a positive phenomenon. However, sometimes it created challenges. Respecting the child’s own cultural background was not always possible, or the teacher did not have enough knowledge of the different cultures or the families. The teachers felt it was important to listen to the child who tells about his or her culture. The problems involving language learning created the need for individualized instruction and thus added to the teachers’ workload. If the parents’ Finnish skills were poor or lacking, the amount of co-operation with them ended up decreasing. Otherwise co-operation between the schools and the families was often described positively, although building trust might have required more interaction than it would have if the family had been Finnish. Enough support and correct resources should be paramount when multicultural education is involved.
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(2018)We are saturated and surrounded by intertwined cultures, by multiculturality. Multiculturality has to do with both our individual identities and more extensively communities and societies consisting of individuals. Constant change and internal diversity are characteristics of identities and cultures. However the discussion concerning them has often a very stiff and a segregational tone to it. As a consequence we create seemingly natural distinctions between the categories generated and reconstruct an idea of "us" and "others". Diversity and the mechanisms of separation occur also in the school world. The objective of this study is to examine how teachers talk about multiculturality and what kind of meanings and implications are associated with multiculturality within this discussion. I also try to illustrate power relations both between and inside the narrational discourses and present possible rationale behind these discourses, all in the theory frame of critical pedagogics. In this qualitative study I interviewed four teachers working in the Helsinki metropolitan area. I collected the research data through theme interviews. In the analysis I used thematic analysis and discourse analytic methods. In the teachers' narrations of multiculturality a childcentric, pragmatical realistic and a natural multiculturality discourses were present. The core of the discourses was based on the division between a child-origininating and a societal frame. All the discourses created based on the data were seemingly positive, in accordance with a fair equality understanding and acceptable speaking manners. However, a deeper examination of the nuances and functions of the discourses showed hidden mechanisms creating and sustaining otherness. Due to the use of language in a way that it creates otherness, school does not appear and actualize similar to all children, as the institution sustains ethnocentric and segregation-creating reality. On the basis of the results of this study the structures and discourses determining the practises of schools should be more critically examined. Furthermore, becoming aware of this discussion should not only happen at the individual and societal level, but it also should concern the education of future teachers.
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(2015)Aim of the study. Society has become more diverse during the last decade. Tolerance is the key to today's society. Knowing cultural heritage helps to construct cultural identity. Understanding cultural heritage and cultural identity helps to understand other cultures better. Museums have an important role in cultural heritage education. Museums can offer visitors things they can relate to and identify with. In this way museums can help to construct cultural identity. The aim of this study is to find out how different cultures are taken into account in museums according to professionals. The aim is also to find out how museums can help to construct cultural identity. Methods. This study is a qualitative case study. The data was collected from two professionals in museum field. The research data was collected by individual interviews using theme interviews. Data from the interviews was analysed by qualitative content-based analysis. The data was analysed by themes utilizing the themes from the interviews. Results and conclusions. The results show that the aim in museums is to have an interactive relationship with the museums visitors. Museums have also tried to get more diverse spectrum of visitors. The professionals consider multiculturalism as an important topic. Multiculturalism and the increasing diversity of society create new challenges for museums. Multiculturalism also brings new possibilities and new perspectives. Museums have an important role in the society as an advocate of tolerance. The professionals are worried that tolerance education is not appreciated enough in the society though. Museums can increase tolerance by providing information about different cultures. It is important to provide culture for the minorities also. Professionals see that museums can support the process of constructing cultural identity. It is important that museums highlight the issues visitors can identify with.
