Browsing by Subject "education"
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(2018)Confucianism can be considered as the most important ideology in China, because it was China’s official ideology for more than 2000 years. During this period of time it intertwined with China’s culture, and formed its own discourse to the Chinese society. Confucianism is described as a moral and as a society philosophy, which concentrates on a specific type of education and behaviour. Given this, I will analyse from this point of view how Confucian discourse is expressed in Chinese teachers’ discussion on education and their values. Furthermore, I will survey how they see that Confucianism has affected their values. My material consists of four semi structured interviews, all three of them composed of three bigger themes. Every interviewee is a Chinese teacher, who teaches Mandarin Chinese in Finland. My method of analysis is a discourse analysis, which I see appropriate because I am studying how Confucian discourse occurs in the speech of the interviewees. In my conclusions, I will introduce the three most visible main themes of Confucian discourse. The main themes are communality, seeking for harmony, and respecting the elderly because these themes can be pointed out distinctly from the discourse of the interviewees. The way that interviewees tend to use a passive structure or ‘we’ pronoun, indicates how the communality is a major part of their lifestyle. The respect for elder people and the aim to harmony is visible in concrete examples, like how they try to act obediently, and suppress their negative feelings in the conflict situations. Chinese teachers also openly agreed that Confucianism has affected their value system, since the Confucian values are taught at home subconsciously. Moreover, the values are taught at school consciously, for example by reading Confucian texts. All in all, it would be very interesting to do more research on how Confucian values can be detected in China’s education system.
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(2019)Creativity is highly valued in the world of education and developing children's creative skills is considered important. This is reflected, for an example, in the early learning plan (finnish “varhaiskasvatussuunnitelman perusteet”) and in the national core curriculum (finnish “perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet”). The purpose of this study is to find out how teachers (early education teachers and primary school teachers) perceive creative children and creative process. The research is carried out as a qualitative theory-based content analysis and the research material is based on three Finnish master's theses. One master's thesis examines the views of early childhood educators on creativity, the second on the perceptions of early childhood educators and primary school teachers, and the third is solely about the perceptions of primary school teachers. Early childhood education teachers perceptions and primary school teachers perceptions on creativity have been considered separately and as a whole. The study revealed that both early education teachers and primary school teachers think that a creative child is insightful, enthusiastic, interested, determined, distinctive, free and brave. Creative children have the courage to think outside the box and do things their own way, even against the rules. Creative children are intelligent, have a good imagination, come up with solutions to problems, know how to identify problems and give new meanings to things. Creative children have knowledge and skills of the field that they are creative in, they are gifted, artistically talented and rich in ideas. Teachers recognized the stages of the creative process and other factors related to the process. They think that creative process can be the result of a brainstorm or a new idea, and that the beginning of the creative process can be preceded by a chaotic state. The communal aspect of a creative process was particularly present in the primary school teachers comments and the early education teachers comments included clear stages of the creative process. Teachers believe that an adult plays a significant role in the generation of children's flow experiences. Teachers play a key role in the development of children's creativity and through their perceptions, one can increase understanding of how well the early education or school environment supports children's creativity. Finding out the teacher's perceptions provides a good starting point for further research to find out, for example, how well teachers' daily activities with children support the development of children's creativity.
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(2018)The purpose of this thesis was to increase understanding about the concept of grit and how to teach it. Grit is a colloquial concept, which nonetheless has been defined scientifically in the field of psychological research. Thus, the first research problem was to define what grit as a concept means. The concept was examined in relation to research on grit and similar concepts as grit. Especially in the United States teaching non-cognitive skills, including grit, in schools as well as developing these skills in students has become increasingly more popular. Similar demands have also been expressed in Finland. Due to this, the second research problem was what research has been conducted on teaching grit within school context. Research on grit in Finnish is scarce, so the purpose of this thesis was to summarize current research findings on the subject and explore grounds for teaching grit also in relation to Finnish comprehensive school. This thesis was conducted as a descriptive literature review. The data collection was conducted according to strict search criteria and focused on current scientific books and peer-reviewed articles and dissertations regarding the concept of grit and teaching it. Due to lack of research in Finnish, the data selected was mostly in English. The research problems were answered according to the data. Based on this review there is an established definition for the concept of grit according to which grit consists of passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Grit can be regarded as an individual, malleable personality trait or as a trait that overlaps with other psychological constructs. Research on teaching grit was scarce or yet unpublished. Interventions aiming to develop grit in students have had both positive and negative results, which gives reason for additional research. Indirect ways for cultivating grit in the short-term appear to be deliberate practice, strategies developing self-control and interactive teaching methods. Grit is related to qualities that should be targeted in school teaching according to the Finnish national core curriculum. As such grit could have applications also within the Finnish comprehensive school.
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