Onko varhaisen tuen päiväkoti mahdollinen? : Tutkimus varhaiskasvatuksen yhteisöllisestä kehittämisestä

Is the early childhood day care facility possible? The research considering communal development of the early education. In Finland mothers and fathers look after 400 000 pre-school children. Half of these attend day care facilities, in which 50 000 staff are employed. The aim of this research is to develop co-operation practices within the day care centre. This research refines and expands my own interest in and knowledge of day care management and content development. The basis of the research draws upon ethnographic material covering the period 1999–2005. The day care centre chosen as a central informant was the first suburban centre founded in 1963, and it provided a rich local and welfare state research perspective. It became clear that the day care facility’s co-operation practices formed the basis of bringing up children and at the same time produced a new multi-operational and multi-layered community for child participation. Adult day care centre workers bringing up the children as a professional work and solutions defining the conditions for the work are expressed in a child’s upbringing. This obviously has an impact in where as the development of communities. From the human and community scientific point of view, the group of youngest children will take up a future position as key players in communities as essential actors and reformers. The research was carried out as multiphase and multiscientific practical research and iterative data formation. The results verified that the co-operation between parents and day care staff produces important benefits for all the stakeholders. However, the day care staff has difficulties in implementing the benefits. During the research process, it became clear that conceptually day care staff saw the practices as ”very important, but not easily realised in practice”. As a result this demanded further research to address this issue and to extend this to the carefacility’s co-operation practises and their communal and social conditions. The research looks at the carefacility’s co-operation with key stakeholders. At the same time it undertakes an analytical and historical examination of carefacilitys’s with an experimental focus as two day care centres chosen as experimental objects. The results of the research showed that the benefits gained by children were determined by the day care centre’s socio-political structure and the parent’s resources. The research framework categorised early childhood education as generational and gender based structures. As part of the research, the strains endemic to these formations have been examined. The system for bringing up children was created as part of a so called welfare state project by implemented by the Day Care Act in year 1973. The law secured the subjective right for every pre-school child to have access to day care facilities. The law also introduced a labour and sosiopolitical phase and the refinement of the day care facility’s education-care concept. The latest phase that started during the early 1990´s was called the market-based social services strategy. As a result of this phase, state support was limited and the screening function of the law was relaxed. This new strategy resulted in a divisive and bureaucratic social welfare system, that individualised and segregated children and their parents, leaving some families outside the communal and welfare state benefit net. The modern day care centre is a hybrid of different aims. Children spend longer and more irregular time in day care. The families are multicultural and that requires more training for the staff. The work in day care has been enhanced, for example he level of education for the staff has been lowered and productivity has been improved. However, administrative work and different kinds of support and net work functions together with the continuous change have taken over from the work done face to face with children. Staff experiences more pressure as the management and the work load has increased. Consequently the long-term planning and daily implementation of the nuclear task of the day care facility is difficult to control. This will have an effect on both motivation and manageability of the work. Overall quality of the early childhood upbringing has been weakened. The possibilities for the near future were tested in the two day care centres chosen as an experi-ment objects. The analysis of these experiments showed that generative interaction work will benefit everyone: children, parents and employees. The main results of the research are new concepts of an early support day care centre, which can be empirically and theoretically possi-ble for development the near future. Key words: Day care facility’s co-operation practises, early childhood education as generational structure, child’s multi-operational and multi-layered community, multi-subjective operator, generative interaction work, communal composition.

Auditory - Visual Matching in Learning Disabilities : Intervention Studies from Finland and Sweden

The present thesis discusses relevant issues in education: 1) learning disabilities including the role of comorbidity in LDs, and 2) the use of research-based interventions. This thesis consists of a series of four studies (three articles), which deepens the knowledge of the field of special education. Intervention studies (N=242) aimed to examine whether training using a nonverbal auditory-visual matching computer program had a remedial effect in different learning disabilities, such as developmental dyslexia, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Specific Language Impairment (SLI). These studies were conducted in both Finland and Sweden. The intervention’s non-verbal character made an international perspective possible. The results of the intervention studies confirmed, that the auditory-visual matching computer program, called Audilex had positive intervention effects. In Study I of children with developmental dyslexia there were also improvements in reading skills, specifically in reading nonsense words and reading speed. These improvements in tasks, which are thought to rely on phonological processing, suggest that such reading difficulties in dyslexia may stem in part from more basic perceptual difficulties, including those required to manage the visual and auditory components of the decoding task. In Study II the intervention had a positive effect on children with dyslexia; older students with dyslexia and surprisingly, students with ADD also benefited from this intervention. In conclusion, the role of comorbidity was apparent. An intervention effect was evident also in students’ school behavior. Study III showed that children with SLI experience difficulties very similar to those of children with dyslexia in auditory-visual matching. Children with language-based learning disabilities, such as dyslexia and SLI benefited from the auditory-visual matching intervention. Also comorbidity was evident among these children; in addition to formal diagnoses, comorbidity was explored with an assessment inventory, which was developed for this thesis. Interestingly, an overview of the data of this thesis shows positive intervention effects in all studies despite learning disability, language, gender or age. These findings have been described by a concept inter-modal transpose. Self-evidently these issues need further studies. In learning disabilities the aim in the future will also be to identify individuals at risk rather than by deficit; this aim can be achieved by using research-based interventions, intensified support in general education and inclusive special education. Keywords: learning disabilities, developmental dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, specific language impairment, language-based learning disabilities, comorbidity, auditory-visual matching, research-based interventions, inter-modal transpose

Molecular Tuning of Rhodopsins for High Visual Sensitivity in Different Light Environments : Variation in Absorbance Spectrum and Opsin Sequence within and between Species

