Browsing by Subject "opettajan sijaisuus"

The purpose of this qualitative study is to describe, analyze and interpret home economics teacher students’ experiences as substitute home economics teachers in metropolitan area schools in Fin-land. The study also highlights how home economics teacher students find substitute teaching to contribute to their occupational identity and how the guidance provided by a home economics teacher helps in substitute teaching. Previous research with the same scope on this topic is unavail-able. The research material was gathered by conducting personal interviews in Helsinki during September and October 2018. There were eight interviewees and all, except for one participant, were home eco-nomics students holding bachelor’s degree from the University of Helsinki. The one interviewee was undergraduate. The interviewees were women aged between 27 and 40 years. All the interviewees had several substitute teaching experiences lasting at least few hours at once. Most of the interview-ees had also experience from longer-lasting substitutions. The interviews were transcribed, and the material was analyzed using content analysis. Based on content analysis the substitution experiences of home economics teacher students were mostly positive. The substitute teaching was considered useful and even necessary part of gaining additional experience during the studies. Interviewed students find substitute teaching a good way to make sure they were in the right field before graduation and that their occupational identity had strengthened substantially as a result of substitutions. Although the teaching practise were consid-ered to encourage for taking substitutions, they were also considered to negatively affect the will-ingness to teach in elementary school. The most significant variability between substitute teaching experiences was related to the received instructions. The proposed development ideas were mainly related to common instructions for substitute teachers as well as the introduction of separate folders for the use of substitutes. These are considered to clarify the job description as well as to provide tools for group management.