Browsing by Subject "koulutuksellinen tasa-arvo"
Now showing items 1-11 of 11
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(2019)Study delay has been considered a challenge within the vocational education, and the dropout rate is much higher than in college. Limited knowledge of the choices within upper secondary education may lead to an unfitted choice of education which for one may hold up the graduation. The main objective of this masters’ thesis was to find out which factors might hold up the graduation in vocational education. The aim is to examine what are the differences between the students who graduated in time and the students whose studies were considered delayed. The interest was also in finding out which factors are the best to explain whether the studies were delayed or not. The study delay is looked through motivation, the grade point average of theoretical studies in the last year of lower secondary education, sex, native language, mother’s education and special support received in lower secondary education. The research data was part of a research done in collaboration by the University of Helsinki, the University of Tampere, the National Board of Education and the Centre of Educational Assessment. The participants of this study consisted of 6277 vocational education students in the Helsinki Metropolitan area. The research data was collected during year 2014 when the students were in the last year of lower secondary education and in year 2017, three years after the beginning of vocational education. The results discovered differences in special support, native language and motivation between the groups of students who graduated in time and the students whose studies were considered delayed. There was an increased amount of study delay within the students who received special support in lower secondary education and the students whose native language was other than Finnish or Swedish. According to this study, receiving special support in lower secondary education was the most significant factor to explain the detainment of studies. In this study, there was no connection found between study delay and the grade point average of theoretical subjects in the last year of lower secondary education.
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(2017)Objectives. Support for learning difficulties has not been made available to students in an equal manner in different parts of the country. Earlier research shows that there are regional differences in the percentages of comprehensive school students receiving support, as well as in the forms of support made available to them. The purpose of this Master's thesis was to study how many ninth grade students participating in the Learning to Learn Assessment in 2012 had received support for learning during the past academic year in different parts of Finland. Another objective was to analyse the realisation of educational equality, i.e. whether there are regional or municipal differences (between urban, semi-urban and rural municipalities) in the support made available to students. Methods. The Learning to Learn Assessment was carried out in spring 2012. A total of 7,222 ninth grade students from different parts of Finland participated in this assessment. Among the participants, 4% were recipients of intensified support and 7.9% recipients of special support. Five task categories developed for the Learning to Learn Assessment were included in the present study. The material was analysed by variance analysis in order to identify possible geographical differences. Results and conclusions. The study discovered regional differences in the definition of recipients of general support. With regard to general support, there were significant regional differences. Intensified support and special support were made available to students least frequently in the regions of Lapland and Southwest Finland. There were also differences between the regions in how effectively they employed the different levels of support included in the three-tier support system. The results indicate that large, urban municipalities in particular have succeeded in amending their support system faster than semi-urban and rural municipalities, and they have also succeeded in re-evaluating students' needs for special support.There were also differences in the use of the individually adjusted syllabus as a form of special support. Using the individually adjusted syllabus may lead to less ambitious learning objectives and weaker learning outcomes, possibly also negatively influencing students' pursuit of further study.The present study concludes that although there are regional differences in the availability of support, it seems that there are no differences between students: students receiving support are similar when it comes to their academic performance and learning to learn competence.
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(2016)Aims. There are only a few studies of values concerning school choice and educational policy in Finland. In this study school choice is being considered as an example of "commons problems". It was hypothesized that conflicts between values regarding public and private interest would be found in the speech of parents discussing their child's choice. According to recent studies, the school choice policy is found to bring about segregation of schools' student base and differentiation of schools' reputations and learning outcomes in big cities, even so that the Finnish comprehensive school is being sectioned into unequalizing parallel school tracks. Studies concerning Finnish values show a growing tension in Finnish value structure from the 1990s to the beginning of the 21st century. The tension applies to positioning of oneself with respect to others. Since it is common to speak about "rationality" regarding school choice, the notion of rationality and its connection to values as well as global epistemic governance is discussed, using Max Weber's concepts of rationality. Methods. The research material consisted of 10 semi-structured theme interviews, which were collected in the year 2011 as a part of wider PASC (Parents and School Choice) research project by a sociology and politics of education research team at the University of Helsinki and Turku. The method used was the discourse analysis of transcribed interviews. The value content was analysed with the help of the circular typology of values, which Shalom Schwartz (1992) has presented in his theory of basic human values. The typology allowed more diverse scrutinizing of values and their conflicts than before, especially regarding the dimension of public and private interest. Results and conclusions. Five discourses with different value content were found in the study: the wellbeing, security, success, self-actualization and equality discourses. Different representations of the nearby community, the Finnish school system and good parenting were constructed in each of them. The tension between values regarding public and private interest was found between the equality and success discourses, the latter often combined with the security discourse where some residential areas and schools were represented as restless and thus to be avoided. As a whole, the parents supported the retaining of the comprehensive school, hence the values found in wellbeing, self-actualization and equality discourses emerged as the most harmonious basis for educational policy in the future.
