Browsing by study line "General and Adult Education (in Swedish)"

Goal. This research considers what measures teachers can utilize to counter conspiracy theories. The study aims to investigate what recommendations six written texts offer teachers when they encounter conspiracy theories in the classroom. How many young people under 18 subscribe to conspiracy theories and how much influence conspiracy theories have on them remains uninvestigated. Research has shown that conspiracy theories threaten society and public health. Research is consistent with the idea that conspiracy theories threaten democracy and people’s health. Methods. This qualitative study employs inductive content analysis. The study includes six written texts from the National Board of Education (Finland), the National Agency for Education (Sweden), the National Union of Teachers, Expo, Grundskoletidningen, and Göteborgs-Posten. The material was analyzed using the qualitative research tool Atlas.ti. Ten minor subject categories under three significant themes arise from the texts. These thematic units are 1) Background factors to conspiracy theories, 2) Conspiracy theories are a threat to society, and 3) Conspiracy theories and school. These thematic units were analyzed using the material from the background theory. Results and conclusions. The results of the study exhibit that conspiracy theories are difficult to counter and that it is almost impossible to change the mind of a conspiracy theorist. Such theories appear from different historical, cultural, and human origins spread through various platforms of communication finding a greater reach into populations. People who felt a loss of control or powerlessness received explanations from conspiracy theories. The study showed that citizenship, education, and securing a job serve as reducing factors to the belief in conspiracy theories.

The aim of this study is to examine coaching from an adult learning perspective and to form an understanding what kind of adult learning processes are involved in coaching. In addition, the purpose is also to form an understanding of potential elements that contribute to learning and elements that can slow down, or even hinder learning. Related to this is the exploration of methods and tools used by coaches to facilitate the learning experience. The research data for this qualitative research was collected by interviewing seven ICF coach practitioners. Theory-guided content analysis was used to analyse the interview mate-rial. Andragogy, experiential learning and transformative learning were used as reference theories that could possible explain the findings from the research material. The findings show that the adult learning processes that are at play in coaching are related to reflective activity, which create awareness that then trigger action. An action with successful outcome, a tested hypothesis proves effective, creates a durable and concrete change, or transformation, in the way of thinking and or acting in the person. All three adult learning theories, that provided the framework for this study, were found to be relevant in one way or the other. None of the theories could alone explain the learning processes that happen in coaching. Andragogy provides a good framework for the overall practical process steps in coaching. Experiential learning provides a good framework in explaining the process of reflective thought, hypothesis testing and action. Transformative learning, on the other hand, provide an understanding of the processes that happen when the testing of hypothesis succeed and transformation occurs in the learner. The fundamentals elements contributing to a positive coaching experience were found to be several. Client’s aptitude for coaching, coach's professionality, a good dyadic relation based on trust and external support from manager and organization were among the important contributing factors.

The aim of this research is to highlight the challenges and opportunities of the two-year pre-primary education trial. To find out how the pedagogy in the trial has been adapted to achieve the goals in the curriculum to further develop early childhood education in Finland. Previous research shows that educators play a central role in children's development and learning. The research also indicates that there are some challenges in early childhood education. It is therefore necessary that this experiment be investigated to see if the idea behind the experiment is really implemented and worked. The research questions that have been highlighted are how the two-year pre-primary education trail is perceived among the pedagogues and how the pedagogy has been adapted to achieve the goals in the curriculum. Eight educators in Swedish Finland working in the pre-primary education where the two-year pre-primary education trial is being carried out participated in the study. In this study, an educator can be a teacher in childhood education, a childcare worker, or a sociologist. This study was done through a qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews with the educators. The results showed that the educators have a positive approach to two-year pre-primary education. The educators see the lack of support from management and staff resources as the biggest challenges with the trial. The educators also highlight many possibilities with the trial. A two-year pre-primary education brings extended opportunities for both children and educators, which creates an equal and qualitative education. The results also reveal that the five-year-olds attending the one-year pre-primary education have very different levels of knowledge, which affects equal education according to the pedagogues. Overall, the educators believe that the trial of two-year pre-school education forms a good whole for the children's development and learning. The results for the second research question indicate that the educators take into account the age differences in the children participating in the trial and that they work in a play-pedagogical way. The informants agree that the trial of the two-year pre-primary education has a positive effect on the children's development and learning.

