Browsing by Author "Lehmunen, Kia"

Objectives. In the research, I study class teacher students’ views on controversial and difficult topics in teaching. In addition, I study their views on how the teacher should act in relation to the content of this teaching. This research sees controversial and difficult topics as naturally present in everyday school life, as part of everyday hectic situations, and to some extent they are also unconscious. The teaching of controversial topics requires the teacher to understand complex phenomena that divide society, and in difficult topics the subjective experience of the person is emphasized. I study the teacher's activities in relation to the subjects from the perspectives of the teacher's role descriptions, the teacher's own opinions, and the concept of influence. Methods. I interviewed nine master’s student class teachers and with the help of theme interviews, I found the focal points for this study in the wide field of teaching controversial and difficult subjects. With the help of a phenomenological-hermeneutic research strategy, I aim to understand and interpret the content of the teaching and the role of the teacher and to make what is known known. With the help of thematization, I got structured and described material, and the quotes from the interviewees served to support understanding in the research. I have analyzed the material with a theory-driven content analysis in such a way that the theory has functioned as a support for the analysis. However, I have started the analysis based on the data by classifying the topics and highlighting the influence-related dimension in the review of the role. The topics do not correspond to the theoretical reviews of the background chapters but analyzing them as controversial and difficult topics binds the analysis to a theoretical framework. I analyzed the teacher's activity and role using Kelly's (1986) four roles, which I applied based on the analysis. Results and conclusions. In the first part of the analysis, I formed five themes from the controversial and difficult topics: current topics, topics related to sexuality and gender education, topics related to multiculturalism and pluralism, topics related to the contents of the subjects and other topics related to teaching. For some topics, it was not possible for me to fully know whether the interviewee meant the topic to be controversial or rather difficult. Therefore, as part of the analysis, I considered the difference between a controversial and a difficult topic. In the second part of the analysis, a picture was formed of the teacher's actions as a promoter of listening to different views and as a presenter of one's own opinions with certain boundary conditions. The teacher's role was positioned to the left of the axis list, i.e. the roles of permissive neutral and permissive committed. The influence of the teacher had different meanings and not all descriptions of the role fit into the axis list, which made us think about the role beyond the axis list.