Browsing by Subject "toimijuuden modaliteetit"

The aim of the study. This study's focus is on children's agency. The aim is to clarify which modalities of agency are manifested in children's speech, how children describe their life and experiences with the help of the modalities and how children use portfolios as an aid in the interviews. This study is based on the sociocultural view of learning in which it is seen that learning is tied to interaction with others in a specific cultural context and that cultural artefacts are used in all learning processes. Children's agency has been a central interest in educational sciences as it is seen to be an important element in all learning endeavours. Jyrkämä's (2008) theory of the modalities of agency serves as a theoretical tool to understand the different elements of a person's agency. The modalities are to know how, to feel, be able to, have to, to have the possibility and to want. In earlier studies it has been shown that documents of children's lives can serve as a tool for them to discuss their agency in wide variety. Methods. This study was conducted in a day care centre in Helsinki by interviewing six six-year-old children individually. The children were interviewed in December 2016 and in January 2017. Thematic portfolios that were collected from mainly adult led activities during the children's earlier year in day care were the subject of the discussions with children. The analysis of the data was conducted using content analysis method. Main results. The results show that all the modalities of agency were prominent in the children's speech, but the amount varied according to the modality and between children. The modality of knowing how was most manifested as children spoke mostly of what they had done or what they knew. The modality of to feel and to be able to could also be seen widely. The modality of To feel was attached mostly to what children appreciated and to be able to the fact that children weren't able to remember what the pictures were connected to. Children used the portfolios as an aid in their interaction in different ways. Mostly they used pointing to different elements to name them and to clarify their message. Documents of children's lives can give a good base for discussing children's experiences and for supporting children's agency. The discussions are dependent on the contents of the portfolio. For the documents to have more meaning to children, it would be important to document experiences that are important to children, involve them in the whole documentation process and use the documents as a base for discussions with children.