Browsing by Author "Tyrsky, Tutta-Lotta"

Objectives. According to previous studies, psychological safety increases learning-promoting behaviour and well-being in the working group. Psychological safety research has mostly been done in the field of organizational psychology and the aim of this research is to get more information about psychological safety placed in a school context. The idea is to develop a meter, a questionnaire form, for measuring the psychological safety of primary school children, and to test its functionality in practice. The questionnaire form is based in Amy Edmondsons meter that is widely used in organizational psychology. In addition, the purpose is to find out teachers' views on the psychological safety of their classes. Of interest is not only the situation of psychological safety in the classroom, but also the extent to which teachers are aware of the situation in their classes. Methods. This study is a qualitative case study. The study group consisted of the students of two sixth-grade classes and the teachers in those classes. In this work, one class with teachers formed case A and the other case B. There were 13 students in case A and 16 in case B. The research material consisted of questionnaire responses collected from students, as well as teacher interviews. The data were mainly analyzed using qualitative methods, but some quantitative methods were also used to evaluate the results of the questionnaires. Results and conclusions. The form turned out to be quite appropriate for the age group, although it required some clarification. The results collected using the form showed a clear difference between the cases. The responses of the students in case B were clearly more positive and there was less dispersion between the responses of the students than in the students of case A. The responses of the teacher in case A were very similar to those of the students, while the teacher in case B rated the situation as worse than that of her students. This case study provided, as intented, a basis for a broader study of psychological safety in the school world.