Browsing by Subject "narratiivinen tutkimus"

The goal of the “new paradigm” in childhood studies and specifically child perspective research is to bring the child into the center of producing information regarding their lives. Various methods based on oral storytelling are considered appropriate for presenting such things that children consider meaningful. Using visual methods aims at increasing children's possibilities in self-expression within the means of the research. From these premises I designed a child perspective narrative study, meant to chart the fourth grader's experience of the school forest. However, new and more acute research problems arose from the data produced in the study: How has the research setting limited, or on the other hand, made possible what is being told? What is expected from the listener for the stories to be heard? 22 4th graders participated in the study in the spring of 2016, and were presented with the question: "What would you like to share with the researcher about the school forest?". To begin with their stories the pupils first photographed the school forest. Photo-elicitated narrative interviews were then conducted with each participant. The material was interpreted by means of narrative analysis, making use of the small stories approach. Reaching the “narrative space” within the research was challenging for the participants. The dominant form of expression was “showing” instead of narrating, or giving narrow descriptions of what is there in the forest: trees, stones, sticks. The narrative quality of the interviews was largely fragile. This resulted in the children's own school forest experience remaining rather distant. Reflexive thinking of the context of the narration, such as the research setting and being in school, brought out several factors prohibiting the narrative space from opening up, such as insufficient informing and the overriding of an explicit consent from the child. So called counter stories within the data were two stories, in which the children's subjective school forest experiences were celebrated. The narrative space was made possible by an inclusive interview interaction. The results of the study can be applied in the planning of ethically solid child oriented research, in which the child's own consent is given the weight it deserves and the challenges of conducting a research in school are consciously met. This is how the potential of children’s free narrating is more likely to flourish.

Purpose. According to previous research there are many factors, for example physical environment, family and friends, that affect being physically active and forming a physically active lifestyle during childhood and adolescence. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the physical activity path of three young adults and research, which factors have affected to its forming. This study shows how physical activity has formed and struck root in the participants’ lives. Methods. The study involved three young adults who have a physically active lifestyle. The data were collected during the spring of the year 2017 by the giving participants a task in which they needed to draw a graph depicting physical activity during their lifetimes and by interviewing them. The interviews were supplemented afterwards via email. Everyone’s personal narrative, physical activity path, was formed from the interview data. The data was analyzed with a plot analysis, which is typical for narrative research, and by comparing it to previous research. Results and conclusion. Every participant has an own physical acitivity path. However, the backgrounds of two participants are quite similar compared to the third one. These two have been physically very active during their whole lives and they had been supported and guided to be physically active in many ways. They have also had plenty of positive experiences and experiences of success in physical activities. The third participant wasn’t physically active during her childhood and her family didn’t exercise. However, in the fifth grade she started to take dance lessons and in secondary school she had an encouraging PE teacher and she started to enjoy physical activity. Her physical self-esteem also rose. The joy and sociality of physical activity were repeated in every three stories. Other factors that are associated to physical activity and formation of physically active lifestyle are also realized in participants’ lives. This study shows that many kinds of physical activity paths can lead to the formation of a physically active lifestyle.

The purpose of this narrative study is to ascertain how kindergarten teachers perceive their pedagogical responsibility in the context of the distributed organization and how they feel their responsibilities have changed expertise in the development of the over time. Changes in the social environment and the shift towards an increasingly distributed organization model in early childhood education are reflected in to need to review and redefine the pedagogical responsibility of the kindergarten teacher. The aim of the study is to define kindergarten teacher's pedagogical responsibility in a postmodern society and to describe its evolution in the wake of the changing nature of the expertise in question of kindergarten teaching. The study analysed views regarding the pedagogical responsibility from the perspective of different teacher generations. The three generations that became apparent from the study were the generation that witnessed the expansion of children's day care outside the home, the experienced early childhood educators, and the latest generation of early childhood educators who are at the beginning of their career. The theoretical framework for the study is formed by research into both kindergarten teacher expertise and distributed organization. The data included eleven (11) kindergarten teacher's diaries. The data was analysed using the methods of structural narrative analysis (Labov 1967) and content analysis. The data acquisition and analysis methods support the objective in narrative research, which is to "give a voice" to the target group of the research. The research findings show that kindergarten teachers have a clear and structured understanding of pedagogical responsibility and the area of its content that falls under their remit. The evolution of pedagogical responsibility is an on going process, affected by personal characteristics as well as societal and particularly early childhood educators at the beginning of their careers felt a lack of confidence in taking pedagogical responsibility in relation to the other members of their team. Kindergarten teachers voiced a wish that directors of day care centers and the organisation would lend their support to their professional development and to carrying out their pedagogical responsibility. The research findings highlighted the importance of pedagogical leadership as a precondition for high-quality early childhood education. The pedagogical responsibility of kindergarten teachers was studied investigated in the present study exclusively in relation to each kindergarten teacher's own team. However, the shift towards shared pedagogical leadership may be deemed a necessary developmental path in the distributed early childhood education organisation.

