Browsing by Author "Salokangas, Tiia"

According to the national core curriculum for basic education teachers should not take pupils person, temperament or other personal features into account in school assessment. However, previous studies have shown that pupils temperament effects on the marks given by the teacher. Since the school experience affect the development of the pupils and the school achievement has a far-reaching consequence in their lives, it is important to research and develop the feedback that pupils get from the school. The purpose of this study was to examine how teachers experience temperament and take it into account in a daily basis when it comes to teaching and assessing the pupils and how essential thing they think it is that teachers are aware of temperament in their work as teachers. Two class teachers from Helsinki were interviewed for this study. The interview was semi-structured interview and before it the teachers red a fictional frame story. Data based content analysis was made to the collected data and points of view that were recognized repeatedly in the data were then thematized. There were three themes that rised from the interviews: thoughts about temperament, temperament affecting on teaching and temperament affecting on student assessment. Class teachers’ thoughts about temperament were mainly in line with the earlier research. Teachers thought that temperament effects on the school lessons and student assessment. There were also some remarkable differences in their thoughts and feelings about how the temperament should be taken into account during the classes and pupil assessment. Research results support the idea that the way temperament effects on pupils’ studies and the assessment the teachers do is a complex process. On the other hand, teachers thought that it is important that a class teacher is aware of temperament and on the other hand they thought that it is only a one background among others. Results provoke thoughts about how appropriate the current assessment practice, where the student learning process and lesson activity have a big role, actually is. Some significant differences in the teachers’ thoughts about pupil assessment also refer that there is demand for some kind of guidance of how the pupil assessment should be executed.