Visual pigments of different animal species must have evolved at some stage to match the prevailing light environments, since all visual functions depend on their ability to absorb available photons and transduce the event into a reliable neural signal. There is a large literature on correlation between the light environment and spectral sensitivity between different fish species. However, little work has been done on evolutionary adaptation between separated populations within species. More generally, little is known about the rate of evolutionary adaptation to changing spectral environments. The objective of this thesis is to illuminate the constraints under which the evolutionary tuning of visual pigments works as evident in: scope, tempo, available molecular routes, and signal/noise trade-offs. Aquatic environments offer Nature s own laboratories for research on visual pigment properties, as naturally occurring light environments offer an enormous range of variation in both spectral composition and intensity. The present thesis focuses on the visual pigments that serve dim-light vision in two groups of model species, teleost fishes and mysid crustaceans. The geographical emphasis is in the brackish Baltic Sea area with its well-known postglacial isolation history and its aquatic fauna of both marine and fresh-water origin. The absorbance spectrum of the (single) dim-light visual pigment were recorded by microspectrophotometry (MSP) in single rods of 26 fish species and single rhabdoms of 8 opossum shrimp populations of the genus Mysis inhabiting marine, brackish or freshwater environments. Additionally, spectral sensitivity was determined from six Mysis populations by electroretinogram (ERG) recording. The rod opsin gene was sequenced in individuals of four allopatric populations of the sand goby (Pomatoschistus minutus). Rod opsins of two other goby species were investigated as outgroups for comparison. Rod absorbance spectra of the Baltic subspecies or populations of the primarily marine species herring (Clupea harengus membras), sand goby (P. minutus), and flounder (Platichthys flesus) were long-wavelength-shifted compared to their marine populations. The spectral shifts are consistent with adaptation for improved quantum catch (QC) as well as improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of vision in the Baltic light environment. Since the chromophore of the pigment was pure A1 in all cases, this has apparently been achieved by evolutionary tuning of the opsin visual pigment. By contrast, no opsin-based differences were evident between lake and sea populations of species of fresh-water origin, which can tune their pigment by varying chromophore ratios. A more detailed analysis of differences in absorbance spectra and opsin sequence between and within populations was conducted using the sand goby as model species. Four allopatric populations from the Baltic Sea (B), Swedish west coast (S), English Channel (E), and Adriatic Sea (A) were examined. Rod absorbance spectra, characterized by the wavelength of maximum absorbance (λmax), differed between populations and correlated with differences in the spectral light transmission of the respective water bodies. The greatest λmax shift as well as the greatest opsin sequence difference was between the Baltic and the Adriatic populations. The significant within-population variation of the Baltic λmax values (506-511 nm) was analyzed on the level of individuals and was shown to correlate well with opsin sequence substitutions. The sequences of individuals with λmax at shorter wavelengths were identical to that of the Swedish population, whereas those with λmax at longer wavelengths additionally had substitution F261F/Y in the sixth transmembrane helix of the protein. This substitution (Y261) was also present in the Baltic common gobies and is known to redshift spectra. The tuning mechanism of the long-wavelength type Baltic sand gobies is assumed to be the co-expression of F261 and Y261 in all rods to produce ≈ 5 nm redshift. The polymorphism of the Baltic sand goby population possibly indicates ambiguous selection pressures in the Baltic Sea. The visual pigments of all lake populations of the opossum shrimp (Mysis relicta) were red-shifted by 25 nm compared with all Baltic Sea populations. This is calculated to confer a significant advantage in both QC and SNR in many humus-rich lakes with reddish water. Since only A2 chromophore was present, the differences obviously reflect evolutionary tuning of the visual protein, the opsin. The changes have occurred within the ca. 9000 years that the lakes have been isolated from the Sea after the most recent glaciation. At present, it seems that the mechanism explaining the spectral differences between lake and sea populations is not an amino acid substitution at any other conventional tuning site, but the mechanism is yet to be found.

Divergencies of Perception : The Possibilities of Merleau-Pontian Phenomenology in Analyses of Contemporary Art

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) has been known as the philosopher of painting. His interest in the theory of perception intertwined with the questions concerning the artist s perception, the experience of an artwork and the possible interpretations of the artwork. For him, aesthetics was not a sub-field of philosophy, and art was not simply a subject matter for the aesthetic experience, but a form of thinking. This study proposes an opening for a dialogue between Merleau-Pontian phenomenology and contemporary art. The thesis examines his phenomenology through certain works of contemporary art and presents readings of these artworks through his phenomenology. The thesis both shows the potentiality of a method, but also engages in the critical task of finding the possible limitations of his approach. The first part lays out the methodological and conceptual points of departure of Merleau-Ponty s phenomenological approach to perception as well as the features that determined his discussion on encountering art. Merleau-Ponty referred to the experience of perceiving art using the notion of seeing with (voir selon). He stressed a correlative reciprocity described in Eye and Mind (1961) as the switching of the roles of the visible and the painter. The choice of artworks is motivated by certain restrictions in the phenomenological readings of visual arts. The examined works include paintings by Tiina Mielonen, a photographic work by Christian Mayer, a film by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, and an installation by Monika Sosnowska. These works resonate with, and challenge, his phenomenological approach. The chapters with case studies take up different themes that are central to Merleau-Ponty s phenomenology: space, movement, time, and touch. All of the themes are interlinked with the examined artworks. There are also topics that reappear in the thesis, such as the notion of écart and the question of encountering the other. As Merleau-Ponty argued, the sphere of art has a particular capability to address our being in the world. The thesis presents an interpretation that emphasises the notion of écart, which refers to an experience of divergence or dispossession. The sudden dissociation, surprise or rupture that is needed in order for a meeting between the spectator and the artwork, or between two persons, to be possible. Further, the thesis suggests that through artworks it is possible to take into consideration the écart, the divergence, that defines our subjectivity.