Browsing by Subject "vaikuttaminen"

Objectives: In my thesis, I studied the fourth, the fifth and the sixth graders views about the conceptions of the influence at school. In the thesis it was also surveyed what kind of matters the pupils wanted to influence at school. Furthermore, it was studied what kind of influencing skills pupils thought they have. The theory part of the thesis consisted in an overview to the children's and youth's different kind of needs for participation as well as an overview to the curriculum system which forms the base of the school work was studied. In addition, in the theory part of the thesis the democracy expressed at school and the awakening of the children's interest in civic matters were studied. Methods: The thesis was a survey-research and structured questionnaires were used when information was collected. The research group consisted of 112 pupils who studied at the fourth, the fifth and the sixth grades in the primary school situated in the Southern part of Finland. The data was analyzed with the quantitative research program SPSS. At first different numbers such as averages and standard deviations were examined and after that factor analyses were used. Correlation examination was also used. Results and conclusions: The results showed that the pupils had a positive image about their own influencing skills and they trusted their own opinions. They felt that it was important to have influence on they own matters as well as on the common matters at school. However many of the pupils felt that they didn't have possibilities to influence what happens at school during the school day. In addition, the pupils didn't want the teachers or the headmaster to decide solely how the work at school was carried out. The things that the pupils wanted to influence the most were the lunch and the snack at school, the seating arrangement in the classroom, the visits carried out at school and the optional subjects. According to the results it's possible to draw a conclusion that the pupils' participation at school is necessary. The pupils value the possibilities to take part in and seem to understand that it is needed them to contribute themselves so that it is possible to enjoy more the time spend at school. It's also possible to draw a conclusion that although the possibilities to participate are valued there is a lack of real enthusiasm to participate. This is why it seems that there is a need for different kinds of ways to participate since the current ways to participate at school lack to motivate many pupils. Also the work of student body needs to be improved since many of the pupils didn't want to participate to the work of student body although they thought the work done by the student body was important.

The aim of this study is to examine the communication ethics of lobbying from the perspective of lobbyists. Lobbying is a constantly growing phenomenon but has not been paid much attention to in speech communication. Most of the previous studies on lobbying have emphasized the perspective of politicians or other "recipients" of lobbying. Lobbying can be defined as professional and interpersonal persuasive communication that aims to influence the opinions or attitudes of others. Usually the main objective of lobbying is to affect the political decision making process. Lobbying involves communication in different types of contexts and relations. Interpersonal communication that aims to influence or persuade others should always be examined with ethical sensitivity. As there are no formal rules or code of ethics in Finland for lobbying, the ethics of the profession rely essentially on lobbyists themselves. Lobbying is an important part of democracy and therefore it is important to address the issue of communication ethics in lobbying. The focus of this study is on understanding the different ethical dimensions of the communication in lobbying. The data of this research was collected by interviewing nine lobbyists. In the interviews the informants described their experiences of professional lobbying. Two main themes were found in these descriptions: the relationships and ethical values guiding the communication. These main themes were divided into six other ethical dimensions of lobbying: 1) disclosure and transparency, 2) honesty, 3) credibility, 4) agreeing with the core message, 5) personal relationships and 6) mutual responsibility. The results indicate that the diversity of lobbying communication makes it possible to view the ethics of lobbying from multiple perspectives. The results had very much in common with the previous literature on ethical communication but also pointed out the demand for further research. It was concluded that the values guiding ethical lobbying, such as disclosure and transparency, were considered as commonly shared values. The data also suggests that ethical lobbying is based on the idea of communication as a dialogue.