Browsing by department "Teacher Education"

Aims. The aim of this study was to investigate the development of, and links between school burnout and physical activity in upper comprehensive school. According to previous studies, school burnout increases as pupils make a transition from one level of education to the next, and school burnout is more common among girls than boys. Previous studies have indicated that physical activity decreases as people grow older. As physical activity is known to promote health and wellbeing, it could be expected to be negatively connected with school burnout. This study involves examining the development of school burnout and physical activity at two different points of measurement occurring in grades 7 and 9. Differences in school burnout between groups of pupils in grade 7 divided based on physical activity were also examined. Finally, the study explored the differences in the development of school burnout between groups divided based on change in physical activity. Methods. The data were collected as part of the Mind the Gap research project in the period 2014–2016. The final data subject to analysis included 518 pupils from the capital region. The pupils had filled out questionnaires on grades 7 and 9. The data included 336 girls and 192 boys. The SBI indicator, developed for measuring school burnout, was used in examining school burnout. The questionnaire measuring physical activity originates from the School Health Promotion Study (THL 1996–, conducted once every two years). The physical activity of the respondents was investigated in this study by asking “how often do you engage in at least half an hour of physical activity during your leisure time?”. Research data were collected from pupils in grade 7 in the spring of 2014 and subsequently from the same pupils in grade 9 in the spring of 2016. The development of school burnout and physical activity was examined with the repeated measures analysis of variance. The differences in school burnout between groups were investigated using one-way analysis of variance, and the repeated measures analysis of variance was used to examine differences between groups in the development of school burnout over time. Results indicated that there was a statistically significant increase in school burnout among girls during upper comprehensive school. No similar development was observed in boys. There was no statistically significant development in physical activity during upper comprehensive school. There was no difference related to school burnout between groups divided based on physical activity in grade 7 or grade 9. The groups divided based on a change in physical activity differed in terms of school burnout in grade 7. The pupils with a considerable increase in physical activity during upper comprehensive school were most exhausted in grade 7 and statistically significantly differed from those with a minor decline, no change, or a minor change, in physical activity. The groups divided based on their chance in physical activity did not differ from one another in terms of the development of school burnout (p = .057). Based on this study, it can be noted that school burnout appears to increase during upper comprehensive school, particularly among girls. More research is needed to determine what kind of a connection can be found between physical activity and school burnout.

Tavoitteet. Käsillä olevan tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää pedagogisen johtajuuden rakentumista perusopetuksen koulujen toimintakulttuurissa. Tutkimuksen kohdeilmiönä olivat pedagoginen vuorovaikutus ja ohjaus laaja-alaisen pedagogisen johtamisen viitekehyksessä. Johtajuuden rakentumista tutkittiin Pedagoginen johtajuus oppilaitoksessa -kehittämis- ja koulutusohjelmaan osallistuneiden koulujen eri toimijoiden (opettajat, johtoryhmä ja rehtori) laajaan pedagogiseen johtajuuteen liittyviä käsityksiä ammatillisen toimijuuden ja osallisuuden näkökulmasta. Menetelmät. Pedagoginen johtajuus oppilaitoksessa -hankkeeseen osallistui viisi pilottikoulua. Pilottikoulut olivat 370-650 oppilaan ylä- tai yhtenäiskouluja Etelä-Suomen alueelta. Tutkimuksen aineisto koottiin Helsingin yliopiston arviontikeskuksen HEA:n toimesta. Haastattelumenetelmä oli ryhmäkeskustelu, jossa käytettiin laadullisen asennetutkimuksen väittämiä. Haastateltavien kokonaismäärä oli 52. Kustakin koulusta osallistui 9-12 edustajaa. Tutkimuskouluissa toteutettiin kussakin kolme haastattelua, joissa haastateltiin erikseen rehtoria, johtoryhmää sekä opettajia. Aineisto analysoitiin fenomenografian lähestymistavalla hyödyntäen AtlasTI:ta. Tulokset ja johtopäätökset. Opettajien ja rehtorien käsitysten mukaan yleisin pedagogisen keskustelun muoto oli oppilasasioita koskevat kahdenkeskiset keskustelut opettajan ja rehtorin välillä. Keskustelujen toteutumiseksi opettajan tuli olla aloitteellinen. Opettajat sopeuttivat pedagogiseen vuorovaikutukseen liittyviä tarpeitaan rehtorin käytetättävissä olevaan aikaan. Kahdenkeskiset keskustelut eivät korvanneet koulussa käytäviä yhteisiä pedagogia keskusteluja. Tutkimuksessa kartoitettiin toimivien ja epätyydyttävinä koettujen vuorovaikutustilanteiden piirteitä sekä opettajien osallisuutta yhteiseen päätöksentekoon. Tutkimuksen tuloksena löydettiin keskustelevaa toimintakulttuuria kuvaavia johtamiskäytänteitä. Tutkimus sisältää suosituksia johtamiskäytäntöihin.

