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According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Covid-19 pandemic has had a serious psychological impact on individuals. This also applies to teachers. Previous studies have also shown that 57% of teachers are considering changing their professions, which is partly because their well-being has been deteriorating. Positive psychology, in turn, has received more attention when it comes to students' well-being. The aim of this study is to investigate what role positive psychology can play in the promotion of teachers' well-being, with a specific focus on the well-being after the COVID-19 pandemic. Six (6) teachers in basic education in Finland participated in the study. They were interviewed through semi-structured interviews. The interviews were taped, transcribed and analyzed through a hermeneutic analysis method. The results showed that all teachers were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and distance learning, although not all of them thought so themselves. What affected the teachers the most was the lack of social interaction and loneliness that the pandemic brought. The results also showed that the teachers in this study had good practices when it came to promoting their own well-being. These methods can be classified as methods belonging to positive psychology. Although teachers did not have good knowledge of what the concept of positive psychology means, these methods were used unconsciously.

International policy documents (FN (UN), 1989; WHO & BZgA, 2010, 2013; WAS, 2014; UNESCO, 2018) recommend that children should receive age-appropriate sexuality education, but it is unclear whether this is fulfilled in practice. There is relatively little research on sexuality education for younger students. Therefore, it is relevant to research how sexuality education for younger students is delivered. The purpose of this study is to describe how sexuality education is delivered in grades 1-2 in Finland and to examine teachers’ attitudes towards sexuality education for younger students. In this study I would like to draw attention to the potential of the Finnish curriculum when it comes to sexuality education. Five teachers, who at the time of the study taught grades 1-2 in Finnish primary schools, participated in this study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews that were recorded, transcribed, and analysed with thematic analysis. The results found that teachers had difficulties defining sexuality education. Teachers taught sexuality education across subjects, spontaneously and sometimes also unconsciously. Teachers need help defining what sexuality education is and what themes are to be addressed. Sexuality education should be made an evident part of the subject environmental studies in the Finnish curriculum. This can hopefully encourage teachers to teach sexuality education. The sexuality education was not really planned, evaluated, or developed in any of the schools. This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. Local plans for sexuality education should be written. The teachers had generally positive attitudes towards sexuality education for younger students, but in some situations sexuality education could be perceived as a difficult subject. Several of the teachers showed interest in promoting diversity and equal treatment in their teaching. This study failed in providing any deeper insight into how teachers work with norms in sexuality education.

The penetration of digital media has had a big impact on life in modern society. The new national core curriculums for the Finnish basic education and general upper secondary education (from year 2014 and 2015) are therefore emphasizing the importance of media literacy for practicing one's citizenship. On the basis of John Dewey, social scientist and pedagogue, the aim of this study is to examine a group of Swedish speaking teachers' perception of the media education responsibility of schools. Furthermore, the aim is to review these teachers' experiences of taking part in the media education project Yle Nyhetsskolan. The research questions are: How do the teachers understand the media literacy responsibility of the schools? Besides Yle Nyhetsskolan, how do the teachers conduct media education and what are the challenges? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the project Yle Nyhetsskolan? Eight teachers, from five different basic or general upper secondary schools in the Swedish speaking part of Finland, participated in the study. All teachers had taken part in the project Yle Nyhetsskolan during year 2014. They were interviewed, based on a semi-structured model and open questions. A phenomenological approach was applied and the answers were transcribed and analyzed in three stages. The answers were categorized in order to describe the essence of the teachers' reflections. The teachers had an evident engagement for media literacy and an understanding of the importance of developed media skills in the digital society of today. The teachers found it challenging to define and integrate media literacy education and they urged for more time and shared responsibilities among colleagues. The lack of time, pedagogical tools and technical skills form the main challenges for media literacy education. There is a need for teachers training, especially focusing on pedagogical methods for integrating media literacy in the education. The teachers found the project Yle Nyhetsskolan to be authentic, exciting and rewarding. Taking part in the project was, on the other hand, challenging because projects do not always fit into the non-flexible school day and because news as a genre is difficult, to both teachers and students. Yle Nyhetsskolan should be developed into a project with an even lower threshold concerning both timescale and desired result.

Goals. The writing performance level of Finnish schoolchildren, especially of boys, has been an area of concern over the past few years. The present study is part of a longitudinal intervention study (RoKKi), which has created an encouraging feedback model for trying to find ways to enhance writing skills. Research has shown that writing self-efficacy and writing performance are related, so this study will examine whether the encouraging feedback model will improve the self- efficacy of the students. A central element of the encouraging feedback model is peer feedback. The idea is that the pupils feel that attention is being paid to what they have written. Pupil experience has not figured significantly as an issue in writing research, so this study will tackle that subject as well. Methods. The study was carried out in three 5th-grade classes between autumn 2011 and autumn 2012. The established class had already used the encouraging feedback model before the study, while the treatment class started to use it at the beginning of the intervention. In the control class, the teacher gave feedback according to a more traditional manner. The data consists of four measures of self-efficacy and writing experience. They were analysed using one-way ANOVA, repeated measures ANOVA, t-tests and the equivalent nonparametric tests. Results and conclusions. The encouraging intervention didn't have a statistically significant effect on the self-efficacy beliefs of the 5th-graders. However, the self-efficacy in the established class was higher and the writing experiences were statistically significantly higher than in the other two classes. In the established class, the experiences remained positive regardless of the genre that was being exercised whereas, in the control group, not even the normally positively experienced genre of story could improve the writing experience of the boys. The intervention seemed to have a positive effect for boys in particular, but one needs to take into account that the starting level of the self-efficacy of the boys in the test class was also high, which is exceptional in the light of earlier research. In the control class, the girls had much higher levels of self-efficacy and better writing experiences than the boys whereas, in the established class, the results were quite even. The positive writing experiences and self-efficacy beliefs – and the equality of the genders – in the established class suggest that the encouraging feedback model might be of value in long-term use.

The purpose of this article-based master’s thesis is to validate the Finnish translation of the teacher subscale of the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASSS 2000). Previous studies have shown that perceived teacher social support is associated with many positive outcomes, e.g., academic achievements (Tennant et al., 2015, 11) and mental health (Rueger et al., 2016, 1045). While the original CASSS has been properly validated, the same validity cannot be assumed for the translated version because validity is context specific (Griffee, 2001, 1). For future studies on perceived teacher support in Finnish schools, the validation of the measure is needed. This study examines the translated subscale, its factor structure, and its ability to associate with background variables similarly with the original. The data for this study are a part of larger data collection collected in a project called Schooling, teaching and well-being in the school community during the COVID-19 pandemic (CEA, University of Helsinki; REAL, Tampere University; NEDIS, Tampere University; Ministry of Education and Culture). The data were collected in the spring of 2021 and total of 51 105 students from 4th–9th grades participated in the study. The methods used in this quantitative study included exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and variance analyses. Different ways of assessing the reliability of the translated subscale were used as well. The results showed that the translated version of the teacher subscale of CASSS is a valid and reliable instrument for researching Finnish 4th–9th grade students perceived teacher social support. Both EFA and CFA demonstrated sufficient results in this regard. While analysing the criterion validity of the subscale, associations between teacher support and academic outcomes, and depressive symptoms were found. These results are in line with prior research (e.g., Tennant et al., 2015, 11; Sikora et al., 2019, 93). These results indicate that the Finnish translation of the teacher support subscale can be used in future studies. The article manuscript The Validity and Reliability of the Finnish Version of the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASSS 2000) on Teacher Support in Basic Education is intended to be published in the European Journal of Psychology and Educational Research.