Teacher’s Conceptions of Caring and Protective Teaching Elements in Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement Schools

The purpose of this study is to find out what conceptions Rwamwanja refugee settlement teachers have about caring teaching methods. The study was conducted by analysing the data gathered from semi-structured interviews. Twelve teachers were interviewed in four different refugee settlement schools. The main theory of this study is based on ethics of care research by Nel Noddings. In addition, the framework was developed by combining the theories of resilience and psychosocial support which are often employed in research concerning emergency contexts. This study uses qualitative content analysis to describe the conceptions of caring teachers have and protective teaching elements they employ. The results of this study show that many of the key elements of caring and protective teaching were present in teacher’s answers. For example, in their answers, the majority of the teachers pointed out the significance of using soft discipline. However, many teaching elements considered ideal in emergency contexts were missing. These missing methods include routines and flexibility which are considered essential for vulnerable children. The teachers’ levels of conceptual thinking varied remarkably depending on their language skills. The communication was limited to very basic and concrete language in some of the interviews due to lack of mutual understanding. This also raised a question about the level of understanding between refugee pupils and teachers since there is no strong common language between them. The results of this research call for further studies about the effect of caring teaching elements in growth of resilience in refugee children. Keywords: The ethics of care, resilience, psychosocial support, education in emergencies, refugees, education, protection.

Conceptions of mathematics teacher education : thoughts among teacher educators in Tanzania

This study addresses the question of teacher educators’ conceptions of mathematics teacher education (MTE) in teacher colleges in Tanzania, and their thoughts on how to further develop it. The tension between exponents of content as opposed to pedagogy has continued to cause challenging conceptual differences, which also influences what teacher educators conceive as desirable in the development of this domain. This tension is connected to the dissatisfaction of parents and teachers with the failure of school mathematics. From this point of view, the overall aim was to identify and describe teacher educators’ various conceptions of MTE. Inspired by the debate among teacher educators about what the balance should be between subject matter and pedagogical knowledge, it was important to look at the theoretical faces of MTE. The theoretical background involved the review of what is visible in MTE, what is yet to be known and the challenges within the practice. This task revealed meanings, perspectives in MTE, professional development and assessment. To do this, two questions were asked, to which no clear solutions satisfactorily existed. The questions to guide the investigation were, firstly, what are teacher educators’ conceptions of MTE, and secondly, what are teacher educators’ thoughts on the development of MTE? The two questions led to the choice of phenomenography as the methodological approach. Against the guiding questions, 27 mathematics teacher educators were interviewed in relation to the first question, while 32 responded to an open-ended questionnaire regarding question two. The interview statements as well as the questionnaire responses were coded and analysed (classified). The process of classification generated patterns of qualitatively different ways of seeing MTE. The results indicate that MTE is conceived as a process of learning through investigation, fostering inspiration, an approach to learning with an emphasis on problem solving, and a focus on pedagogical knowledge and skills in the process of teaching and learning. In addition, the teaching and learning of mathematics is seen as subject didactics with a focus on subject matter and as an organized integration of subject matter, pedagogical knowledge and some school practice; and also as academic content knowledge in which assessment is inherent. The respondents also saw the need to build learner-educator relationships. Finally, they emphasized taking advantage of teacher educators’ neighbourhood learning groups, networking and collaboration as sustainable knowledge and skills sharing strategies in professional development. Regarding desirable development, teacher educators’ thoughts emphasised enhancing pedagogical knowledge and subject matter, and to be determined by them as opposed to conventional top-down seminars and workshops. This study has revealed various conceptions and thoughts about MTE based on teacher educators´ diverse history of professional development in mathematics. It has been reasonably substantiated that some teacher educators teach school mathematics in the name of MTE, hardly distinguishing between the role and purpose of the two in developing a mathematics teacher. What teacher educators conceive as MTE and what they do regarding the education of teachers of mathematics revealed variations in terms of seeing the phenomenon of interest. Within limits, desirable thoughts shed light on solutions to phobias, and in the same way low self-esteem and stigmatization call for the building of teacher educator-student teacher relationships.

