Browsing by Subject "vuorovaikutusanalyysi"

Tiivistelmä - Referat – Abstract Aims. The aim of this study was to film, analyse and describe what kind of observations children make during voluntary outdoor play. Previous research suggests that playing in a natural environment is associated with environmentally friendly attitudes. Observation has been recognized as the most important skill in early childhood science. The research questions were: (1) What kind of observations do children make in voluntary outdoor play, (2) How is the observation in voluntary outdoor play related to science education? The results of this study can be used in the planning of educational activities, where the aim is to strengthen the child's observation skills as part of activities that support the goals of science education. Methods. The study was a qualitative case study. The material consisted of 119 minutes and 56 seconds of video footage of the outdoor play of a southern Finnish pre-school group. A total of 24 episodes were located from the material in which children made observations. Episodes were analysed using multimodal interaction analysis. Results and conclusions. Especially testing as part of making observations was rich and varied. Therefore, it could be concluded that the frameworks and elements provided by nature support children’s ability to make observations from the perspective of science education. With the help of this study, it could be demonstrated that the children showed emotions in connection with the making of observations, which was evident in e.g. as a commitment to action. Commitment to the action could be concluded to be related to focusing. In this study, children gave new meanings to the play equipment they used. In conclusion, it could be argued that imaginative situations give rise to situations in which observations were made and thus are favourable moments for using other science process skills as well. Regarding questioning in children’s communication, the result of this study was that questions always gave rise to other aspects of making observations such as experimentation, descriptioning or interpretation. However, the findings did not lead children to use other science process skills. From this it can be concluded that adult support as a supporter of science education and science play is essential.

Aim. During the last decade, there has been a lot of discussion about agency as a part of children’s lives in and out of school. Agency has even become one of the priorities of Finnish education in the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education. Still, the definition of agency remains ambiguous, even contradictory; there is no univocal way to define the phenomenon. One way to conceptualise agency is to view it as an individual’s (or group’s) ability to influence on their life circumstances and practices in which they are involved (Rainio, 2010). Rainio has identified dialectical contradictions in supporting students’ agentive participation in education. One such contradictory dimension is between agency and control in educational relationships. It is important that teachers find ways to balance with this dialectics to enable pupils to practice their agency in the pressures of school’s structure, rules and other educational aims. The aim of this study is to find and specify the ways in which the teacher can, by employing certain interaction and pedagogical techniques, give pupils’ agency an opportunity to be realised in the context of phenomenon based learning in special education (see also Lipponen & Kumpulainen, 2011; Rainio, 2010). Methodology. Qualitative video research was utilised as the method of research in this study. The data of this research was collected by videotaping phenomenon based learning in class of special education. At the time of taping there were eight pupils and one special education teacher present. In this study 7 h 54 min of videotape was analysed using interaction analysis. The aim of the analysis was to identify all the episodes in which the teachers was enabling pupil agency. These episodes were then compared with each other to identify the common interactional patterns employed by the teacher. Results and conclusion. Five different ways of enabling student agency were identified in this study: making pupils accountable authors, active positioning, recognising and appreciating ideas and contributions, sharing authority and transferring authority. The results were parallel to what Lipponen and Kumpulainen (2011) have reported as empowering agency of pre-service teachers. The results indicate that it is important to enable every pupil to participate in the teaching event in a way that supports the empowerment of their agency by taking into account their own level of development as well. By doing so the teacher is developing pupils’ agency and empowering their ability to make a difference in their own life. This is a particularly significant observation in terms of integrated pupils with special needs. The explicated examples in this study give teachers practical tools to enable and empower pupils’ agency in everyday life at schools.