Browsing by Author "Xabur, Ronya"

Aims. The aim of this dissertation was to find out and understand how children view different ways of touching: how they name them, what meanings and situations they associate with different ways of touching, and with whom they see different ways of contact as possible. I examined touch as part of social interaction. The aim has been to understand how touch is used and interpreted differently in different situations. Examining contact from the perspective of children is especially important for teaching. Teachers, school staff, and caregivers of children can take advantage of available research information when working with children. In addition, it helps to pay more attention to touches with children and important features associated with them, such as different individual ways of interpreting and dealing with touch. Previous research has shown that touch is an important means of interaction and can communicate a wide variety of things (Wiio, 1994). Through touch, the teacher can, among other things, help students with school assignments, facilitate concentration, comfort (Tainio et al., 2019), enhance learning, relieve stress, calm down (Owen & Gillentine, 2011), encourage and motivate (Guéguen, 2004) the students. Methods. The material of the study consisted of 30 student interviews collected by Koskettava koulu -project. There were 16 interviews, which two of them were individual interviews and the remaining 14 were paired interviews. In the interviews, students were shown 6 different images, each with different ways of touching. Pupils answered the interviewer's questions about touching and were also free to share their own thoughts about the images and the ways of touches. This dissertation is a qualitative study and I used content analysis and thematic methods as methods. Results and conclusions. Various themes emerged from the students' interviews, the largest themes were: 1. Touch in teacher and school activities, 2. Touch in emotional communication, interaction and expression, 3. Touch with close people, 4. Touch in hobbies and doing things together, and 5. Ritual touch and norms and limits of touch. Pupils often viewed the touch used by the teacher from a positive perspective, and many aspects of helping, encouraging, guiding, and comforting were associated with the touch. The teacher was considered to use touch as part of teaching and interaction with students. The teacher’s touch was often interpreted as positive and benevolent, although in some cases the teacher’s touch could also interfere the student’s concentration. Pupils were positive about touch from the teachers they personally liked. A teacher was considered to touch children when he or she liked his or her students or when the student was succeed at something. Touch was interpreted mainly in school, spare time, and home contexts. Touch contacts were mostly with close people. Touch contacts with strangers were generally viewed with suspicion.