Curriculum innovation in teacher education : exploring conceptions among Tanzanian teacher educators

The focus of the study is to understand curriculum innovation from the perspective of Tanzanian teacher educators. It is argued that the deterioration of quality of education in schools is partly to be attributed to the way in which teachers are educated. Curriculum innovation is considered as an essential strategy for bringing about improvement in teacher education. Therefore, in 2000 a new curriculum was introduced; however, right from the inception the curriculum was criticised by teacher educators. The overall aim of the study is to investigate teacher educators’ conceptions of curriculum innovation. In the theoretical framework the main focus is on discussion about different curriculum approaches for teacher education and innovation. In order to achieve the aim of the study, a phenomenographic approach is employed. This approach is used in order to identify similarities and variation in educators’ conceptions of curriculum innovation. The empirical basis of the study consists of interviews with thirty teacher educators working in eight teachers’ colleges situated in various parts of Tanzania. The findings, in brief, reveal variation in teacher educators’ conceptions of the dominant domains of innovation. Two broad conceptions of teaching with six aspects are identified. Conceptions of educational studies are presented in four broad categories of description with four aspects. Similarly, in methodology subjects two conceptions are described with four aspects. On the integration of subject matter studies and subject methods, two broad conceptions are presented with six aspects. Conceptions of textbook prescription policy are characterised in two broad categories of description with four aspects. With the use of modules two broad conceptions are identified with six aspects. In addition, the study identifies four broad conceptions of future curriculum approaches with eight aspects. Looking across the categories of description, the results indicate that educators cope with innovation individually. Three character types of teacher educators are presented: loyal, creative and critical. Furthermore, four types of phenomena suggesting critical areas about teacher educators’ conceptions of innovation are described: educators’ prior educational background, technical factors, student teachers’ factors and shifting from teaching to learning. On the whole, educators express a number of frame factors in the process of change towards the aim of curriculum innovation. This indicates that the new curriculum (2000) is not implemented as intended by curriculum developers. Constraints to the implementation are presented and discussed in detail. From these findings, two models of educators’ stance towards curriculum innovation are presented and can be used as a framework for planning successful curriculum innovations and analysing practice in teachers’ colleges.

Teachers' conceptions of literacies during and after a school library development project

Abstrakti

Kielikeskuksissa toimivien kieltenopettajien käsityksiä ja kokemuksia massayliopiston luomista haasteista

Challenges of mass university conceived and experienced by university language centre language teachers The massification of the university involved not only an expansion but also a transition from one period to another, from elite higher education to mass higher education. Massification cannot be viewed as expansion and structural change but it has to be viewed in a context of a number of changes involving universities, state, economy, society and culture as well as science, technology, education and research. In the Finnish academic context, massification is often associated with negative development and it may be used as an excuse for poor teaching. The objective of the present study is to find out how the mass context is manifested in the work of university language centre language teachers. The data were collected by means of semi-structured questionnaires from 32 language teachers working at language centres at the universities of Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Tampere and Turku in Finland. Both Finnish and native speakers, 6 male and 26 female teachers, were included. All the teachers in the study had taught more than 10 years. The data were complemented by interviews of four teachers and email data from one teacher. Phenomenographic analysis of the informants’ conceptions enabled a description of their experiences of students at a mass university, conceptions of teaching and learning and of issues related to work health. Some conceptions were consonant with earlier results. The conceptions revealed differences between two teacher groups, teachers of subject-specific language, or language for specific purposes (LSP), and teachers of elementary and advanced language courses (general language teachers). For the first, the conceptions of the investigated teachers provided a picture of the students as a member of a mass university. The students were seen as customers who demanded special services to facilitate their studies or were selective about the contents of the course. The finding that appeared only in the LSP teachers’ data was the unengaged attitude towards language study, which appeared as mere hunt for credits. On the other hand, the students were also seen as language learning individuals, but a clear picture of a truly interested language learner was evident in the data of general language teachers. The teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning revealed a picture of experienced teachers with a long background of teaching, reflecting experiences from different time periods and influences from their own education and illustrating the increasing problems with organizing individual tutoring due to large, heterogeneous groups. It seemed, however, that in spite of the large student groups, general language teachers were able to support the students’ learning processes and to use learner-centred methods, whereas LSP teachers were frequently compelled to resort to knowledge transmission type of teaching. The conditions of the mass university were clearly manifested in the respondents’ conceptions about work satisfaction: there were a number of factors related to administration, teaching arrangements and the status of the language centres that were likely to add to the teachers’ work stress, whereas traditional characteristics of academic work were viewed as promoting work satisfaction. On the basis of the teachers’ conceptions, it is safe to assume that academic mass context and students’ orientations have an effect on the teacher’s approach to teaching, while there is no unequivocal association between mass university teaching and poor teaching.

