Browsing by Subject "opettajan asema"
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(2019)Objectives. The purpose of this study is to compare Mexican and Finnish classroom teachers’ perceptions of the role and status that teachers have in a society. I also aim to find out reasons for choosing a teaching career. The theoretical background of this study will introduce both Mexican and Finnish educational systems, as well as teachers’ training. In addition, the concepts of vocational selection and teacher’s role and status are under scrutiny. Methods. Eleven Mexican and nine Finnish classroom teachers participated to this qualitative and comparative study via semi-structured e-mail inquiry. Mexican respondents come from all over Mexico, while most of the Finnish respondents come from Southern Finland. Both ages and teaching experience of all the respondents vary significantly. The research material was analyzed by means of content analysis. The role of theory was directional in the analysis. Results and conclusion. The results of this study showed that Mexican and Finnish respondents had similar thoughts about their vocational choice and congruent understanding of teachers’ role in both school environment as well as in society at large. Among both respondent groups, there were six types of similar definitions concerning vocational choices: (1) desire to teach and help the children learn, (2) the possibility to have an impact on children, (3) attachment to work with children, (4) diverse and creative vocation, (5) the influence of family and friends on the choice of career, and (6) employment. Regarding teachers’ role in schools and in society, nine groups of similar perceptions emerged: (1) educator (2) a role model (3) a mentor (4) a ’parent’ for the childen, (5) many roles outside teacher’s profession (6) producer of good citizens (7) supporter, (8) authority, and (9) companion. The results indicate that teachers’ vocational choices and the variety of roles inside the teaching profession are a global phenomenon. However, the social status of teachers is, according to Mexican teachers, bad, while Finnish teachers consider their social status to be good. Regarding the social status of teachers, there were three groups of similar perceptions among both respondent groups: (1) low wage, indicating the lack of appreciation, (2) liberty to choose the teaching methods and, lastly, (3) good status/position in relation to the pupils.
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(2020)The purpose of this Master's Thesis was to find out the views and experiences of teachers with emotional and interactive skills about the role of a teacher in a traditional school. Underlying the study was previous research on how the dominance of the student-teacher relationship is questioned when teachers study emotional and interaction skills. At the same time, the teacher also becomes more aware of his or her own position and role in the school. Indeed, the theoretical part, which deals with the role of the school, the role of the teacher, and the manifestation of socio-emotional skills in the general school discourse, leads to this research. The study was conducted by interviewing eight teachers with NVC or Nonviolent Communication skills. NVC is one of the emotional and interaction trainings available to teachers, and with it made it possible to limit the research to a specific and concrete method of emotional and interaction skills. The interviews were conducted as thematic interviews in January-February 2020, and their analysis was done by means of discourse analysis. The analysis focuses on how the interviewees use different teacher positions in the interview situation. All teacher positions produced in the interview speech have been classified and presented prior to the actual analysis. Traditionally, the integration of emotional and interaction skills into schools uses the so-called utility discourse. In this research it came up that the teachers interviewed did not refer in their speech to the superficial utility discourse but justified the use of NVC in the context and its meaning. Indeed, NVC and its humanistic values emerged in the first analysis of the interview speech. However, the second interview speech analysis revealed how utility discourse and empirical discourse eventually were highlighted in the speech of the teachers interviewed. In the end, NVC itself left space mainly for teachers to cope at work, which can be seen as representing the typical therapeutic ethos of our time, i.e that individuals have to shape themselves to manage the consequences of structural problems, for example for their own (work) well-being. With the results, the study finally considers change and where there is room for it. When teachers are influenced by educational policy discourses in which economic benefits and efficiency play a guiding role, individual choices and decisions do not always seem to work. Indeed, research ultimately puts the teacher's agency in the limelight.
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