Browsing by study line "Luokanopettaja (kasvatustiede)"

Aims. In the context of computing education, the vast majority of prior research examining achievement goal orientations has been conducted using variable-centred methods. In order to deepen understanding of the student population and achievement motivation, this Master’s Thesis employed person-oriented perspectives. The interplay of different goal orientations was explored by identifying prevalent motivational profiles and investigating profile differences in performance. Normative and appearance performance goals were handled as separate clustering variables in addition to mastery goals for the first time. Methods. The participants were 2059 introductory programming MOOC students. Data were collected by a questionnaire and from automatically assessed programming assignments and final exam. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted for the achievement goal orientation items to examine the factor structure. Using TwoStep cluster analysis, the students were classified into clusters according to their achievement goal orientations. Cross tabulations and analyses of variance (ANOVA) were conducted to investigate profile characteristics and differences in performance. Results and Conclusions. Five distinct achievement goal orientation profiles were identified: Approach-Oriented (31.2%), Performance-Oriented (18.9%), Combined Mastery and Performance Goals (18.0%), Low Goals (17.6.%) and Mastery-Oriented (14.3.%). Students with Combined Mastery and Performance Goals performed significantly better than students with Low Goals regarding two metrics. Consistent with previous findings, the results highlight the positive link between multiple goal pursuit and performance. Further studies are needed to investigate motivational profiles in relation to other educational outcomes in the context of computing education. This kind of knowledge is valuable for designing interventions and new courses. The article ‘Achievement Goal Orientation Profiles and Performance in a Programming MOOC’, which is based on the present thesis, will be presented at ITiCSE 2020 (Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education) conference and published in conference proceedings.

Objectives. The goal of this thesis is to examine what kind of mathematical identity the groups of third, fourth and fifth grade students have. In addition, the study aims to decipher, through drawings produced by students, what kind of positive methods teacher use in math lesson, and considers whether positive pedagogy has an effect on students’ mathematical identities. Methods. The research method for this thesis was a qualitative case study of pupils’ drawings and writings. The research material comprised of 44 drawings and 44 writings. The research group consisted of three school classes from Uusimaa. The teaching methods of the class teachers were largely in line with positive pedagogy. The drawings were analyzed through drawing analysis and the writings by using classifications. Results and conclusions. The mathematical identities of the data were defined into four different categories: positive mathematical identity, conflicting mathematical identity, neutral mathematical identity, and negative mathematical identity. In the studied groups, over half of the students had a positive mathematical identity. Negative mathematical identities occurred the least. The majority of students described positive means in teacher action. The postive means of teachers manifested themselves in three different ways: encouraging and positive precence, support for learning, and encouraging and positive words. Based on the data, the teachers had the most encouraging precence and support for learning. Although the various words of encouragement were not very much present, the students for the most part described their relationship with the teacher positively. The research findings the encourages the use of positive pedagogy because it has the potential to positively influence a learner’s mathematical identity. The research also shows that drawing research, especially with combined with students’ writings, is a good method of research in analyzing mathematical identity.

Objectives. Prior research on educational literature has identified shortcomings in equality in assessment. In addition, prior research has observed that teachers evaluate pupils with respect to other pupils rather than with respect to general learning objectives. Solutions to these challenges have not, however, been proposed. This thesis seeks to examine assessment from perspectives of validity and equality and to offer solutions in increasing the equality in assessment. Increasing the equality of assessment is needed, as varying assessment sets pupils to inequal position with regards to further studies as well as development and growth as learner. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to develop assessment but also to shed light to underlying challenges of equal assessment. Methodology. The data utilized in this thesis was based on a web-based brainstorming session made for teachers and other actors in primary school, and in particular on responses to question on how to increase equality of assessment. The brainstorming session was organized by Fountain Park, and funded by Finnish National Agency for Education. The total number of responses was 2487. The research methodology applied in this thesis was sample-based and inductive qualitative analysis. The responses were first categorized by using Atlas.ti qualitative analysis software due to the large number of responses. As a result of data analysis and conceptualization, eight categories were created. Findings and conclusions. The eight factors increasing equality in assessment found in this research are 1) requirements of collaboration between evaluators, 2) increasing knowledge e.g. through trainings, 3) diverse assessment methods, 4) consideration of individuality in assessment, 5) nationwide assessment system including e.g. exam and assignment library 6) openness of assessment towards pupils, 7) detailed assessment criteria and objectives in the curriculum and 8) resources. Resources are not directly related to increasing equality in assessment, however resources were seen as a barrier or enabler for the other factors. For the identified factors to be realized in practice, different actors on levels of teachers, schools, as well as administration are needed. As a support his/her assessment work, a teacher needs knowledge and trainings provided by the administrative actors, collaboration with colleagues, and sufficient assessment skills.