Understanding and improving quality of secondary school education : conceptions among teachers in Tanzania

Temat för studien handlar om gymnasielärares uppfattningar om kvalitet och om hur kvalitet kan utvecklas i gymnasieutbildningen in Tanzania. Studien är till sin karaktär kvalitativ och består av utprövade semistrukturerade intervjuer med sammanlagt trettio lärare som arbetar i fyra gymnasieskolor både i urbana och rurala miljöer. Lärarna har varierande arbetserfarenhet och undervisar i olika ämnen. Huvudfokus har gällt identifieringen av variationer i lärares uppfattningar om kvalitet. På basen av två forskningsfrågor avslöjar analysen uppfattningar av hur lärare förstår och önskar utveckla kvaliteten på gymnasieutbildningen. Resultaten visar att lärare förstår kvaliteten på utbildningen i sina skolor som försök att möta skolans och samhällets mål, som individuella prestationer och förmågor som att inneha kompetenser och som att möta utmaningar inom utbildning, Identifierade uppfattningar var baserade på lärarnas personliga kunskap, arbetsmiljön och varierande omständigheter som rådde i deras skolor. Uppfattningar om en förbättring av kvaliteten i gymnasieutbildningen innefattade utveckling av lärares motivation, skolmiljön, arbetet i klassrum, kvaliteten på lärares kunskaper och färdigheter och undervisningsmaterial. Ambitionen bakom studien ar att erbjuda en plattform för strategier för att förbättra kvaliteten på gymnasieutbildningen. Resultaten strävar till att ge en fördjupad insikt i uppfattningar hos en utvald grupp av lärare som arbetar under samma villkor inom gymnasieskolor I Tanzania. Av den här anledningen är den genererade kunskapen därför relevant för att belysa lärares uppfattningar även utanför den studerade gruppen av respondenter.

Integrating environmental education in primary school education in Tanzania : teachers’ perceptions and teaching practices

The study focuses on primary school teachers’ perceptions of environmental education, its integration into primary school education and teachers’ teaching practices in Tanzania. The thesis is based on empirical research. The theoretical underpinnings of the study are based on Palmer’s (1998) model of environmental education. According to the model, meaningful environmental education should include education about, in or through and for the environment. The study is supported by national and international literature from research done on environmental education and education for sustainable development and policy statements. The study is qualitative in nature, adopting phenomenography and phenomenology as points of departure. The empirical data was collected from four primary schools in Morogoro region in Tanzania. The study sample consisted of 31 primary school teachers. Data was collected through interviews and lesson observations. According to the results of the study, primary school teachers expressed variations in their perceptions of environmental education and education for sustainable development. Most of the teachers focused on the aspect of knowledge acquisition. According to Tanzanian education and training policy, environmental education has to be integrated into all subjects. Although there is environmental education in the primary school curriculum, it is not integrated on an equal footing in all subjects. Some subjects like science, social studies and geography have more environmental content than other subjects. Teachers claim that the approach used to integrate environmental education into the school curriculum was not favoured because many claimed that what is to be taught as environmental education in the various subjects is not shown clearly. As a result, many teachers suggested that to ensure that it is taught properly it should be included in the curriculum as an independent subject or as specific topics. The study revealed that teachers’ teaching practices in integrating environmental education varied from one subject to another. Although most of the teachers said that they used participatory methods, lesson observations showed that they limited themselves to question and answer and group discussion. However, the teachers faced a number of barriers in the teaching of environmental education, some of which include lack of teaching and learning resources, time and large class size. The role of teachers in the implementation of environmental education in developing an environmentally literate citizenry is of great significance. The responsibility of the government in developing a curriculum with clear goals and content, developing teachers’ capacity in the teaching of environmental education and provision of teaching and learning materials needs to be taken seriously by the government in educational plans and programs.