A good occupational health is what every human wish for. Because people spend a lot of their time at the workplace the concept occupational health is an important factor to consider as a leader. Also due to a raise in the retairement age and changes in worklife, occupational health has become a current and known topic at workplaces. Occupational health refers to wellbeing at work and that an employee should experience physical, psychological and social wellbeing at the workplace. In this study the teachers occupational health is in focus. This study aims to find out wether a headmaster conducting a healthpromoting leadership would be of advantage for the teachers, when it comes to experiencing a good occupational health. It also aims to find out if teachers have any certain expectations regarding healthpromoting leadership and what thoughts they have conserning the topic occupational health and their own experienced occupational health. Background and contextual research consist of theory and previous studies on leadership, leadership in schools, healthpromoting leadership, educational leadership and occupational health. The thesis is a qualitative research project with a phenomenograpic perspectiv. The data was collected in fall 2019 and the sample consisted of eight teachers from swedishspeaking schools in the south of Finland. The data was collected through semistructured interviews and was later on analysed with help of inductive content analysis. The result refers to that most of the teachers have sometime during their career experienced a minor setback concerning their occupational health and consider therefore a healthpromoting leadershipstyle to be desireble. The teachers expectations are many and individual. Their expectations refer to being present, structured and flexible, and communicativ as a headmaster. Characteristics of the headmaster that the teachers refer to as being important for their occupational health are trust, honesty and personality. Other important leadership qualities for a headmaster to have is to give support and structure, and to be good at allocating resources and time. The research result can hopefully contribute to a better occupational health for the teachers true healthpromoting leadership. In addition, the result can give an indication, not only to the headmasters, but also to municipalities and state institutions, concerning what has to be accomplished and altered within education for the teachers to achieve a good and sustainable occupational health.

Aim. Employee selection is an activity that strongly affects the competitiveness of organizations and their opportunity for success. Decision making in employee selection is often believed to be rational and objective, but research has shown that rationality is not the only factor in recruiters decision making (Goings et al., 2021). It has been shown that intuition is part of human decision making and that intuition is present during employee selection regardless of the recruiters will (Miles & Sadler-Smith, 2014). Research has highlighted intuition as a cognition that through domain specific experience can develop into a form of expertise. This expertise is called expert intuition and can be used as support for decision making (Salas et al., 2010). The aim of this study is to explore recruiters use of intuition with focus on work experience and how it affects recruiters use of intuition in decision making. Methods. The study was conducted as a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews as method for data collection. The participants consisted of eight recruiters whose work experience varied between 3 and 20 years. The collected data was analyzed through qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions. The results showed that the recruiters used intuition in their decision making and the majority of them felt that intuition plays an important part in employee selection. The recruiters used their intuition mostly during the job interview and at the end of the recruitment process. Intuition was also seen as useful while reviewing CVs, LinkedIn profiles and in situations where time is limited. The recruiters felt that their work experience had led to development of their intuition and to an increased thrust in their intuition. The majority of the recruiters felt that their work experience had neither led to an increased or decreased use of intuition in their decision making.

