Browsing by study line "Luokanopettaja, kasvatuspsykologia"

This study’s purpose was examine the needs for game educators training material for a game education company named School of Gaming. Game education is still rather new field of education. While game education has been studied the study of professional game education is lacking. This master’s thesis was carried out as a design-based research that produced a game educators training material for School of Gaming. Design-based research encompasses problem analyses whose focus is to examine both the theoretical as well as empirical needs of the design product. The theoretic problem analysis for this study came to be from the studies of extracurricular programmes’ instructors and their behavior’s correlation to the participants’ positive youth development. There seems to be a common finding in this field of study that the close relational distance between instructors and participants is in positive correlation with the positive youth development. Don Hellison’s Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility model acts as the theoretic framework for this design-based research. The model is originally created in the context of physical education but it can be also applied in the field of game education. The model defines the underlining values and principles that affects physical education as well as stages of development for the skill of personal and social responsibility. The empirical need for the game educators training material was studied by interviewing active game educators from School of Gaming. The interviewees were picked from those who had been trained through the first version of the training material, were actively working as game educators in School of Gaming and had started working within six months by the time of the interview. Total of nine game educators were interviewed. The interview was carried out as half-structerd theme interview. The questions of the interview were divided in three themes: the strengths of the training material’s first version, the weaknesses of the whole game educator training and the possible future reform of the training material. Deducting from the problem analyses the training material went through a reform. The language as well as structure were systematised, the contents dividing were changed to make the whole material more understandable and better suit the need of the training. A new sections about the importance of seeing children and youth as individuals, facing of difficult situations in game education as well as the importance and practicalities of communicating with children’s or youth’s homes. The training material was made to be used by School of Gaming.

The aim of this thesis is to study disinformation as a cultural phenomenon from the point of view of media education. Disinformation, aforethoughtful misleading information sharing, is a form of information advocacy. The civil impact of disinformation has been considered as a global threat by several parties. In this thesis I elaborate on how the case of disinformation appears in lives of children who have grown during the era of social media and how media education corresponds to it. In this thesis recognizing disinformation is proposed to require a way of media critical thinking. The thesis includes an analysis based on an interview with a professional media educator. In the analysis I seek for understanding for meanings of disinformation as a cultural phenomenon and as a part of educational work. The method of this thesis is a phenomenographic, theory-based content analysis based on an interview with a media education expert. For this thesis I had an interview with media education expert, docent Sara Sintonen. The interview questions came to prominence from the theoretical framework. In the analysis I clarified the media educators meanings for disinformation as a part of media education. I analysed the thoughts of Sintonen in relation to the literacy, articles, and writings from the theoretical framework of this thesis. The expert of media education defined disinformation as non-truthful knowledge, which appeals to emotions. As for the strenghts of media education the media educator appointed the high-quality content and democratic practices. As for the challenges of media education the way of seeing media education by usability and not by the content was pointed out. As for the key features of media education for example the role of the teacher was seen as a social influencer on for their close circle. As for prevention of disinformation the media educator named collective crowding and common value base. Relevant features also included dialogue, counter-sounds and striving for understanding.

The goal of this thesis is to examine how teacher define challenging behavior and their causal attributions for the challenging behavior. Previous research has shown that teachers tend to describe challenging behavior more as externalizing behavior problems (aggression and hyperactivity). The behavior is often attributed to causes from students’ inner reasons and family. The research was done as a qualitative study based on interviewing seven class teachers working in schools in Helsinki. The interviews were carried out via the web application Zoom. The first research question was analyzed by inductive content analysis and in the second research question by deductive content analysis based on Weiner’s (1986) attribution theory. The study found that teachers described challenging behavior, as in previous studies, with features from external behavior challenges. The participants described challenging behavior broadly, and it was divided into four categories: challenging authority, disturbing others, physical violence, and emotional uncontrollability.Causes of challenging behavior were mainly attributed to factors from students’ families or the student. Teachers reported the causes of challenging behavior in five broad categories: lack of boundaries, attention-seeking, challenges of learning and attentiveness, emotional and interaction skills, and the teacher. Only one interviewee considered the teacher to be the main reason for student’s challenging behavior. Teachers should be aware of their perceptions of the causes of students’ challenging behavior. When a teacher attributes challenging behavior to external, unstable, and controllable factors, such as their own teaching, the teacher believes that their own actions can affect student behavior. On the other hand, if the challenging behavior is attributed to internal, stable, uncontrollable reasons such as student’s family, the teacher does not feel able to affect the behavior.