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors supporting the work of a novice class teacher. Earlier studies have shown that novice teachers find the first working years as challenging and more and more wind up changing their professions. The significance of support is emphasized at the beginning phase of the working career, and the successful transfer to working life has an important role in the commitment to the teaching profession and its enjoyment. The aim of this study is to highlight those factors which make novice teachers to remain working as class teachers despite the stress of the first years of work. The study also examined the support the novice teachers received from the work community and school management. A novice teacher in this study is defined as class teachers who have been working for less than three years (Berry, 2009). The theoretical reference framework of the study is based on an examination of early phase of the career of the novice teacher, as well as the theory of self-determination of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. This study is a qualitative study that examines the novice class teachers' own experiences. The research material was collected by interviewing seven class teachers working in the Helsinki metropolitan area and its suburbs who had less than three years of teaching experience. The data collection involved a theme interview, which was conducted as individual interviews. The collected material was examined from the point of view of the research questions, in order to find answers to the questions that are relevant to the research. The material was analyzed by content analysis methods. The research results show that novice teachers are supported themselves in their work by teaching and students. Successful experiences and the relevance of work become an important factor in staying in teaching. The opportunity to develop in one’s own work was also considered to be important. Support from the work community and school administration proved to be of paramount importance, even though shortcomings were felt most of all in the support received from the supervisor. Novice teachers felt they received support most of all from mentoring and working in pairs at work. The results also highlighted the lack of systematic orientation and the gap between education and the reality of work.

The purpose of this study is to compare special education teacher training programs of University of Helsinki and University of Jyväskylä trough the lenses of inclusion. Study has been made by comparing curriculums of special education using a theory of core-values of inclusion. According to Watkins and Donnelly (2014) there are four core-values of inclusion: valuing learner diversity, supporting all, working with others and professional personal growth. Study has been made by using qualitative content analysis. This study is a part of Oppijan oikeus – Opettajan taito -project, which aims to create com-mon teaching materials and equalize special education teacher training in universities and universities of applied sciences in Finland. This study is a part of the first step of the project: to find out what is the current situation of special education teacher training in Finland and what are the most important issues curriculums consist. Results show that all four core-values of inclusion are highly included in both curriculums of the universities, alltough the word inclusion does exist only once in curriculum of Jyväskylä. Common contents in both curriculums are special education in science and in practice, varie-ty of special needs in education, to plan, execute and evaluate the support in learning, work-ing with others and personal professional growth. The differences in curriculums are primarily in perspectives that contents are presented. Positive pedagogy, criminology, social exclusion, Finnish in second language -teaching and psychiatry exist only in curriculum of Helsinki. Mul-ti-professional teamwork, disablement and challenges in behavior are more visible in curricu-lum of Jyväskylä. Both of curriculums include rhetoric about troubles and hardships.

