Browsing by Author "Hussinki, Riikka"

Tiivistelmä - Referat – Abstract My master's thesis is part of This Life of Mine research project, which aims at developing life management tools for young people who are struggling with their life choices and decisions concerning postgraduate studies. The project approaches these issues through positive pedagogy, character strength and inclusive education, which may help young people to develop features that help in decision-making regarding their future education and careers. I participated in the first pilot phase of the project and I used action research approach. The project workshops were built on several positive pedagogical solutions, such as inclusive groups, positive experiences and character strength development. My research focuses on the impact that that these positive educational solutions could have on young peoples’ capability to make decisions regarding their lives and careers. The data for my study was collected during the workshops by means of video recording and interviews. My data-driven analysis are conducted with grounded theory and Atlas.ti program. In this thesis, the features that support young person’s decision-making process consist of personal social development domains, educational achievement and lifelong learning domains, as well as career management domains. I focus predominantly on the personal social development domains. Young people’s understanding of their skills and character strengths developed during the course of the workshops. The development started from individual skill recognition, went through character strength specification and ended up with more profound deliberation of the character strengths. During the final days of the workshops, the participants used character strength vocabulary quite fluently in their career thinking processes. The use of character strength terminology developed as its own path and the development of the character strength terminology gave the participants more diversified perspective of their future career decisions. Therefore, the role of character strength terminology should be considered more strongly, when assessing the features that are needed in young people’s decision-making process. In addition, the importance of peers’ influence as a starting point of individuals’ skill and character strength thinking was noticed during the analysis. Therefore, it might be fruitful to develop understanding of the character strength in a peer group.