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(2021)Koulutuksellisen tasa-arvon nähdään toteutuvan, kun kenenkään taustaan liittyvät ominaisuudet, esimerkiksi sukupuoli, asuinpaikka tai äidinkieli eivät ennusta sitä, mihin koulutukseen kukin hakeutuu ja kuinka siinä menestyy. Vaikka suomalainen koululaitos on niittänyt kansainvälistäkin tunnustusta erinomaisilla oppimistuloksillaan ja menestyksellään PISA-testeissä, löytyy koulutuksellisen tasa-arvon suhteen puutteita myös tässä menestystarinassa. Itse asiassa juuri PISA-tulokset ovat osoittaneet, kuinka suomalainen koulutusjärjestelmä ei ole onnistunut tukemaan parhaalla mahdollisella tavalla maahanmuuttajataustaisten oppilaiden koulutusta. Vuoden 2018 PISA-testin mukaan kaikkien OECD-maiden eriarvoisimmat tulokset löytyivät Suomesta, kun verrattiin kantaväestön ja maahanmuuttajien tuloksia. Koska nimenomaan koululaitos nähdään maahanmuuttajataustaisten lasten ja nuorten ensisijaisena väylänä yhteiskuntaan integroitumisessa, on koulutukselliseen tasa-arvoon erityisen tärkeää kiinnittää huomiota nopeasti monikulttuuristuvassa yhteiskunnassa. Esimerkiksi kielitietoisen opetuksen voisi nähdä tarjoavan joitakin ratkaisuja aiheeseen. Vieraskieliseksi opiskelijaksi määritellään tässä tutkimuksessa jotain muuta kuin suomea, ruotsia tai saamea äidinkielenään puhuva henkilö. Vieraskielisten osuus väestöstä kasvaa jatkuvasti, ja yhä useampi vieraskielinen nuori valitsee peruskoulun jälkeen toisen asteen koulutukseksi lukiokoulutuksen. Kuitenkin vahvasti kirjalliseen osaamiseen perustuvan lukiokoulutuksen on ollut haasteellista vastata vieraskielisen opiskelijan kielitaitoon liittyviin erityispiirteisiin. Haasteita vieraskieliselle opiskelijalle asettaa esimerkiksi sisältöjen ja vieraan kielen samanaikainen opiskelu. Lisäksi minkä tahansa tieteenalan opiskelu vaatii kyseisen tieteenalan kielen oppimista. Tieteen kielellä on sen oma erityinen sanasto, semantiikka ja syntaksi, joiden hallinta on edellytyksenä itse tieteen hallinnalle. Opiskelija, joka siis tiedettä joutuu opiskelemaan itselleen vieraalla kielellä, on näin ollen ikään kuin kaksinkertaisen kieleen liittyvän haasteen edessä. Tämä väistämättä asettaa vieraskielisen opiskelijan epätasa-arvoiseen asemaan suomea äidinkielenään puhuvan opiskelijan rinnalla. Lukion oppitunnilla opiskelijalla on mahdollisuus päästä näyttämään osaamistaan monin eri tavoin. Usein arvioinnissa painottuu kuitenkin summatiivinen kurssikoe, jossa testataan ainoastaan opiskelijan kirjallista osaamista. Myös lukiokoulutuksen päättävissä ylioppilaskokeissa arvioinnin kohteena on nimenomaan opiskelijan kirjallinen osaaminen, joka välittyy erilaisiin tehtäviin annettujen kirjallisten vastausten kautta. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena onkin selvittää, kuinka lukio-opiskelijan suomen kielen taito näkyy tehtäviin annetuissa kirjallisissa vastauksissa. Oppiaineista tämä tutkimus rajoittuu fysiikkaan, ja aineisto on kerätty Helsingin kielilukion ensimmäisen vuosikurssin fysiikan opiskelijoilta. Opiskelijat suorittivat FY2 Lämpö -kurssia, ja tutkimuksen aineistona toimiikin tämän kurssin oppikirjan tehtävät, opettajan antamat tuntitehtävät sekä opiskelijoiden vastaukset näihin tehtäviin. Tehtävien tehtävänannot luokiteltiin Andersonin ja Krathwohlin taksonomiataulun eri soluihin. Opiskelijoiden