The aim of this research is to reveal elements of contents and choices made in craft science doctoral dissertations. Total 27 dissertations have been published between 1994-2019 during the nearly 40-year history of craft science. The research theory focuses on the phenomenon itself revealing how and when the branch of science was founded and what it was based on. Theory section continues by introducing the central craft science models and theories focusing on those that are essential for the creation and objective of this thesis. The main question leading the research was: how the conceptions on craft science research content appear in craft science doctoral dissertations? The research is qualitative and inductive as it is based on analysing documents. It investigates conceptions on craft science through the dissertations. The research strategy and method is phenomenography, used also in the analysis of the data. Computerized coding was executed with ATLAS.ti coding programme and fulfilled with the help of NCT analysis model. The focus is on the dissertation abstracts. They sum up the most important information the craft scientists have chosen to share and reveal about their researches. The research aims to form an outcome space that summarises and offers an informative visual presentation of the data collected, coded and contemplated. The result of the analysis is a selection of categories of description that form an outcome space, which is common for phenomenographic research. The categories of description are: craft maker, role of craft, holistic craft, craft context and choices considering craft science researches. The outcome of the analysis is compared to craft science theories introduced in the theory section. Research findings also include a number of additional research suggestions and ideas.

According to the current concept of leadership, it is at its best in the model of shared leader-ship with collaborative action. A characteristic key component of school leadership is peda-gogical leadership, which takes the form of a collaborative process similar to shared leader-ship. The concept of pedagogical leadership is not well established and has been defined from several perspectives including the hierarchical model of pedagogical leadership (Ser-giovanni 1984), expanding pedagogical leadership responsibilities (Fonsén 2013). Other re-searchers have searched for differences in the meanings of instructional and general peda-gogical leadership. The aim of this study is to find out what kind of perceptions class teach-ers have about pedagogical leadership and what kind of perception they have about the role of a teacher as a pedagogical leader. A phenomenographic research approach was used in this qualitative study. The material consisted of essays by ten class teachers, with a total length of 19 A4 pages. The essay re-quest was made to pre-selected teachers with more than 15 years of work experience and collected by email. The analysis was done by dividing the theoretical material into themes which consisted of descriptions of pedagogical leadership that appeared in the previous stud-ies. Teachers’ perceptions of pedagogical leadership collected from the essays according to the theme and made an analysis on the basis of these themes. Teachers' perceptions of pedagogical leadership followed themes emerging from the previ-ous studies. Teachers’ perception of pedagogical leadership was by nature more of a trust-based leadership than instructional leadership. Teachers’ perceptions of pedagogical leader-ship appeared to be complex and multilevel. Teachers' perceptions differed and emphasized different issues. The concept of pedagogical leadership appears to teachers in a different sense.

Objectives. The purpose of this study is to use philosophical conceptual analysis to open up concepts that are linked to the values ​​of the 2014 basic education curriculum, utilizing a literature review collected through a descriptive literature review. In the first chapter, after the introduction, I discuss the theoretical framework of the study. In the second main title, I focus on the meaning of the study and the research questions, as well as some previous research and literature. I would like to highlight a few previous studies, such as Leevi Launonen's dissertation. The third main title focuses on the results of the study. This is followed by the reliability of the study, the conclusions and the reflection. Methods. In my research, I utilized philosophical concept analysis as well as educational philosophical methods. Results and conclusions. It would seem from my study that values ​​are an integral part of education and its goals. The concepts raised from the curriculum are ambiguous and linked to other value concepts. The concepts I analyze are all variable and require explanation in order to know what they mean.

This qualitative study approaches the professional agency of art pedagogues in the inclusive early education settings. The aim of this study is to find out: 1) what kind of interpretative repertoires are constructed in the speech of art pedagogue teacher, and 2) how these repertoires represent the art pedagogue´s possibilities for supporting the child’s learning and growth. In the previous studies we can see that the artistic interventions have positive effects on child’s learning and to the culture of work and learning environment. In the previous studies the changes are seen challenging from the point of view of professional agency. This study focuses on the written texts of six (N=6) art pedagogues as informants. The text-based material was collected from six kindergartens, during 10 months in the first year of art education in early educational settings in research project of Taikava, that took place in 2014—2016 in the city of Vantaa in Southern Finland. Additional material consisted of six edited articles that were written to the final report of Taikava project. This study is based on the production of meaning, approached by social constructivist and discourse analytic frame. The theoretical frame of professional agency by Vähäsantanen, Paloniemi, Hökkä & Eteläpelto (2017) assisted the discourse analysis, narrowing theoretically the specific definition of the context of professional agency in the speech of art pedagogues. This research answered the first question with three key repertoires: 1) The repertoire of a strong professional identity 2) The repertoire of contradictions 3) The repertoire of collaboration. Based on the identification processes of the key repertoires, the second question was answered: the main results of this study consist of three dimensions: The professional agency of the art pedagogue in the early educational setting was effective on the supportive acts of care, growth and learning of children based on the core values of art pedagogical approach: the val-ues of empowerment and well-being. Circumstances, the conflict of professional roles, and the lack of co-constructed feedback of work created contradictions and conflicts. Acknowledging and amplifying the art education needs active collaboration. Based on the results of this study it is reasonable to re-consider the iteration of work in early education and focus on the issues of management and leadership of early education. We need more research on art education of early years and on arts-based interventions in the early educational and inclusive settings.

