Browsing by Author "Cornér, Timo"

According to Tinto’s (1975) interactive model, higher education students’ integration socially and academically affects on the level of commitment and through that to the students’ deci-sion of dropping out or continuing the studies. For the last 40 years student integration has been actively studied, but rarely the focus is on the individual reasons behind it. Thus the in-dividual reasons behind it are in the center of this study. The objective of this study is to find out is there a connection between the peer teacher-student-interaction and the students’ integration. And which are the ways the peer teachers affect on the students’ integration. Third objective is to explain how the students perceive the role of the peer teachers in the program. The data of this study consists of 40 qualitative texts and 40 pictures and 59 quantitative Lik-ert-scale items. The data was collected from students of University of Helsinki’s environmen-tal bachelor study program in Viikki, Helsinki 2017. The quantitative data was analyzed with SPSS-statistics exploring the correlation between the variables, the qualitative text data through a method called Inductive category development and the pictures by a Thematic analysis. Because of the data variation, the results were interpreted together with a method called Sequential explanatory. It was found out that the peer teachers’ interaction with the students correlated with students’ social integration and with the student identification of the program. The students felt that the peer teachers affected on their integration by sharing important information and personal ex-periences concerning the studies. The peer teachers were often seen as a part of the stu-dent group, helping and supporting the students in beginning of their studies more often than as a superior.