Aims. Accoring to the Self-Determination Theory all human beings have fundamental psychological needs to be competent, autonomous, and related to others. Satisfying all these basic needs is essential to motivation and also affects the psychological well-being of people. The concept of motivation can be examined also from the perspective of social psychology and cognitive science. Combining several theoretical models enables a more in-depth analysis of the phenomenon. This study focuses on reading motivation. The first research question of this thesis is, how much autonomy Finnish primary school teachers provided their pupils when choosing the latest novel to be read in class.Teachers’ arguments for using this particular way of choosing the book will be analyzed in the second research question. The aim was to find out what kind of thoughts about motivation guide teachers’ pedagogical choices when teaching literature. Additionally, the aim was to find out if all the psychological needs were mentioned equally when the term motivation was used in an answer or was one of them highlighted more than the others? Methods. This study is a part of the Lukuklaani research project and it’s data was collected by an online survey in Finnish primary schools during November-December 2017. The total number of answers was 885. This thesis is based on two questions from the questionnaire. One of the questions was closed and the other question was open. The data of this study includes only the Finnish-speaking answers from the research project schools and sample schools. The research method was theory driven analysis, which was based on the quantitative data of the first research question. As a qualitative research the corpus was wide including 583 answers. Results and conclusions. Teachers’ arguments hold a lot of understanding of motivational psychology. Also the fundamental psychological needs of The Self-Determination Theory appear widely in the whole data. Interestingly, the concept of autonomy appeared more than the other aspects of the SDT when teachers were referring to motivation in their answers. According to this study it is relevant to consider how the term motivation differs from the terms of enthusiasm or interest in teachers’ minds.

Objects. In my Bachelor’s thesis I executed a descriptive literatute review about dialogic teaching and collected a table of the methods used by a dialogic teacher. In this research I observed lessons and used the grouping I had created in order to identify the methods of dialogic teaching. The objective of the study was to examine in what extent dialogue appeared in the teaching of class teachers and teacher students. My research questions were: 1. Which methods of a dialogic teacher can be identified from the observed teachers’ lessons? 2. How is dialogue manifested in the teaching of class teachers and teacher students? and 3. How is dialogue manifested in the teaching of different subjects? In this study I created information about the practices of dialogic teaching. Methods. I examined the topic with the methods of qualitative study with videotaped lessons as my research material. Three class teachers and three teacher students participated in the study. I collected my research data from one school located in the metropolitan area with the help of video observation. As a base for my analysis, I used the grouping from my Bachelor’s Thesis. I analysed my research material by creating different groups of the methods used by a dialogic teacher. Results and Conclusions. All of the class teachers and teacher students observed in this study used dialogic methods in their teaching. For example dialogue appeared in a conversational tone of voice, leaving space for the students’ voices and showing the importance of their claims. The dialogic methods used by the teachers observed could be placed in four groups: building of subject matter, teachers approach, teachers’ feedback and supporting students’ autonomy. From all of the lessons observed, it was possible to identify the most dialogic methods in the Finnish language lessons. It is possible to utilise these research results when teachers want to add dialogue in to their teaching. Concrete ways in which dialogue appears were listed in the study.