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(2022)Finnish grade school is becoming more and more multicultural due to increasing immigration. However, according to previous studies, the structures of our education system are not equal or do not support diversity. Purpose of this thesis is to study experiences of otherness of young people with immigration background. The object of the analysis is to clarify what kind of experiences of otherness and othering young people have encountered in secondary school and in home economic classes. By opening the experiences of otherness, the dismantling of distorted value structures can be promoted. Qualitative research data were collected in December-January 2021–2022. Eight young adults with an immigrant background participated to the interviews. The young adults were from the Helsinki metropolitan area. The themes of the interviews covered the use of the concept of immigrant, identity and citizenship, racism, discrimination, as well as time in secondary school and home economic classes. The interview material was analyzed with content and thematic method. According to the study, home economic classes were perceived as pleasant, and they promoted equality. However, element where the students' backgrounds would become more visible part of education were missed. By group division in home economic classes teacher can promote mutual respect between students. The functional structure of the learning content is suitable for practicing interaction skills. Racism and discrimination in schools were found to be difficult to deal with because they are not actively talked about within school culture. According to the study, students are powerless to express the racist, discriminatory, and unfair treatment they have faced in school. The study found that the use of a concept immigrant increases young people’s sense of otherness. The young people also felt that it was difficult for the representatives of the mainstream culture to accept their identification as Finns.
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(2015)Purpose. The main purpose of this research is to find out what teacher student's of Helsinki university think about multicultural education. The goal of this research was to figure out how teacher students define multicultural education, how useful they think it is and how they define a multicultural school. Another goal was also to find out if the thoughts of those student's who had accomplished minor studies in multicultural education differed from those student's thoughts who had not had multicultural education as a minor. Methods. This research was executed by using the qualitative method. Research material was collected from teacher students of Helsinki university by using e-questionnaire. Half of the participants had had a multicultural education as a minor subject. The research material was analyzed by using research material based content analysis. Conclusions. According to my results, multicultural education was seen useful and multicultural school was seen to be much more than only student's multicultural backgrounds, equity and interaction were seen as the base of education. According to my results those teacher students, who had had multicultural education studies as their minor subject, had better and deeper understanding of the nature of multiculturalism and multicultural education than the students who hadn't had this minor and they also emphasized critical thinking.
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(2017)The objective of my research was to determine whether teachers' intercultural competence will develop by attending an open-mindedness enhancing CulturED seminar. Walter ry., an organization that has arranged workshops against discrimination and racism to young people, has found out that nearly half of all teachers say that native Finns cannot recognize the problems of multicultural students. Also, the experiences of teachers and students on whether teachers intervene in racism and discrimination sufficiently enough differ from one another in significant ways. To my phenomenographic case study, I selected CulturED seminar participants (N=11) of which six were teachers and five teacher students. The half-structured theme interviews were created for me to understand the level of personal intercultural competence before the participants participated the seminar. In addition, the participants were interviewed after the seminar. This interview was held to understand the nature of the immediate effects of the seminar on the development of intercultural competence by the participants. The research data was analyzed by using content analysis methods, both themes and trends. In addition, I collected feedback forms from all attendants (N=44). That allowed me to study the experiences of all participants when it comes to the seminar's effectiveness and to the teaching material that all participants received at the seminar. The results revealed that the CulturED seminar had an impact on the intercultural competence of the participants. After the seminar, a significant proportion of the participants showed a change in understanding their own prejudices, the effects of racism and discrimination, as well as their own operating models related to the themes. When it comes to the reliability of the research results, the small size of the sample and the personal interest in the content of the seminar were taken in to account. Based on the analysis of the feedback forms, it was discovered that the teachers experienced the provided teaching material useful for open-minded teaching. It also became apparent that there is a need for the CulturED seminar -like event in order to develop the skills related to diversity encounters.