As a result of inclusive thinking, students with disabilities are increasingly being transferred to mainstream classes. According to the current support model, support measures must be transferred with the student, and according to the Basic Education Act, a special support decision entitles the students to receive full-time special education. In full-time co-teaching between a special classroom teacher and a classroom teacher, students from all three levels of support study in the same classroom. Previous research has shown that co-teaching is one effective way to achieve inclusion. The aim of this study is to find out what benefits teachers perceive from full-time co-teaching. The study examines how responsibilities are shared between the co-teaching couple from the perspectives of teaching design, implementation, and evaluation. In addition, this study examines how co-teaching supports inclusive education. This study was conducted as a qualitative study. The research material was obtained through interviews with a total of three special class teachers and three class teachers. The teachers who participated in the interviews formed a total of three full-time co-teaching work pairs. The data were analysed by data-driven content analysis. According to the study, the benefits experienced by teachers from co-teaching were reflected in terms of both the benefits to teachers and the benefits to students. The most significant benefits that teachers received from co-teaching were the importance of dialogue, the reduction of workload, the improvement of well-being at work and one's own professional development. Teachers perceived the benefits to students to be primarily social, such as a broader social environment, multi-adult presence, and peer learning. In terms of the division of responsibilities, the study showed that each working group shared responsibilities according to their own interests and specific competencies, especially in terms of teaching planning. Teachers used a wide range of co-teaching models. With regard to evaluation, the importance of the working couple was emphasized, as evaluations were always preceded by a joint discussion. The teachers interviewed felt that co-teaching would increase student equality and student participation, which they felt were included in the definition of inclusion. The results of the study thus confirm previous research findings on the positive link between co-teaching and inclusion.

The purpose of the study was to find out, if the character strength intervention that is based on the See the Good! -character strength pedagogy by Lotta Uusitalo and Kaisa Vuorinen influences children’s well-being. Many previous research show that character strength education advances children’s well-being. The intention of this study was to examine more closely what kind of effect the character strength intervention has on chil- dren’s subjective well-being, school related happiness and self-esteem. These influ- ences were observed between boys and girls and between boys and girls of different age. The aim of this study was to offer relevant research data for care and education sector for them to understand what kind of significance the character strength education has for children’s well-being. This study was carried out as a quantitative intervention study and the intervention was a part of a larger #uuttakoulua initiative. The data was collected in the beginning of the intervention in September 2019 and then again when four months of the intervention had passed in December 2019. The final measurement in 2020 wasn’t used because of the coronavirus pandemic. 240 comprehensive school students took part in the study. There were twelve municipalities and nineteen comprehensive schools involved in the #uut- takoulua initiative and those who wanted participated in this character strength interven- tion. This study consisted of a sample group with 184 students and a control group with 56 students. An electronic questionnaire was used to collect the data and the data was analyzed by SPSS-program with Wilcoxon signed rank test. Generally, there were no statistically significant differences in different well-being sectors in the sample group during the character strength intervention. However, there was a statistically significant rise in subjective well-being in the 10-year-olds from the sample group during the intervention. In the same way there was a statistically significant rise in school related happiness in the 12-year-olds from the sample group. Whereas the 11- year-olds’, from the sample group, the subjective well-being lowered statistically signifi- cantly. Little differences from different genders emerged when boys and girls of different age were compared. The results of this study indicate that character strength intervention has moderate effects on children’s well-being. Further research is needed to get confir- mation for the results of this study.