Quality enhancement in teacher education : Tanzanian teacher educators’ conceptions and experiences

The overall aim of this study was to investigate and examine teacher educators’ conceptions and experiences of quality of teacher education. The research interest therefore was two-fold: a) to deepen understanding of the concept quality and b) scrutinize experiences of teacher educators of quality enhancement. To achieve this ambition the study was conducted in the context of a newly established university college-based teacher education in Tanzania. Two research questions guided the study. The first focused on investigating how teacher educators conceived quality in the domain of teacher education and the second intended to explore teacher educators’ experiences of quality enhancement. The theoretical framework of the study centered on the concepts of teacher education, quality, and criteria for quality enhancement. Phenomenographic and phenomenological approaches under the main umbrella of qualitative research design were selected. Twenty five teacher educators participated in the study. Interviews were used for the collection of the data. The results of the first research question, in brief, indicate that teacher educators’ conceptions of quality are expressed in two main categories, namely, outstanding academic scholarship and adequate professional scholarship. Quality as outstanding academic scholarship was illustrated by two subcategories: excellence and positive transformation. While the former was composed of two aspects, the latter was demonstrated by three aspects. Quality as adequate professional scholarship was described in three sub-categories. The first was improved teaching competency, consisting of two aspects. The second was conscious research orientation, which is displayed by three aspects, and the last was enhancing the ability to reflect, represented by two aspects. The results of the second research question, which focused on exploring teacher educators’ experience of quality enhancement, were classified into two main categories of description: insufficient programs of teacher education and unsatisfactory professional development of teacher educators. From the two categories, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges related to programs of educating teachers, particularly curriculum development and implementation, and the professional development of educators, were exposed. Since the ambition of conducting the study was to deepen the understanding by producing insight that would act as a platform for appraising and enhancing the quality of teacher education, the results hopefully can be used for the development of the quality of teacher education in Tanzania.

University students’ regulation of learning and text processing – examples from medical and teacher education