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of three Finnish volunteer teachers in developing countries. Specific point of interest was to understand the functions of volunteer learning experiences in developing teacher identities. The objective of the study is to understand the possibilities of personal and professional growth that international volunteer teaching can provide. In this study, identity was seen as socially constructed narratives (Sfard & Prusak 2005). Learning was considered the bridge between actual and designated teacher identities. Teachers' professional growth was seen as interplay between developing the teacher's personal identity, professional identity and collective identity (Heikkinen 2001). This study follows constructivist theories' conception of knowledge as socially and subjectively constructed. A narrative approach defines the study as a whole. The research method applied was a combination of autobiographical narrative interview (Schütze 2005) and a semi-structured interview. The subjects were three Finnish teachers who all had taken part in an international volunteering program for six months. The collected data was analysed using Polkinghorne's (2005) analysis of narratives and narrative analysis. Analysis of narratives was utilised in categorizing the teachers' learning experiences. Narrative analysis then was applied to construct a new narrative: a typical story of the functions of international volunteering in teacher identity development. The teachers' learning experiences through volunteering were substantial and strongly linked to the teacher's personal background. The learning experiences were categorized as follows: 1) adapting in a new country, 2) working in the school community, 3) facing challenging situations in teaching and 4) cultural encounters. All categories except for the first one were linked to teacher identity development in the teachers' narratives. Learning experiences were utilized in two ways: realizing designated identities and creating new ones. International volunteering can support teachers' professional growth, but learning experiences are not linked to professional identities automatically without reflection. For the organizations providing international volunteering opportunities, it is important to identify the reflexive nature of volunteering and be organized in guiding teachers to reflect their experiences.

The purpose of this thesis was to describe mistakes occurring in daycare and the emotions they evoke, as well as how these mistakes are reported to outsiders. Mistakes occurring at work have raised internationally steady amounts of attention throughout the entire 2000s. Earlier studies have mainly focused on the best ways to avoid mistakes or to learn from them, as well as on factors that predispose to mistakes and failures. However, there are very few Finnish studies on this topic. Additionally, earlier studies have mainly ignored the individual view; thoughts and emotions in a situation where a worker makes a mistake. This thesis investigates the types of narratives told about mistakes. Further, the emotions perceivable in these stories are mapped together with how these narratives reflect the thoughts of alternatives to reality. In research publications, the latter is called counterfactual thinking. The material was collected and analysed using a narrative research method. For this thesis, six former or present daycare workers were interviewed, each of them twice. The first interview was a narrative one, and the second one a semi-structured one. The actual material comprised 18 narratives, each one describing a particular situation where a mistake was made by the interviewee or his or her coworker. Narrative analysis was used to analyse various reporting styles, the emotional expressions used in them and the counterfactual thinking. Through reporting styles and counterfactual thinking it was possible to detect five different types of narratives the daycare workers used for reporting mistakes. These types of narratives were qualitatively different depending on whether the reported mistake was made by the person himself or herself or by a coworker. The types of narratives were judgmental, evasive, learning, polishing and what if reports.

Aims. Education students create their paths to working life in an insecure and complicated environment. Their journey throughout education studies involves many choices, that are significant in terms of their future career. In this narrative study I review the paths of educational scientists to working life from the perspective of human agency. Agency is understood in this study from a temporal perspective. Method. This study was conducted with narrative methods. I collected the data during fall 2018 by narrative interviews. During those interviews seven educational scientists revealed their paths to working life. I analyzed the stories by means of narrative analysis. As a result, a new story, that reflects the educational scientist´s path to working life was constructed. To finish off with I examined the stories of the interviewees and the story I reconstructed from the perspective of human agency. Results and conclusions. The result of this study was a story that reflects the path of educational scientist´s to working life. The story consisted of four phases: (1.) the beginning of the story, (2.) the rise of uncertainties and anxieties, (3.) the discovery of one´s own direction and letting go of the past and (4.) the end of the story. Different time horizons were present in the story and the future was the most preeminent time horizon in all of the phases. The stories of the interviewees could be understood as stories about the construction and structuring of professional identity. The stories proceeded through the feelings of uncertainty and anxiety to discovering of one´s own direction, happiness and confidence. This study also reflected the way people construct their life paths in their stories. The stories of the interviewees built up a story of overcoming difficulties, where the journey included uncertainties and challenges, but where the result was worth of all the trouble.

The aim of the study was to research those factors that strengthen employees’ work en-gagement or threaten to maintain or develop it in the context of work change. Theoretical back-ground consisted of job demands and resources model developed by Demerouti et al. and Deci’s and Ryan’s self-determination theory. Previous research show that work engagement is strengthened by job resources. Job demands and weakened job resources, in turn, appear to be a threat to main-tained or developed work engagement. The focus of the study is on job resources and other possible factors that strengthen employees’ work engagement or threaten its development or maintenance. The context of work change is strongly linked to digitalisation and the effects of it. The study exam-ines the factors that strengthen work engagement and threaten its development or maintenance emerging from employee narratives. Eight narrative interviews were implemented in autumn 2018. In addition, the study ap-plied the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) to measure the amount of employees’ work en-gagement. The material was analyzed by narrative methods in the form of thematic narrative analy-sis and expectation analysis. In this study, the elements of work engagement appeared in line with the previous research and the theoretical framework. Job resources strengthened work engagement, while resource depletion and emerged demands hampered the maintenance and development of it. Expectation analysis showed that fulfilled positive expectations and unfulfilled negative expecta-tions strengthened work engagement indirectly through job resources. Unfulfilled positive expecta-tions and fulfilled negative expectations, in turn, led to resource depletion and emerged demands further undermining the development and maintenance of work engagement. Depending on job re-sources, job demands, and expectations, the changes in work appeared to be a resource that strengthens work engagement or a threat to its development and maintenance.