Browsing by Author "Sillman, Sami Mikael"

The purpose of this research study was to examine what comprehension school students find important in their lives, what their relationship is with their own material possessions and what contribution the educational applied drama program Mikä känny sulla on? had to offer to the character education mission of the Finnish comprehension school institution. The study aimed to understand the value systems that students build and maintain in their own environments and document through the use of personal accounts of students how they themselves experienced the program and how it fit into their school work, with a special emphasis on the critical nature of the program towards identity-building centered around materialism. Prior research has established the essential differences between values displayed by youth and adults. In this study, our hypothesis was that the students participating in the study would display the same sorts of value systems as have been established in other studies, which found that young people's values center around social values, such as family relations, and the more materialistic, hedonistic values. The research study was executed in two different comprehension schools located in Helsinki, Finland. The participants of the study were two classes of students, one of the fifth grade and another of the eighth. The total number of participants was 36. As part of the study the students were all given a questionnaire form, in addition to which 17 of the students were interviewed in a semi-structured thematic interview. Both the questionnaires and the thematic interviews were conducted in the classrooms after the applied drama program Mikä känny sulla on? had been performed. The study results confirmed our hypothesis that the value systems centered around social relations and hedonistic values would be accentuated in the answers of the students. The study also established that the single most important material object in the students' possession according to their own views is the mobile phone. Based on the experiences of the students as relayed by them in the interviews, it can be said that the drama program's pedagogic solutions have been ontologically committing and interesting to the students. The students also described their impressions of the purposefulness and necessity of the program, and based on these experiences the Mikä känny sulla on? -program can be said to have provided a new angle from which the character education mission of the comprehension school system can approach such themes as human dignity, social skills, healthy self-images and friendship.