Objectives. Family background and school bullying victimization has been a popular research topic globally yet studies focusing on Finnish school system are still rare. Usually, family background is studied from the perspective of socioeconomical background. Previous studies have found that family background factors and several other individual factors may influence the likelihood of being bullied. The theoretical framework of this study focuses mainly on factors related to parental relationship and parental behaviour. The purpose of this study is to deepen the knowledge on how different family background factors predict bullying victimization among fourth and fifth grade primary school pupils. Methods. The data used in this study consists of a Finnish school wellbeing survey that was conducted in May 2019. The survey is a nation-wide study with target group being one cohort of fourth and fifth grade primary school pupils. The survey received a total of 99 632 responses of which 70 814 fulfilled the criteria of the employed analysis methods. A literature review acted as a basis for forming 11 family background variables and a gender variable. The influence of different variables on school bullying victimization was then analysed through a binomial logistic regression using a forced entry method. Accuracy and goodness of the regression model was tested with multiple accuracy measures, Hosmer-Lemenshow test and classification table. Results and conclusions. In contrast to previous research, the family background factors of this study did not significantly predict school bullying victimization. Even though the logistic regression model itself was statistically significant, it was capable to explain only 8.4 percent of the total variation in school bullying victimization variable. In this model, the neglect of parental duties proved to be the best predictor for school bullying victimization. Of the different forms of parental violence experienced by pupils, mental violence was the most significant predictor. The results also indicate a minor gender difference in bullying with boys having higher odds of being school bullying victims.

Aims. The aim of this study was to find out what kind of social reality is produced about teachers’ occupational well-being in Finnish newspapers’ opinion section in the time of the pandemic. This was seen to include the question of who talk about the subject and how, what kind of subject positions are given to teachers and what kind of power-relations are included in the conversation. The news about teachers wanting to change fields and recent studies of teachers’ decreased well-being (including the research produced by The Trade Union of Education in Finland) justify the currentness of this study. The pandemic made significant changes to the everyday life which also raised the question about teachers’ occupational well-being and working conditions. In this study the occupational well-being of teachers is seen through the occupational well-being theory of Rauramo (2012), Self Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and Job Demands – Resources –model (Demerouti et. al., 2001). Methods. The epistemological and ontological backround was based on social constructionism and the method of analysis was critical discourse analysis (CDA). The research data included 29 writings which were from three Finnish newspapers. Four of the writings were from Aamulehti, four from Turun Sanomat and 21 from Helsingin Sanomat. The data was gathered in November 2021 and the writings were published from March 2020 to October 2021. The participants of the conversation were teachers, other professionals of the field of education, politicians, and external participants of the field of education. The participants were categorised into groups by writer status and the voice of the writing, and the categories were teacher, neutral and defender of teachers. Results and conclusions. There were four discourses constructed from the data. The discourses were The concern about teachers, Teachers in distress, Satisfied teacher and The change of society. Teachers were given different subject positions in each discourse and they were The help needer, Exhausted teacher, Capable worker and satisfied teacher and The executor of the impossible task. The subject of teachers’ occupational well-being was mostly seen as a problem that needed a solution. Teachers held the decision makers accountable, whereas the other participants argued that the teachers were responsible for their own well-being. The discussion about the subject had an emphasis on negation as well as the most recent studies on teachers’ occupational well-being. The negativity of discussion can decrease the attractiveness of the education industry which is already reflected from recent studies.

