Browsing by Author "Terho, Outi"

The purpose of this thesis is illustrate, analyse and construe how children think about their own actions when their strive for playing together with peer have been rejected. This thesis find out associations between action strategies both age and gender. The associations between action strategies and child-specific evaluation made by kindergarten teachers are also subject of the review. There are only few previous research of children's own thoughts about their actions in rejection situations altough injurious impacts of rejection and signification of positive peer relationships is known a lot. The aim of this study is add knowledge about thoughts of rejection in equal peer relationships by children under school age and stimulate conversation of how to prevent rejection and what good peer relationships significance to every children. The data used in this thesis is part of the large and international "Orientaatio projekti" research project material. The data has been collected in 2010 from different kinds of day care centres and 8 Councils of Central Uusimaa. The material has been collected by interviewing children and having the teachers evaluate the children's different skills on a five point scale. There was total 411 answers by children the age of 1-7. This thesis was a mixed methods research where qualitative research was complemented by quantitative data and quantitative analysis methods. Research results were obtained by data-driven content analysis, cross tabulation, Chi-Square- and Cramer's V tests. The SPSS software was used resource of analysis. According to this thesis most popular action strategy was adaptive (48,8%). Other action strategies in rejection situations were retiring (15,8%), resourting to adults (7,1%), interactive (9%), emotional (2,6%), dominant (4,5%) and uncertain (5,6%). The eight category was composed of the non-respondents (4,1%). The impact of gender was slight. Only resourting to adults were considerably more common in girls. The association of age was statistically significant between adaptive, retiring, uncertain and non-respondents. Several claims in child-specific evaluation and action strategies based on children's answers has statistically significant association. However there was no association between categories and claims that directly descriptive them. According to this children's own estimates doesn't correspond to kindergarten teachers' evaluation of children's abilities. Based on the results children should be supported in the development of social skills whereupon interactive action strategy become more common. In this way experiences of continual rejection stay more likely occasional.