The specificity of children's behavior and children considered as special have been raised in school discussions as the cause of deteriorating learning outcomes, causing problems with teachers' time use and preventing teaching of the so called majority of children in primary school. Naming a child special affects the way and place of his/her teaching and therefore it is necessary to look at the definitions and discourses of special behavior. The purpose of the thesis was to find out how the behavioral problems and a child with a behavioral disorder named in many ways is constructed in expert articles and to examine the specificity of behavior using the social disability model of disability research. Sahlin's cultural model was used as a way to study the change in the discipline of special education together with changes outlined through paradigms. The study highlights the discourses special pedagogy experts have built on the specificity behavior of a child in the book series “Childrens’ Special Care and Education in Finland” over seven decades. These discourses are considered in the context of changes in special education and paradigms of special education. Critical discourse analysis was used as a research and analysis method in the study. The material of the study consisted of the texts of the thirteen editions of the book “Childrens’ Special Care and Education in Finland”, dealing with behavioural disorders. The textual material was analyzed by thematizing the medical, disability or feature related definitions of these texts, as well as the definitions of the social construction and creation of specificity according to the theoretical background of the research. After the thematizing, the selected text samples were analyzed for how the causes of specificity are localized and what is the child's position in them, and the discourses formed by these were named. These discourses were also examined in the context of changes in special education and the paradigms of special education. The research showed a hegemonic discourse based on psycho-medical interpretation, which at different times defined the child's position as a victim of the child's psychological and biological structure and as achild who is not mentally adaptive. Parallel and intertwined discourses were also built on a hegemonic discourse. The discourses of the specificity of behavior in the material reflected changes in the paradigms of special education and special pedagogy and the cultural reproduction of the category of specificity. According to the study, the discourse based on psycho- medical interpretation is the hegemonic discourse of the “Special Care and Education of the Child in Finland” book series, in which the child’s position is a child with internal pathology. The discourses of the material and the child's positions reflect changes in special education and in the paradigms of special education, as well as the cultural structure of the discipline.

The purpose of this study was to describe what an invention project is like in a class of students with special needs. Special attention was paid to the division of labor and how the support of teachers and other group members appears during the project and how students participate in the project. In addition to this, the study wanted to find out how socio-emotional challenges show up during the invention process. The subject group was a 7th-grade special education class where six out of eight students participated. The pupils took part in a community-based invention project that combined different subjects and utilized invention pedagogy at the Helsinki Metropolitan Area's primary school. The project is part of the Growing mind research project. The study is an ethnographic case study in nature, in which material was collected by several different methods. The research material used was small group process diaries, group interviews, researcher observation material and e-mails, which teachers used to keep in touch between project sessions, and special classroom teacher interviews. The collected material was analyzed by qualitative content analysis and formed into a narrative. The invention project was, in the opinion of the students and the special class teacher, a project in which they would be happy to participate again. The course of the invention project was different in its linearity compared to the general education classes. Students got more motivated as the project progressed. The division of labor between the groups was done according to interests and some of the students worked more independently during the project. Each of them participated in the project in their own way. The socio-emotional challenges were visible at the beginning of the process, but as the process progressed, all the students overcame their challenges. The invention project groups were guided more than what they usually are in the general education classroom. The members of the small groups gave each other social support during the project. Students were instructed to aim for compromises and all those involved in the groups sought to work together and unity within the groups. The results suggest that an invention project, which includes observable features of nonlinear learning is suitable for a group of students with different interests and students with different levels of technological skills. The importance of this research culminates in the development of pedagogical models that support different learners and their role in a community learning process.