The general aim of the thesis was to study university students’ learning from the perspective of regulation of learning and text processing. The data were collected from the two academic disciplines of medical and teacher education, which share the features of highly scheduled study, a multidisciplinary character, a complex relationship between theory and practice and a professional nature. Contemporary information society poses new challenges for learning, as it is not possible to learn all the information needed in a profession during a study programme. Therefore, it is increasingly important to learn how to think and learn independently, how to recognise gaps in and update one’s knowledge and how to deal with the huge amount of constantly changing information. In other words, it is critical to regulate one’s learning and to process text effectively. The thesis comprises five sub-studies that employed cross-sectional, longitudinal and experimental designs and multiple methods, from surveys to eye tracking. Study I examined the connections between students’ study orientations and the ways they regulate their learning. In total, 410 second-, fourth- and sixth-year medical students from two Finnish medical schools participated in the study by completing a questionnaire measuring both general study orientations and regulation strategies. The students were generally deeply oriented towards their studies. However, they regulated their studying externally. Several interesting and theoretically reasonable connections between the variables were found. For instance, self-regulation was positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation and was negatively correlated with non-commitment. However, external regulation was likewise positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation but also with surface orientation and systematic orientation. It is argued that external regulation might function as an effective coping strategy in the cognitively loaded medical curriculum. Study II focused on medical students’ regulation of learning and their conceptions of the learning environment in an innovative medical course where traditional lectures were combined wth problem-based learning (PBL) group work. First-year medical and dental students (N = 153) completed a questionnaire assessing their regulation strategies of learning and views about the PBL group work. The results indicated that external regulation and self-regulation of the learning content were the most typical regulation strategies among the participants. In line with previous studies, self-regulation wasconnected with study success. Strictly organised PBL sessions were not considered as useful as lectures, although the students’ views of the teacher/tutor and the group were mainly positive. Therefore, developers of teaching methods are challenged to think of new solutions that facilitate reflection of one’s learning and that improve the development of self-regulation. In Study III, a person-centred approach to studying regulation strategies was employed, in contrast to the traditional variable-centred approach used in Study I and Study II. The aim of Study III was to identify different regulation strategy profiles among medical students (N = 162) across time and to examine to what extent these profiles predict study success in preclinical studies. Four regulation strategy profiles were identified, and connections with study success were found. Students with the lowest self-regulation and with an increasing lack of regulation performed worse than the other groups. As the person-centred approach enables us to individualise students with diverse regulation patterns, it could be used in supporting student learning and in facilitating the early diagnosis of learning difficulties. In Study IV, 91 student teachers participated in a pre-test/post-test design where they answered open-ended questions about a complex science concept both before and after reading either a traditional, expository science text or a refutational text that prompted the reader to change his/her beliefs according to scientific beliefs about the phenomenon. The student teachers completed a questionnaire concerning their regulation and processing strategies. The results showed that the students’ understanding improved after text reading intervention and that refutational text promoted understanding better than the traditional text. Additionally, regulation and processing strategies were found to be connected with understanding the science phenomenon. A weak trend showed that weaker learners would benefit more from the refutational text. It seems that learners with effective learning strategies are able to pick out the relevant content regardless of the text type, whereas weaker learners might benefit from refutational parts that contrast the most typical misconceptions with scientific views. The purpose of Study V was to use eye tracking to determine how third-year medical studets (n = 39) and internal medicine residents (n = 13) read and solve patient case texts. The results revealed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts; compared to the students, the residents were more accurate in their diagnoses and processed the texts significantly faster and with a lower number of fixations. Different reading patterns were also found. The observed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts could be used in medical education to model expert reasoning and to teach how a good medical text should be constructed. The main findings of the thesis indicate that even among very selected student populations, such as high-achieving medical students or student teachers, there seems to be a lot of variation in regulation strategies of learning and text processing. As these learning strategies are related to successful studying, students enter educational programmes with rather different chances of managing and achieving success. Further, the ways of engaging in learning seldom centre on a single strategy or approach; rather, students seem to combine several strategies to a certain degree. Sometimes, it can be a matter of perspective of which way of learning can be considered best; therefore, the reality of studying in higher education is often more complicated than the simplistic view of self-regulation as a good quality and external regulation as a harmful quality. The beginning of university studies may be stressful for many, as the gap between high school and university studies is huge and those strategies that were adequate during high school might not work as well in higher education. Therefore, it is important to map students’ learning strategies and to encourage them to engage in using high-quality learning strategies from the beginning. Instead of separate courses on learning skills, the integration of these skills into course contents should be considered. Furthermore, learning complex scientific phenomena could be facilitated by paying attention to high-quality learning materials and texts and other support from the learning environment also in the university. Eye tracking seems to have great potential in evaluating performance and growing diagnostic expertise in text processing, although more research using texts as stimulus is needed. Both medical and teacher education programmes and the professions themselves are challenging in terms of their multidisciplinary nature and increasing amounts of information and therefore require good lifelong learning skills during the study period and later in work life.

Factors Related to Study Success at Lappeenranta University of Technology

Tutkimuksen avulla selvitettiin opintomenestykseen liittyviä tekijöitä Lappeenrannan teknillisessä korkeakoulussa (LTKK). Tutkimus liittyi opetuksen ja oppimisen kehitystyöhön tuotantotalouden osastolla. Tutkimuksen viitekehyksen muodosti oppimistuloksia selittävä malli, joka on laadittu Tynjälän (1999) kokoaman mallin perusteella. Tutkimuksen perusjoukko muodostui LTKK:n läsnä olevista perusopiskelijoista lukuun ottamatta jatko- ja vaihto-opiskelijoita. Opiskelijat jaettiin ositetulla otannalla ryhmiin, joissa suoritettiin yksinkertainen satunnaisotanta. Otoskoko oli 645 opiskelijaa. Tiedonkeruumenetelmänä oli Internet-kysely. Aineisto analysoitiin useiden kvantitatiivisten ja kvalitatiivisten menetelmien avulla. Tutkimuksen tuloksia voidaan pitää luotettavina ja tutkimuksen avulla saatiin tärkeää ja hyödyllistä tietoa opintomenestyksestä ja oppimisprosesseista. Tulosten perusteella merkittävimmät oppimistuloksiin positiivisesti liittyvät tekijät ovat syväsuuntautunut opiskelustrategia ja luottaminen omiin kykyihin, ja negatiiviset tekijät ovat oppimisen itsesäätelyn puute, omien kykyjen epäily ja pintasuuntautunut opiskelustrategia. Merkitysorientoituneet, itsesäätelykykyiset opiskelijat menestyivät LTKK:ssa parhaiten.