Previous studies have shown that the workload has increased for teachers due to Covid-19, which can have affected their job satisfaction. At the same time, other challenges have been reported in the teaching profession that creates a concern regarding the number of teachers who want to change jobs. Research also shows that it has been challenging for principals to balance the various tasks of leadership during Covid-19, which raises questions regarding what kind of leadership needs to be prioritized by principals during a longer period of crisis. The purpose of this study was thus to find out what kind of support primary school teachers need to maintain job satisfaction during Covid-19, how primary school teachers describe principals' leadership and what kind of leadership primary school teachers consider important during Covid-19. Previous studies in the research area that concern primary school teachers' job satisfaction and principals' leadership were used as a background for the study. Seven certified primary school teachers with at least one year of work experience during Covid-19 participated in the study. The study used qualitative research methods and semi-structured interviews as data collection method. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using inductive content analysis. The study was based on a phenomenological perspective. In line with previous research, the results of the study showed that the informants thought that the collegial support had been the most important support for maintaining job satisfaction during Covid-19. The informants also thought that they needed more peace of mind than they had during Covid-19, because it took a lot of time to get acquainted with new rules and restrictions. The results showed that the informants thought that principals had a greater focus on administrative leadership than the pedagogical leadership during Covid-19. At the same time, the informants believed that principals did not have the opportunity to lead during Covid-19, but instead acted as mediators of information. In line with previous research, clear communication was highlighted as an important part of principals' leadership during Covid-19. It was also clear that according to primary school teachers, it is important that the principal is physically present in the school and visible to the teachers during Covid-19.

This master’s thesis was written in association with University of Helsinki’s SATSA-project (Social and cultural sustainability in ECEC) and explores how directors of early childhood education understand sustainability and what responsibility they address themselves in maintaining socially and culturally sustainable organization cultures in their respective kindergartens. Sustainability issues are highly significant within today’s society and the policy for ECEC also emphasizes sustainability to a high degree (Utbildningsstyrelsen, 2022). It appears that the role of directors of ECEC has not been examined to any larger extent from a sustainability perspective in previous research. The objective of this study is to develop a deeper understanding for organization cultures and leadership in ECEC and the relationship between them from a sustainability perspective. Based on this objective the following research questions were formulated: 1. How do directors of early childhood education describe a sustainable organization culture? 2. What responsibility do directors of early childhood education address themselves in maintaining socially and culturally sustainable organization cultures? To answer these research questions the study was carried through with a qualitative method and phenomenography as the research approach. The data consists of seven recorded and transcribed interviews with directors of ECEC. These half-structured interviews were carried out remotely with directors from several kindergartens around Svenskfinland. The data was analysed with a phenomenographic analysis process inspired by Dahlgren and Johnsson (2019). The results of the study showed that directors of ECEC described sustainable organization cultures by focusing on cultural and social aspects such as structures, agreements, diversity, connection, open communication, and well-being. They pointed out economic and ecological aspects of sustainability to a lesser extent. The result also showed wide descriptions of areas of responsibility. The directors saw themselves having an important role in maintaining socially and culturally sustainable organizations cultures by taking care both of their own and their staff’s well-being and by maintaining structures in their respective kindergartens. They saw presence, availability, cooperation with the staff and a responsibility of the big picture as their significant roles in maintaining the organization cultures. To be able to understand the broad role of directors of ECEC in their work, it needs to be looked at from a sustainability perspective. Furthermore, the implementation of sustainability in organization cultures could be clarified for example with the help of educating the directors. This way the directors could form a unified vision on what sustainability could implicate in an early childhood education context from a leadership perspective.

Digital learning environments were introduced in the 1990s and have since then become a well-established part of today´s education. This study is written as the use of virtual learning environments increases rapidly, although it is still surrounded by challenges and uncertainty in regard to experiences, results and efficiency. Simultaneously, our society demands more of Finland´s educators than ever before, and the teaching staff is in greater need of support to manage the complexity of their work. The need for flexible, well-functioning in-service training was evident already at the beginning of the 2000s, which this study and the larger project are a response to. The aim of this study was to examine the efficiency of in-service training in a virtual context, to bring light to the challenges the participants still face, and to examine how the participants experience meaningful learning. The theoretical basis was Ausubel´s theory of meaningful learning, with additions by Jonassen as well as Ruokamo and Pohjolainen. The experience of meaningful learning was examined by five categories: commitment to teamwork, interest for the subject, discussion, professionalism and evaluation. The study is a part study in the LUMATIKKA-project, which is a cooperation between the Finnish National Agency for Education and a large number of universities. The data used in this study was gathered in 2018, through a survey sent out to participants in five courses within the project. The survey was completed three times per course to measure the experience of the participants and was filled out by N= 102 individuals. The statistical programme SPSS was used to process and analyse the material. The results showed that the participants had a positive experience in the LUMATIKKA-project, although the means of the categories commitment to teamwork and discussion declined during the courses. The participants who took part in the courses targeted at their specific school level were more satisfied than their colleagues in the general courses. No differences were found between the sexes. Differences were found in regard to age, showing that the younger participants were more negative than their older colleagues. Differences were found in regard to educational stage, stating that the teachers in grades 7-9 were more negative than their colleagues. Despite the differences in the sample, all participants were overall positive and stated that the courses felt meaningful to them. By offering well-functioning in-service training to teachers, we can support them in their profession and increase their competencies needed to educate the people of tomorrow.