The objective of this study was to find out why adolescents stop taking part in organized sports. The aim of the qualitative study was to understand and get answers from adolescents themselves. The interest was to find out what exercise means to young people and what are the reasons for dropping out from organized sport. Studies show that physical activity declines and participation in organized sports reduces significantly in adolescence. The target group in this study was ten young people who had stopped taking part in organized sports. Participated adolescents were 12–18 years old. The material was collected by themed interviews. The interviews progressed through three themes. These three themes were: 1. the meanings of sports hobbies, 2. quitting sports hobbies and 3. exercise in the future. Due to the corona pandemic situation, most of the interviews were performed remotely. All the interviews were recorded. The material was analyzed using theory-guided content analysis. As a result of the study, doing sports had had different kinds of meanings for young people. There was also found different reasons for dropping out from sports in this study. The reasons were: competing priorities and other leisure activities, decreased motivation, negative experiences, lack of a suitable team or sports club, an injury and a want to change to another hobby. The results of the study confirmed the notion that the meanings and causes of doing sports may change in adolescence. Study showed that disciplined and serious competitive sport activities did not attract adolescents to participate to sports. Young people hoped that doing sports would rather be relaxed than serious leisure activity. The conclusion was that young people`s wishes should be considered when planning sport activities for young people. Also, the low effort sport club activities should be increased in Finland. In addition, the negative experiences of adolescents with sport activities which emerged from the material, are issues that need further research.

The objective of this research was to determine what sorts of risks pre-adolescent children are able to recognize on social media and how they act once they have acknowledged these dangers. Additionally, the goal was to study the effects of school and media education on the preadolescents’ social media behavior. In this research social media has mostly been de-fined according to previous studies, as applications favored by children and adolescents. One class of fifth graders from the Helsinki metropolitan area participated in the research. The material was collected through themed small-group interviews. There were a total of 21 participants and seven interview groups. The data was categorized and analyzed by using the content analysis method. Four different content types were identified from the material, and were categorized as social media risks recognized by the pre-adolescents. These labelled risks were bullying, personal information, hoaxes and unpleasant content. Bullying on social media was brought up the most often. The adolescents had been taught media education at school, but they still would have preferred to receive further education especially on the subject of social media har-assment. Some of them felt they were already familiar with the content of the media educa-tion curriculum beforehand, and had not learned any new useful information. The pre-adolescents’ behavior on social media aligned with the risks they had identified and the media education they had received. They valued their own privacy on social media, but were not able to react to bullying otherwise than by blocking the harassers. The pre-adolescents con-sidered bullying to be a substantial part of social media, without any possible solutions.

The framework for this study comes from Koster’s, Nakken’s, Pijl’s and van Houten’s (2009) theory of a child’s social participation in a peer group. According to Koster and the partners, social participation is built by four dimensions: child's social self-perception, acceptance by classmates, contacts/interactions and friendships/relationships. A lot of research has been conducted of social participation of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, but most of the researches are quantitative or have been examined through the adult perceptive. The aim of this study is to examine social participation of a disabled child from multifaceted perspective. In addition to this, the aim is to find out how the dimensions of contacts/interactions and acceptance by classmates are related to each other’s. This is a qualitative case study of a child with Down syndrome, who has been in a mainstream primary school class. The data of this study consists of a thematic interviews of the child herself and the persons who have been involved through her school path. In addition to this the data consists child’s writing book and a message book of a parent and school counselor from the 6th grade. The analysis was done using a deductive content analysis. The results suggested that the child’s social participation of the peer group had been incomplete. On the eyes of outsiders, the child’s social self-perception had been seen as positive, but the child’s own school satisfaction had been alternately positive and negative. The child didn’t have any actual friendships or two-way play during the primary school. During the school years she had participated a lot to classes activities and especially on these situations there had been strong support from the other classmates. In general, the child was a respected and accepted member by her classmates but the externality became relevant in occasional conflicts or on group work situations. Social participation is a key requirement for inclusion and it needs to be reached more so that the equality of every student can be advanced