vastaukset luokiteltiin eri luokkiin niiden laadun perusteella. Suomen kielen taitoa tutkittiin vastauksissa esiintyneiden kielellisten virheiden ja oikein käytettyjen tieteellisten termien avulla. Andersonin ja Krathwohlin taksonomiataulun lisäksi teoreettista viitekehystä rakentaa kognitiivinen kuormitusteoria. Tutkimuksessa havaittiin, että opiskelijoiden tekemät tehtävät eivät kognitiiviselta vaatimustasoltaan olleet erityisen hankalia. Opiskelijoiden vastausten analyysin tulosten mukaan noin puolet opiskelijoiden vastauksista oli laadultaan rikkaita, mutta yli kolmasosa oli laadultaan heikkoja tai (esimerkiksi malliratkaisuista) kopioituja. Selkeästi suurin osa kopioiduista vastauksista oli annettu paljon sanallista selitystä vaativiin tehtäviin. Tehtävätyypiltään rutiininomaisiin laskutehtäviin sekä yksinkertaisiin kuvaajien piirto- tai tulkitsemistehtäviin oli annettu eniten rikkaita vastauksia. Lisäksi kielellisten virheiden sekä oikein käytettyjen tieteellisten termien havaittiin korreloivan vastauksen laadun kanssa.
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(2018)Educational equality has long been the aim of the Finnish education policy. In the early days of the welfare state, education was considered, as far as possible, as an independent right, unbound by socio-economic status. A key element in promoting equality was the creation of a cohesive primary school. With the advance of the neoliberalist view, educational equality was defined as an individual's possibility to pursue their own endeavors. School market and school choice enabled t to support the students' talent and interest. While controlling education, municipalities have played a key role in promoting educational equality. Earlier research suggests that individual equality is more supported by the right-wing parties and the Greens, while supporters of social equality have been more common in the left and center groups. Less researched is, what the city's decision-makers refer to as equality. I examine which views of social and individual equality, in connection with the school choice, are seen in the voting advice application answers of elected Helsinki City Council Members. I analyze the Council Members' justifications for their perceptions of educational equality and their opinion on the matter. In addition, I review which measures Council Members propose to promote educational equality. The data for the study was the answers of the elected Helsinki City Council on the issue of school election in the Helsingin Sanomat VAA. I collected the answers from the electoral machine after the final municipal election result in spring 2017. I analyzed the material with a theory-driven content analysis method. Educational equality appeared to be a complex phenomenon. High quality was striven for all schools, but at the same time the answerers tried to meet the demands for individual services and different life situations. The answers focused on the view of individual equality, but the concepts of equality did not comply with previous studies of party division in all respects. Actions to promote equality was most strongly linked to social equality. My research specifies the meaning of educational equality in a situation where the coming regional reform puts primary education in the center of the city council's responsibility.
