Browsing by Subject "attityder"
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(2019)Aims. Previous research shows that attitudes towards mental illness are to some extent negative and that stigmatization and discrimination exist, therefore a majority of the one´s who suffer from mental illness choose not to reveal their condition. Employees suffering from mental illness have a greater risk of losing their jobs, have worse career opportunities and are in the risk zone of being bullied or even left as an outcast. The aim of this study was to identify different attitudes towards mentally ill employees in Finland and Sweden, how these attitudes affect their everyday working life and if research indicates a change of attitudes over time. Methods. I chose to demarcate this thesis on studies on attitudes towards mental illnesses among employees in Finland and Sweden, published between 2012 and 2017. The material was retrieved from various databases including Google Scholar, Helda, Helka and Julkari and the searches were made in Swedish, Finnish and English. The keywords I used were: mental illness, mental health, attitudes, working life, stigma, psykisk ohälsa, psykisk hälsa, attityder, arbetsliv, mielenterveys, asenteet and työelämä. Results and conclusions. The results of this study show that stigmatization and negative attitudes towards mental illness within the working life are prevalent both in Finland and Sweden. Yet, the general awareness of mental illness is relatively high and the supportive discussion about the subject is improving in organizations. However, the majority of mentally ill employees in rehab, executives and the general population considered that in situations where an employee is mentally ill, and the employer knows about it, there might be a risk of a lower status or maybe even a loss of an employment. The career prospects for employees with mental illness are limited, because of an unwillingness to hire or keep an employee suffering from mental illness. Employers who have previous experience of employees with mental illnesses are more willing to hire people who have or have had a mental illness. The attitudes of the employers and colleagues turned out to have a major impact on the affected person, and the support was considered extremely important. The fear of stigmatization, special treatment and the potential loss of employment leads to a concealment of the condition for the majority of the affected. Although the results show that the attitudes towards mental illness in the working life have improved over time, unfortunately negative attitudes and stigmatization still exists.
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(2019)In conjunction with the new regulations in early childhood education, there has been an increasing emphasis and demand on educators’ knowledge concerning gender issues and their ability to understand how preconceived notions of gender affect how they perceive and act towards children, the pedagogical environment as well as their ability to distinguish gender norms in theory and practice, both in themselves and in others. The purpose of this study is to present Fenno-Swedish early childhood educators’ experiences of gender pedagogy after going through a gender pedagogical training program. The study investigates how they perceive and internalize gender pedagogy in theory and in practice and what kind of attitudes they hold in relation to it. Previous studies have shown that early childhood educators who consider working gender pedagogically in theory do not, in fact, do so in practice due to lack of knowledge and the need of education concerning gender issues among educators. In this study, gender pedagogy is defined in accordance with its theoretical starting point, that is, the attempt to avoid encountering and treating children and how they act and behave after assumptions that stem from gender stereotypical dichotomies such as boy/girl. A qualitative research method was used in this study and data was collected through semi-structured interviews with four early childhood educators with experiences in gender pedagogical training and practice. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and the data was analyzed through qualitative content analysis. Results show that all four informants consider that they work with gender pedagogical issues, but in different ways. Two out of four informants show tendencies towards a cautious and negative attitude towards the gender pedagogical training program. One half of the informants regard gender pedagogy as a starting point in their pedagogy while the other half perceive it as a method. The study shows that the educators’ perception of gender pedagogy play a decisive role in how they implement it in practice. The educators’ own interest and attitude towards gender pedagogy has shown to be a prerequisite in order for them to be able to internalize gender pedagogical issues and thus be motivated to put them in to practice.
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(2018)The purpose of this study is to search for people´s describing thoughts and furthermore positive and negative attitudes to the value and status of preschool teachers in the Finnish society, to explain a possible disharmony between these two. The theoretical frame of this study clarifies the concept of professionalism and its meaning in relation to the occupation of preschool teacher. It furthermore clarifies the concept of attitudes and its components, its origin and its ability to change. Furthermore, this study is a qualitative study and its approach is phenomenological, based on semi-structured interviews. Four people, regardless of earlier experience of children, are interviewed in Helsinki with the aim to seize the phenomenon, their positive, negative or indifferent attitudes towards preschool teachers in respect of their value verses their status in the Finnish society. Finally the result shows that positive, affective attitudes seem to be connected with children and positive, cognitive attitudes tend to be connected with their childhood witch creates a link to why preschool teachers has such high value in the society. According to this study, lack of knowledge and stereotypic point of views, lowers their status and therefor a disharmony is created between the preschool teacher´s value and status. Furthermore, in order to make a change, knowledge and visibility of the meaning of the profession as a preschool teacher within young children’s education is needed in purpose to bring their value and status to the same level.
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(2019)There has been an ongoing debate in Finland since the mid 1970´s about the Swedish language and the benefits of it for the pupils in Finnish schools. The majority of Finnish-speaking Finns do not see any advantages of choosing Swedish as a second language in the elementary school because many of them consider they will not use the language in the future. The main purpose for this study is to review the experiences of four teachers who teach Finnish in the Swedish-speaking parts of Ostrobothnia. I have interviewed these four teachers to see how their pupils approach the Finnish language. I wanted to get a picture of the pupils´ motiva-tion for learning Finnish and I also wanted to find out what kind of attitudes the pupils have towards the Finnish language. The first interviews took place in 2005 and the second round of interviews was done in 2018. In this study I have found that the pupils in the Swedish-speaking parts of Ostrobothnia strug-gle in the same way with Finnish as the Finnish-speaking pupils do when learning Swedish. The pupils in this study find it difficult to learn Finnish, which affects the inner motivation to learn the language and which also impacts on the attitudes towards the language. The theory background for this study is built upon The Self Determination Theory by Deci and Ryan (2002). In the interviews the teachers tell about pupils having difficulties with learning the Finnish lan-guage. The pupils find it hard and challenging to study Finnish. The Swedish language and the Finnish language are not related and both the pronunciation and the spelling cause problems for the pupils. Most pupils do not practice their language skills in their free time as they live in a very Swedish-speaking area and the pupils do not know any Finnish-speaking people. In 2005 the teachers wished for new educational materials for Swedish-speaking pupils and now, thirteen years later in 2018 the teachers create all educational materials themselves in order to make it suitable for the pupils´ learning levels. The digitalization in the Finnish schools has made it possible to use videoblogs, blogs and all kind of digital material in the language teaching. This has also made a big impact on the pupils´ interest in the goal language. The eClassroom Tandem (Pörn & Hansell, 2013) has been implemented in the language teaching in the school where the four teachers work.
Now showing items 1-4 of 4