Aims. The aim of the study was to find out which elements of the physical learning environment are related to the safety and school comfort experienced by students. The study examined how safe and comfortable students found their physical learning environment in general and what elements of the environment were associated with students perceiving the school building and its yard as safe. Previous studies have found that the comfort of a school building has an impact on student safety. Methods. The study used questionnaire data produced by Anne Konu's School Welfare Profile series, which was collected in the 2017–2018 academic year. 10477 students from grades 4-6 answered the survey. The questions in the material were divided into four themes, one of which dealt with the physical conditions of the school. The study focused on analyzing these issues. The questions related to the safety and comfort of the school building and the yard, the comfort of the canteen, the size and temperature of the classroom, the cleanliness, the toilets, and whether one can play in the schoolyard. The data was analyzed using statistical measures, the Spearman’s correlation coefficient, the Mann-Whitney U-test, and the Kruskal-Wallis test. Results and conclusions. Students were mainly satisfied with the safety and comfort of the school building and yard. They were least satisfied with the cleanliness of the school and the toilet facilities. All of the factors in the physical learning environment studied were related to whether students perceived the school building or its yard as safe. Sixth graders differed from students in other grades in all variables and were more dissatisfied than other respondents. Fourth and fifth graders differed in some of the variables. The biggest difference between the different grade levels was in the comfort of the yard. Girls and boys also differed in some of the variables. The most significant differences were in the class temperature at which the girls were more dissatisfied than the boys. The boys, on the other hand, were more dissatisfied with the toilet facilities. Based on the results, the safety and comfort of students will be increased the most by improving the cleanliness of schools and toilets. In addition, the safety and comfort of older students will be improved by adding more things that interest them to the schoolyard. The safety and comfort of girls will be improved by focusing on classroom temperatures and boys by improving toilet facilities. However, the study found that the correlation and the degree of explanation of the physical structures to the safety experienced by students were generally low.

It is important to look for new approaches and means to support learning in the constantly changing world. The potential of live-action role-playing games or larps to affect motivation and learning is examined in this study. In the center of the study is a larp called Velhokoulu. The skills taught by role-playing games and their other positive effects has also been studied earlier, but the children's point of view is rarely emphasized. Furthermore, the Velhokoulu-larp is a fairly unique case in a Finnish context. The aim of the study is to empirically find out the effects of larping both from the view of motivation as well as learning. The study was carried out as a case study, which data was collected with both qualitative and quantitative methods. The motivation and the learning were examined through the vision of the designers of Velhokoulu, the assistants’ execution and the players' experience. The material concerning the designers and assistants was collected with semi-structured interviews, while the players' experiences were surveyed with a quantitative questionnaire. The methods for analysis consisted of the qualitative content analysis for the interviews and simple methods of the statistical description for the questionnaire. The results showed that Velhokoulu can support the player's motivation and psychological basic needs in many different ways. Some of the most centered results concerning motivation were influencing one's own character and the action in the game, an optimal level and supporting it and the good and safe atmosphere. These principles were supported by enabling different action, taking the players' different age and experience into consideration and through safe roles and the model of assistants. Some centered results from the point of view of the learning were the development of the imagination, taking others' perspective, cooperative skills and critical thinking and questioning. The learning of the skills was supported by creating atmosphere, assistants' own model and the concrete examples, active encouraging and the challenging of the players. The player’s experience mainly highlighted the fact of Velhokoulu supporting both the basic needs and learning of the skills. On the basis of the results can be said that concepts such as Velhokoulu bring many benefits with it from different points of view. The filling of psychological basic needs is a precondition for the development of inner motivation, in addition to which the skills taught by role-playing games are important for example from the point of view of the wide-ranging skills mentioned in Finnish curriculum. The study indeed offers a viewpoint and example of how the untapped resources of games could be brought into use in practice and could be adapted for example in the context of education.