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(2019)The cornerstone of Finnish educational system is equity stating that all children have the same access to high quality basic education despite of their e.g. socio-economical status, ethnic back-ground or school district. However, according to the previous studies, educational outcomes have diverged in Helsinki (especially between the highest ranking and lowest ranking schools) due to socio-spatial segregation subverting the ideal of egalitarian and universalist schooling. This study focuses on teacherhood in a context of segregated urban area in Helsinki. My re-search questions are following: What kind of preconditions segregated neighbourhood engen-ders to teaching and teacherhood? What kind of teacherhood these preconditions create? And; how the official state school discourse is related to this teacher discourse? The research material of this qualitative case study consists of tematic interviews of five experienced and qualified teachers working at the same elementary school in eastern Helsinki. A high unemployment rate, low level of education, and high percentage of immigrants are determinants of the school district. The transcribed material was analysed by implementing critical discourse analysis to adduce the interfaces where teacher discourse and official state school discourse (e.g. national curriculum, Basic Education Act) were conflicting. Firstly, this study shows that school reality in a segregated urban area is incongruent with the ideals of national curriculum, Basic Education Act, and the official writings of Finnish National Agency for Education. This study describes how e.g. challenging student base, inappropriate resources and enlarged socialisation task confront teachers’ ideals causing cognitive dissonance. Secondly, I present the concept of negotiated normativity to describe the space where teachers create their own norms to meet the demands of their work. Teachers respond to cognitive dissonance by a process of negotiating new aimes and modifying their pedagogy.
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(2024)The basis of this research is the situation of educational equality in Finland. Previous research shows the strong heritability of education and the differentiation of students' skills according to socio-economic backgrounds. The influence of socio-economic backgrounds on learning outcomes has become even stronger in recent years. The skills learned and the competence achieved in primary and lower secondary education (basic education) can be defined as human capital. Capital deficits are linked to intergenerational disadvantage. Previous research suggests that there is a connection between receiving support at school and a weaker social background. This study, carried out with a qualitative research strategy, aims to answer what kind of work practices in special education in primary and lower secondary education aim to influence the learning and educational differences linked to the students' different socio-economic backgrounds. The research data consists six interviews (semi-structuded) of special education teachers working in the region of Southern Finland. The interview material is analyzed using qualitative content analysis. A key finding of the study is that the work of special education teachers reveals practices that seek to address learning and educational differences that are linked to students' socio-economic backgrounds. The work practices are divided into five categories: cooperation in student networks, understanding education and teaching as a broad entity, student-orientation as the basis of the teacher's work, and special education in the school's operational culture. The work practices have a close connection to the framework and concepts of the sociology of education and to the key factors of educational equality.
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(2018)Objectives. In 2011, Finland has reformed learning and schooling support which is divided to three steps: general, intensified and special support. Based on students' equal rights, every student should have the same opportunity to learn and learning support. The purpose of this Master's thesis is to find out how much there are students in intensified and special support in last school year in different regions based on Learning to Learn Assessment in 2017. Students in intensified and special support in this dataset are compared to Finnish official statistics of learning and schooling support needing students. Finally, the aim is to find out if there are regional differences in how the provision of intensified and special support has changed from 2012 to 2017. Based on earlier researches, students' equal rights seem not to be fulfilled and there are regional differences in support systems. Methods. Learning to Learn Assessment were executed in spring 2012 and 2017. There were 7 779 9th graders in 2012 and 9 241 in 2017 in that Assessment from different regions. Actual sample of this thesis was 6 383(2012) and 7 563(2017) because some students' information of their support status was missing. Data from official statistics from fall 2011 and 2016 were used as well. Regional comparisons were done by independent sample t-test separately to both forms of support. The change from 2012 to 2017 was analyzed with Repeated measures ANOVA and non-parametric Wilcoxon test. School-level changes were analyzed by Paired Samples t-test. Results and conclusions. There were regional differences in intensified and special support. Most support was provided in Northern Savonia and least in Satakunta. Especially Satakunta differed statistically significantly from other regions in both forms of support in the learning to learn data. As the difference was not as large in the official statistics, it seems that students with support needs were divided unevenly between schools there. Results indicated that learning and schooling support system does not meet up its goals. Learning to Learn Assessment sample were alike with Finnish official statistics for intensified support's part. For special support's part, there were differences between those samples. This will be explained by lacking special schools and special classes in Assessment sample. In some regions, transform in support groups from 2012 to 2017 were major but transforms weren't statistically different. On the other hand, transform in intensified support differs statistically on school level.
