Browsing by Subject "palaute"

Writing is one of the most important skills learned in school. Studies have indicated that pupils' writing skills need improvement which evokes to observe the practices of teaching writing. This thesis contemplates the teaching of writing from the feedback's point of view. The goal of my thesis is to find out what kind of conceptions the sixth-graders have about the feedback they receive from writing and how pupils describe the meaning and effectiveness of feedback. Research type was qualitative study. Data was gathered from three different classes by using method of empathy-based stories. Data consists of 69 pupils empathy-based stories that deals with response given from the opinion essays. Material was analysed by using qualitative theory-guided content analysis. Study indicated that according to pupils' stories feedback wasn't given until the text was finished. Response consisted mainly of text evaluation. In the pupils' stories the response was given verbally and in writing generally by classmates and the teacher. Besides the content of the text and pupils working effort, the feedback was often focused on opinions in the text. When feedback was given by the classmates it was sometimes targeted at the pupil receiving the response and contained inappropriate features such as mocking. Empathy-based stories showed that feedback clearly had a meaning but experience of the feedback may consist of many different factors. In the story conceptions and expectations considering the feedback had the most influence on pupil's experience. In most cases feedback had an effect on pupil's experience at emotional level. In the stories feedback was also seen to have an influence on future writing, pupil's self-esteem, conception of feedback and person giving it. The results showed that the pupils have lots of resources to reflect the quality of the feedback and its meaning for the writer. According to the stories the benefit of feedback was tangential from the writings point of view and the idea of giving feedback was in accordance with conventional evaluative feedback. I think the results support the idea that feedback should be more firm part of the actual writing process. The person receiving the feedback should be more active and the pupils' aptitudes to utilize the feedback should be supported more.

Goals: There are different kinds of textual genres read, written and interpreted in school. This is to improve students' literacy skills and prepare them to operate with all kinds of genres. The genre that the students often are the most familiar with is a narrative. Lots of narratives are written in school hence a teacher often evaluates and gives feedback on them. Evaluation and feedback are not always easy tasks which is why it is important to develop pedagogic tools that offer help in this area. The purpose of this master's thesis was to create a feedback model for analyzing the overall structure of narratives and the complexity of storytelling. The first goal, however, was to find out what kind of a genre a narrative is according to a fifth grader's sense of genre. Secondly, the aim was to examine how does the complexity of storytelling appear in the narratives written by the fifth graders since the complexity of storytelling has a relation to the overall improvement of storytelling skills. The theoretic framework of this thesis is related to the research on genre, on writing and also on narratives. Methods: The data of the thesis consisted of 47 written narratives. The data was collected in two different classes in a project called Rohkaisukeskeinen kirjoittamisinterventio in 2011. This qualitative study utilized features from several research traditions including design-based research, systemic functional linguistics and qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions: Following phases were found in the narratives: orientation, initiating event, sequent events, resolution and evaluation and dialogue. According to the fifth graders' sense of genre it seems that these phases are essential in a narrative. In the analysis both temporal and causal connections of the narratives were studied in order to examine the complexity of storytelling. Also attention was paid to the implications of reaching a goal. The narratives were classified into scale from 1 to 7 in which the level 7 means that the storytelling is the most complex. On the level 4 there were 12 narratives. On the levels 5, 6 and 7 there were 22 stories altogether and on the levels from 1 to 3 altogether 13. The findings indicate that implying goal direction has stronger influence on the complexity than causal or temporal connections. The length of the story does not seem to be unambiguous factor when it comes to the complexity of storytelling. The feedback model for analyzing narratives presented is based both on the analysis and the previous research.

The aim of this study is to examine parents’ learning-related mindsets and parental praise in two different neighbourhoods. The framework for this study comes from Carol Dweck’s (1999, 2006) mindset theory which proposes that people hold different implicit beliefs about the malleability of human attributes, such as intelligence and giftedness. The characteristic of human nature is the capability to change and grow. A person with a growth mindset believes that qualities are malleable and can be developed over time, but having a fixed mindset, core qualities are perceived as built in and fixed by nature. This research context centres around the findings of increased social segregation and differentiation in education across families, and hence concern about educational equality. Mindsets develop in the environment where people grow up, most notably at school and home. Previous research has established that parents’ implicit beliefs about learning play an essential role in child’s development, and parental praise is a significant vehicle to support the implicit beliefs of children and improve learning. The data of this quantitative case study (N = 693) was collected with a questionnaire during the years 2016–2017 as part of a Copernicus research project. K-means clustering was used to form intelligence and giftedness mindset groups and differences between groups were analysed using Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis -tests. Based on exploratory factor analysis, the different ways of parental praise were compared with Mann-Whitney U tests and linear regression analysis was utilized to identify how given feedback is related to parents’ mindsets. Cronbach alpha was used to evaluate the internal reliability of the sums of variables. The results indicated that there were significant differences between the mindsets that caregivers hold and groups of fixed, growth and mixed mindset were found. Intelligence is perceived as a more malleable trait than giftedness among parents. This study also revealed gender and socioeconomic differences in mindsets. Four ways of parental praise were discovered: neutral, process, person and luck praise. The parents were more likely to adopt neutral and process praise, but differences between schools were also found. Parents’ growth mindset indicates at least partially given process praise and luck praise is explained by fixed mindset. Findings suggest that parents might not know how to actualize their growth mindset in process-focused praise.

This thesis analyzed interaction and learning in simulation debriefing. Simulation usage has increased in the social and health care during the last years, and the new technology has given more opportunities to use high-fidelity simulations more widely. Simulations enable a new way for students to learn different kinds of patient situations in the real life and in work-based environments that are still completely safe. The investments are expensive and create discussion in universities whether these simulations can create the learning they are supposed to create. The research focused on simulation debriefing is an essential phase in simulation learning. The research approach drew on adults learning theories as well as on simulation and debriefing research. The approach is based on socio-constructivist understanding on learning and on studentcentered teaching (Engeström 1982; Miettinen 1993), which represents criticism towards traditional classroom teaching and introduces the concept of learning activity. From these theoretical starting points emerged three key learning concepts, interaction, feedback and reflection. The research questions were: 1. How is the interaction of the debriefing constructed? 2. What kind of feedback by peer students and by the instructors and 3. what kind of reflection takes place during the debriefing? The data was collected from one simulation center's simulation day in the Southern Finland University of Applied Sciences. The data includes one simulation group's (9 students and 2 instructors) all five videotaped debriefing situations. The analysis was both data and learning theory driven, and both qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied. The results indicate that debriefings interaction was led by the instructors, and was based on a question–answer dynamics. The analysis found three different kinds of peer feedback types, four instructors' feedback types and five self-reflection types. Both the peer and instructor feedback were mostly positive encouragement. Students' self-reflection was mostly reflecting on the confusion caused by the simulation. . Clinical skills were emphasized in both feedback and self-reflection. It can be concluded that debriefing's script and the way it is used leads and restricts the interaction. The script should be developed to be more dialogical. Especially the form and meaning of peer feedback should be critically considered. The peer feedback remained quite superficial, whereas instructors' feedback has a clear impact on students' constructive self-reflection. The instructors' cultivation of constructive criticism would best enhance the students' learning.