Maisterintyö tutkii ohjelmistokehityskonsulttien oppimisen halua ja kykyä tukevia tekijöitä. Teoreettinen viitekehys ja aikaisempi tutkimustausta selittävät oppimista sosiokulttuurisen ja kognitiivisen oppimisteorian avulla. Molemmat näkökulmat ovat tarpeellisia tässä tutkimuksessa, koska asiantuntijatyön vaatimukset oppimisella ovat vahvasti sidoksissa sosiaalisen osaamisen tasoon ja kapitalistiseen kulttuuriin. Toisinaan oppimisen halua ja kykyä voidaan ymmärtää laajemmin yhdistämällä kognitiivinen näkökulma sosiaaliseen rinnalle, joka käsittää henkilökohtaiset edellytykset oppimiselle merkittävinä. Tutkimus toteutettiin kvantitatiivisena haastattelututkimuksena, jossa seitsemän asiantuntijan kokemusten syväanalyysi pyrkii vastaamaan viiteen tutkimuskysymykseen. Oppiminen ja osaamisen kehittäminen ovat henkilökohtaisia prosesseja, joiden ymmärtämiseen vaaditaan kattavaa analyysiä asenteista, uskomuksista ja ympäristöstä, jotta eri tekijöiden vaikutukset tuloksiin voidaan huomioida. Tutkimuksen tulokset kertovat, että oppimista haittaavien asioiden poistaminen ja hyvinvointia tukeva ympäristö, merkityksellisyys, tietoisuus, työssä oppiminen ja yhteisö ovat merkittäviä tekijöitä konsulttien halussa ja kyvyssä oppia.

The aim of this study is to establish an understanding of how early childhood education and care (ECEC) leaders and employees describe the pedagogical leadership, as well as how they would develop the leadership. In addition to that the aim is to establish an understanding of how the ECEC leaders’ description of the pedagogical leadership relates to the employees’ description. Previous studies show that ECEC leaders do not seem to have enough working hours for the pedagogical leadership although it is considered to be an important part of their job. The previous studies that have been found for the theoretical references of this study seem to mostly focus on either ECEC leaders’ or employees’ experiences of the ECEC leadership. Hence, this study aims to compare the experiences of the leaders and employees while trying to create an overall picture of the pedagogical leadership in ECEC. It is also relevant to look into the informants’ suggestions for leadership development because of the current situation where the ECEC has reached a point where changes in working conditions are necessary. Based on these aims the following four research questions were formulated; how do ECEC leaders describe the pedagogical leadership, how do ECEC employees describe the pedagogical leadership, how do the ECEC leaders’ descriptions relate to the ECEC employees’ descriptions and how would the informants develop the leadership in the ECEC? The study was conducted as qualitative research with a phenomenographic research approach. The data was collected through semi structured interviews with ECEC leaders and employees. Five leaders and three employees participated in the study. The interviews were later transcribed, and these transcripts were then analyzed with a phenomenographic analysis method. ECEC leaders and employees had very similar descriptions of pedagogical leadership on several points. In the descriptions, policy documents and visions were mentioned as essential parts of pedagogical leadership. In addition, reflection, the leader’s availability, and the offer of tools for the pedagogical activities were highlighted as important aspects. Regarding the development proposals the informants wished for more ECEC leaders, a change in the number of employees and guidance at work.