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(2015)The meaning of home-school partnership is to support the students school achievement. Home-school partnership is defined by law and by different curriculums. Recently there has been studies of residential and school segregation. Residential segregation affects on segregation on student basis. In Helsinki, there lives more than half of the foreign language population of metropolitan area. Multiculturalism has increased significantly. Between regions there are large differences between the residents of immigrant background as well as sosio-economic status. The aim of this study is to find out teachers conception of home-school partnership in differentiated residential area. The study examines the factors that teachers feel to support to complicate the home-school partnership. In the addition, the aim is to find out how student base and neighborhood affects on home-school partnership. The study was conducted in a qualitative case study in Helsinki. This case study research data was collected by interviewing four teachers. In addition, the school social worker was also interviewed. The form of the interview was theme interview. Interview data analysis was carried out by using a theory content analysis. The teachers felt that home-school partnership was important. The factors that support home-school partnership are five-day school social worker, work phone and positive attitude towards home-school partnership with immigrant families. Teachers felt that parents passivity, language problems, as well as the differences between home and school complicated home-school partnership. Teachers and school social worker felt that the area was divided in two different areas. It can be concluded that residential are as well as student background has an impact on home-school co-operation, because student base of the school represents the areas population base.
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(2018)Aims. This study investigated to what extent servant leadership and new job demands are associated with employees’ workaholism and work-related self-efficacy. The job demands and resources (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) was used as the theoretical framework of the study. The job demands included challenges related to multiple venues of work, work time extending to free time, and challenges related to multiculturalism at the work place. Servant leadership was investigated as a job resource. Previously it has been found that servant leadership is positively associated with well-being in the workplace. However, there have been contradictory results about the impacts of new job demands. Following the JD-R model, we hypothesized that servant leadership is positively associated with self-efficacy and new job demands are positively associated with workaholism. Methods. This study is a part of an occupational health study, in which employees (N = 1415) from three big organizations participated. The participants filled in a questionnaire concerning workaholism, work-related self-efficacy, and job demands and resources. The data was analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis. Results and conclusions. The results showed that work time extending to free-time, challenges relate to multiculturality, and servant leadership were positively associated with workaholism, but multiple venues of work did not predict workaholism. Servant leadership was positively, and challenges of multiculturality were negatively associated with work-related self-efficacy. Servant leadership also buffered against the negative impact of multiculturality challenges on self-efficacy. As a conclusion, the servant leadership appears to be a good social resource that can be useful for organizations. In addition, there should be open conversations in organizations about the new job demands, in order to prevent workaholism and promote work-related self-efficacy.
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(2018)This research focuses on educators’ perceptions and views about diversity. I am interested in how educators perceive diversity when working in day care centers. That is to say how they act in reality. In addition I want to examine what kind of perceptions educators form together in discussions about diversity. Previous studies have shown that the diversity of the Finnish society doesn’t affect the learning environment in early childhood education. Studies have also shown that educators need more education and training to improve their intercultural competence so that they are able to work with diverse children and families. This research is qualitative. The data was collected by using two methods. The data was mainly collected by observing. Observation was made in nine day care centers in different child groups during three months’ time. The observation was partly made by participant ob-servation. The data was transcribed and it was all together 60 pages. The data was analyzed by content analysis. The other method was focus group discussion. There were three group discussions with two educators in each. The data was transcribed literally (16 pages). The data was analyzed by dialogical analysis of multivoicedness. The main three perceptions about diversity that emerged from observing were: organizing the education and activities, implementing activities in practice and educators’ perceptions about their daily work. About half of the educators saw that children have different needs. They worked in small groups and had lot of interaction with children. The other half saw that same pedagogy suits all children. Some of the educators had difficulties to see multilingualism of children and their families as natural. The results of the group discussions showed that the educators’ perceptions about diversity were very sensitive. They also payed attention to meet children’s needs. The results show that educators’ perceptions in practice differ a lot. In theory all educators’ were sensitive and understanding to diversity. The results also show that there is urgent need for training in order to gain more proficiency in intercultural competence.