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(2020)This study focuses on Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture’s action plan for a better utilization of the matriculation examination in university selection procedures in the perspective of educational equity. Therefore I am analyzing a Ministry of Education and Culture’s report called Valmiina valintoihin - Ylioppilastutkinnon parempi hyödyntäminen korkeakoulujen opiskelijavalinnoissa (2016:37), which includes the action plan for better utilization of the matriculation examination in the university selection procedures. Before the report went public, it was sent to multiple educational fields experts to comment. In this study I am interested in the comments the experts made about the action plan and the way the action plan for the university selection has proceeded. I am also focusing on the questions of educational equity this action plan raises. This reform has sparked widespread discussions and raised concerns about the growing inequality. The research methods used in this study were thematic analysis and content analysis. I am analyzing the action plan made for better utilization of the matriculation examination in the university selection procedures, and the feedback from the report given by the experts from the educational field. I am also researching the current state of the action plan for higher education. I used content analysis to determine the opinions experts had about the action plan, and then divided them into on behalf-opinions and against-opinions. After that I utilized thematic analysis to point out the main themes which raised up from the comments. Relevant literature was used to support the analysis. As a result I found out that the experts were really concerned about the possible outcomes the action plan for the university selection could raise. The main themes which came up are the selection, the questions regarding college education and the different forms of capitals the individuals have. The experts were also concerned that educational equity may weaken as consequence of the action plan for better utilization of the matriculation examination in university selection. I also found out that our current government is as well concerned about the consequences the action plan may raise and has shown support to strengthen up Finlands higher education. Despite experts concerns the action plan has been launched, and only the time will tell what kind of consequences it has to equity of education in Finland.
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(2023)According to prior research and public discourse, students of immigrant back-ground and students who receive support for learning are increasingly at a disadvantaged position in every level of education in Finland. The purpose of this study is to view the school transition from elementary school to middle school through the perspective of students of immigrant background who get special educational support. Through analyzing their experiences, the aim is to find out the role of the Finnish learning and school attendance system in a student’s transition to middle school and to examine how educational equity is achieved during this transition. This study is qualitative in nature. The research material has been collected through six semi-structured interviews, which have been analyzed with a narrative method. The results of this study show that the interviewed students, who are of immigrant background and receive special educational support, experience the shifts in their peer groups, teachers, the requirements for Finnish language and the learning and school attendance system as especially significant when transitioning to middle school. According to the students, learning Finnish becomes progressively more difficult in middle school. The interviewees experience that they do not receive enough support in getting sufficient resources to increase their Finnish language competence to the required level. However, they feel that special educational support has a major role in supporting their learning in middle school. Additionally, most of the interviewees explain how they face more prejudice and racism specifically from teachers after transitioning to middle school. Despite facing an increasing amount of prejudice and their studies becoming more challenging, the interviewed students appreciate middle school and find it an essential part of their educational path.
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(2018)Despite the Finnish schooling system, which leans on the idea of equal educational opportunities, various studies have found that education is inherited. One of the best explanatory causes for this is thought to be the inheriting of cultural capitals, which is a central part of Bourdieu’s research in the field of social class. Additionally, former studies have found that cram schools inequalize students applying to universities based on their financial capitals. Regardless of the tendency to inherit education, some students whose parents are not highly educated still manage to apply and get in the university studies. In this thesis these students are called cross-generational educational risers. The objective of this thesis is to examine the reasons and background factors which encourage the cross-generational educational risers to apply to the university studies by a mixed method research strategy. These factors have been first studied via an internet survey conducted in four faculties of the University of Helsinki: educational sciences, social sciences, law and medicine. These influences to the applying process are studied using general statistics. The survey reached a total of 186 answers of which 29 were from cross-generational educational risers. Additionally, after the survey the case of one cross-generational educational riser from the faculty of law is studied and even further attention is payed to how these factors have been of influence in his case. This part of the thesis is executed through a semi-structured interview and the results are then analyzed using the phenomenological analysis. Differing from former studies in the field of inheriting education studies, this thesis detaches further away from the research tradition of social class studies and links closer to the research tradition of inheriting education. According to the survey, the greatest positive influences were found to be parents and different teachers. The lowest grade was given to the school counselor which was the only influencer to receive a grade below neutral. Of all the students from the faculties of law and medicine who answered, close to 90 % had attended a cram school before their university studies. The person interviewed, whose answers were in line with the results of the survey, also pointed out that his good grades throughout the school years and his coaches in sports were of great influence. The results of the school counselor are somewhat alarming and researchers should pay more attention to the role of the school counselor in the future.
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