Browsing by Author "Eskelinen, Vesa"

Supporting pupils’ participation and the active membership of the community are part of the key principles of the national core curriculum. The curriculum aims to create structures that support children’s participation in the school community and encourage cooperation with oth-er public and private actors. Participation as a concept can be complicated to define. Gener-ally, participation is defined as a voluntary process by which people influence the decisions that affect their lives. Therefore, participation has a great impact on individual’s wellbeing. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees the right for children to express their views and right to participate in the decisions considering them. The purpose of this thesis is to clarify how pupils’ participation occurs in the nature school education and in what ways participation is supported. The research subjects were three primary school classes in two different nature school visits. The research material for this thesis was collected by observing the nature school visits and by interviewing pupils in small groups. The gathered observation notes and voice recordings were analysed with qualitative content analysis. The pupils’ participation was affected by the school culture of their class and the offered op-potrunities of free expression in the nature school. As its best, activities performed in small groups encouraged pupils to take responsibility for their group and lead to spontaneous ob-serving of the environment. Additionally, possible unequal dynamics of the group negatively affected participation. The nature school’s activities were designed and run by adults, but the pupils were active participants. Pupils did not want more options for decision-making but were open to share some ideas with the adults. The nature school has a solid foundation and possibilities to support and increase pupils’ participation.