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(2020)The main purpose of this research is to observe the home economics teachers in comprehensive school as multicultural educators. The goal of this research was to clarify how the home economics teachers experience multiculturalism in their work and how multicultural education can be included in home economics lessons. The Finnish society becomes more multicultural all the time and the teachers are working with the diverse groups of pupils every day. The teachers’ multicultural skills are important especially in the home economics class where students learn new information and skills for their own life and home. This research has a qualitative method. The research material was collected by using the theme interview method. Seven home economics teachers who work in different comprehensive schools took part in the interviews and all the interviews were carried out in January 2020. Three different themes were handled during the interviews. The themes were derived from the research questions in this study. The themes were teaching and multiculturalism, home economics teachers work and multiculturalism along with diversity in school’s everyday life. The interview recordings were transcribed word for word and analyzed using the content analysis. According to my results, multiculturalism enriches the home economics lessons in comprehensive schools. The discussions about food, cooking and eating create good opportunities to learn something new about diverse cultures and tolerance. Home economics teachers strive for equality when meeting the students in the home economics classroom and try to teach tolerance during the lessons. According to this research, the challenges with multiculturalism are mostly connected with students’ weak knowledge of the Finnish language. Home economics teachers consider warm and approving atmosphere in the home economics classroom very important. The home economics teachers’ own multicultural skills increase especially when working with diverse students and outside the school through their own experiences and interests.
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(2015)Background and aim. Bilingualism is a worldwide and old phenomenon. It is also a current topic in speech therapy. Bilingualism can be defined in many ways, for example by the age when a person has been exposed to his/her languages. Bilingual children are common clients in Finnish speech therapy field due to increased immigration. When evaluating the linguistic skills of a bilingual child the speech therapist might need to co-operate with an interpreter. In this research the aim was to identify how the SLT's feel the co-operance with the interpreters in evaluation situations. There is only few former studies about this subject, especially in Finland. Some studies have been made to examine the co-operation of the interpreter and another healthcare provider. In this study we also asked if there are some typical challenges in the co-operation and could something be done to develop this liaison. Methods. In this study 12 SLT's were interviewed. They worked in the capital area of Finland. I contacted the leading SLT's to recruit the examinees. The SLT's had been working 2-34 years and they all had evaluated bilingual children in co-operation with an interpreter. The semistructured interview material was gathered and transcribed in the autumn 2014. After transcribing the material was separated into four main themes for reporting the results. Results and discussion. Co-operation between SLT and interpreter shows out to be working mainly fine. Typical challenge mentioned is for example achieving a natural interaction. There are still some lacks in the language skills of the interpreters and the SLT's hope to develop the co-operation with a better guidance (also in the training program of logopedics) and diverse co-operation opportunities. The SLT's seem to appreciate interpreters' social skills, language proficiency, natural interaction with children and flexibility in diverse therapy situations.
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(2018)The study examines sensitivity in the everyday interactive situations with multicultural children under 3 years of age in early childhood educational context. The research problem focuses on figuring out in which ways sensitivity occurs and what are the contextual factors related to sensitive and non-sensitive situations. Sensitivity refers to early childhood educator’s ability to detect and take into account the emotional needs of the child (Laevers according to Kalliala, 2008). The study was conducted in collaboration with the University of Helsinki LASSO project and a kindergarten in Helsinki, where the research material was collected by videorecording three early childhood educators and two children in their everyday life at the kindergarten. The research material was colleted between the late autumn 2014 to early spring 2015. The qualitative data were analysed by utilizing theory-driven approach. The basis of the analysis is in AES (adult engagement scale) and especially the sensitivity part of the scale, as well as EA (emotional availability) scale. LIS-YC scale was also used in observation of children (Kalliala, 2008). The results showed that sensitivity is a small part of everyday interactive situations. Differences in results were seen in the quality of the interaction. The majority of the interaction with the first participant was neutral, and more than half of the interactions were sensitive. In contrast, only half of the other participant’s interaction was neutral, and also half was non-sensitive. The differences were also found in the ways in which the sensitive and non-sensitive situations appeared in the participants' everyday life. For the first participant, the sensitivity was constructive, and adults made huge efforts to interact with the child. The insensitive moments were not numerous, but they could not be classified as accidental. The second one’s sensitive moments were supportive in nature but relatively rare. Insensitive situations were somewhat accidental, and for some reason, educators failed to notice the child’s needs. Based on the results, a study related to sensitivity between educators and children comparing Finnish and multicultural children would be important to conduct.
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