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills are recognized as an important asset in the transition phase of society that we are living in. The attitude climate in entrepreneurship education is mainly positive and has developed significantly over the past decades in Finland. The importance of entrepreneurship education as part of the Education Curriculum has been strengthened since the 1990s. Despite this, the role of entrepreneurship education in the everyday life of elementary schools is small. In my research, I wanted to find out why entrepreneurship education does not appear in basic education according to POPS (2014)? The goal of my research was to form an understanding of the current state of entrepreneurship education in basic education based on the views of entrepreneurship education experts, and thereby define measures that support the future of entrepreneurship education in basic education. I approached the research question through three sub-questions: "What kind of role does entrepreneurship education have for the individual and society?", "What kind of opportunities and challenges are associated with entrepreneurship education?" and "What kind of views do entrepreneurship education experts have about the future of entrepreneurship education in basic education?" My research was based on the theory of entrepreneurship education (e.g. Seikkula-Leino 2018, Lackéus 2017) and guidelines defining entrepreneurship education. The research was carried out as a qualitative case study by interviewing seven expert teachers of entrepreneurship education and was analyzed using content analysis methods. The research results showed that entrepreneurship education has a significant role for the individual and society. The main influencing factors of entrepreneurship education were the attitude climate, financial resources and the role of teachers. The most important challenges were the lack of teacher training and teachers' skills, as well as the school's marginal conditions and lack of resources for multidisciplinary learning that crosses subject boundaries. In their views, the experts criticized the division of subjects and knowledge-based nature of the current school and emphasized that the school should serve the student's interests more strongly than it currently does. As conclusions, POPS should provide a stronger backbone for entrepreneurship education than at present, which forms an integral learning path for basic education. POPS should strengthen its concreteness and clarity, as well as the importance of multidisciplinary and broad competence skills. So that in the future every student has equal opportunities to receive entrepreneurship education, the Board of Education must use financial resources and training to support the realization and implementation of POPS in elementary schools and university teacher training more strongly than at present. School curricula should include an annual calendar of entrepreneurship education, and the management should provide sufficient resources for teaching that crosses subject boundaries.

The aim of this study is to find out the classroom teachers' perceptions of learning motivation, the factors influencing it and their motivation strategies. I use two different theories related to learning motivation as the theoretical background of the research. These are Deci's and Ryan's (2000) Self-Determination Theory and Eccles’ and Wigfield's (2000) Expectation-Theory. According to these theories, an individual's motivation is constructed by various factors. At the heart of self-determination theory are basic psychological needs that, when fulfilled, increase an individual's intrinsic motivation. According to Decin and Ryan (2000), the basic psychological needs of an individual are perceived autonomy, perceived ability, and a sense of belonging. In Eccles and Wigfield's (2000) expectation value theory, an individual's motivation is again seen to be influenced by performance-related expectations and values. This study is a qualitative and its research approach is a case study.The subject of this study was six classroom teachers. Classroom teachers were interviewed individually using themes related to learning motivation. All interviews were recorded and later transcribed. Thematic design was utilized in the analysis of the obtained material. The results of the study showed that the perceptions of learning motivation of the interviewed teachers were very similar to each other. Three different themes were created from the responses of classroom teachers as factors influencing learning motivation. These included psychological factors, social factors, and student alertness. Three different themes were also created from the motivational strategies provided by the teachers themselves. The themes related to the strategies of motivation were the strategies related to working methods, the strategies related to the learning environment and the strategies related to the learning situation. This research does not actually provide entirely new information on the topic I am researching, but it does give voice to the interviewees ’perceptions of learning motivation. I find this important both from a research point of view and from the individual point of view of the interviewees. Some of the interviewees stated that they had never thought deeper about perceptions of learning motivation, because they felt that it was automatized.

There has been intense debate over the Finnish school system and new curriculum in recent years. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze this public debate in the comment fields of news sites. I try to describe the ways in which school reality is constructed in these comment fields. The material of the study was the discussions under the articles about school and new curricu-lum in Helsingin Sanomat and Yle Uutiset from autumn 2018 to spring 2019. The delimitation was made based on the topic of the news and the number and quality of comments on the dis-cussion under it. The method of analysis was interpretive discourse analysis, which was also supported by rhe-torical analysis. In discourse analysis, language is seen as a tool to shape reality, and it is im-portant to examine what kind of image about school is produced in public debate, when public debate is increasingly influencing in educational policy processes. As a result of the analysis, five discourses were constructed. Discourses were called the dis-course of the circle of accusations, the discourse of confrontation, the discourse of international comparison, the discourse of solutions, and the discourse of defending the school and the cur-riculum. All discourses presented different perspectives on education policy, teachers, methods, and students. The new curriculum was seen as a failure. The discourses used strong and even offensive rhetoric.