Browsing by Subject "crafts"

This study focuses on stress experienced by students and the effect of crafts in dealing with stress. The aim of the study is to find out what kind of stress students experience and what are the main reasons for the development of stress. The study focuses also on how making crafts in spare time has changed during studying crafts. For the study a group of Helsinki University crafts science students were interviewed. The emphasis is on students' personal, both positive and negative, experiences of stress. At the same time stress is ap-proached widely, trying to avoid dealing with the issue from only one perspective. Even though the well-being of students have been researched a lot, there are not that many studies done from the perspective of students studying to be crafts teachers. Crafts done on spare time is considered calming and stress-relieving, but what happens when the hobby turns into an occupation? Selecting the topic was affected by an interest in crafts' effect to well-being and personal experiences from the heaviness of studying at a university and the stress caused by it. Studying the stress of students is important, be-cause it enables collection of data and practical suggestions for improving teaching. The material was collected through group interviews, which were preceded by a back-ground information form. Nine crafts science students participated into the interview, and all of them told they had experienced stress. Even though the experiences were individual, the research results showed some common stress factors, such as money and time man-agement problems. Making crafts in spare time had decreased, but for almost everyone the quality had improved during studies. The results give a better perspective on student stress and the challenges related to studying and life management. The results could also be useful in developing crafts science and planning courses. The study could be expanded to apply to all crafts teacher students as well as to compare the results with all students. Further studies could find out how to improve the awareness of students about stress and its good and bad sides.