Opettajan monikulttuurinen työ

Teacher's multicultural work The purpose of the present study is to explore teachers’ conceptions of their work as teachers of multicultural students. Teachers’ experiences of multicultural work and conceptions derived from them are part of the teacher’s multicultural competence which is seen as a key component of the teacher’s multicultural teachership. The teacher’s multicultural competence consists of the teacher’s cultural knowledge, pedagogical skills and experiences and attitudes related to multiculturalism. The teacher’s multicultural competence constitutes the basis on which the teacher implements multicultural education. The foundation for the teacher’s work is laid by laws and decrees, curricula, regulations issued by authorities in charge of the education of immigrant students, resources available and other demands and expectations set by the ambient society. The study was conducted in the city of Turku, Finland. The sample consisted of class teachers who taught both immigrant and majority students. Main objects of study in the theoretical part are the multicultural and pluralistic school and the multicultural teachership. The basic assumption is that the multicultural and pluralistic school forms the frame of activity in which the teacher implements multicultural teaching. The research strategy is based on methodological triangulation. The quantitative part of the study was carried out using a questionnaire typical of survey methods. The questionnaire was returned by 71 teachers. The qualitative part was conducted using theme-based interviews typical of phenomenological philosophical research. Of the total of teachers who returned the questionnaire, twelve (12) teachers were selected for interviews. According to the results, the participating teachers enjoyed their work regardless of the ample extra work caused by the students with immigrant backgrounds. The teachers experienced their work as teachers of multicultural student groups as strenuous, yet challenging. Students with immigrant backgrounds had caused many changes in the teacher’s work. The teachers regarded their multicultural skills as inadequate in relation to the demands of the work. They had not received education related to teaching students with immigrant backgrounds, but they were ready for in-service education. The teachers’ previous attitudes concerning immigrant students had been enforced. Teaching experiences strengthened the earlier, both positive and negative, attitudes. The central problems related to multiculturalism in the teacher’s work were caused by the deficient Finnish skills of the students with immigrant background. This was apparent in both teaching and learning as well as in contacts with parents. The teachers reported on relatively few inclusions of multicultural angles in their teaching. However, they believed that they could aid students with different cultural backgrounds in their integration process. At the same time they felt that their own chances to enhance the students’ cultural identities were slim. On the basis of the interviews conducted in connection with the teacher’s multicultural competence, the teachers were divided into three groups: assimilative, indeterminate and integrating multicultural teachers. The present study provides a strong indication that teachers tend to interpret multiculturalism in narrow terms. School activities, such as Finnish as a second language, first language and religious instruction, which were targeted exclusively at immigrant students were in most cases considered adequate. A holistic, cross-disciplinary, all-inclusive multicultural education that would permeate all school activities remains largely unimplemented.

The grammar of psychosis

This thesis is concerned with the philosophical grammar of certain psychiatric concepts, which play a central role in delineating the field of psychiatric work. The concepts studied are ‘psychosis’, ‘delusion’, ‘person’, ‘understanding’ and ‘incomprehensibility’. The purpose of this conceptual analysis is to provide a more perspicuous view of the logic of these concepts, how psychiatric work is constituted in relation to them, and what this tells us about the relationships between the conceptual and the empirical in psychiatric concepts. The method used in the thesis is indebted primarily to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy, where we are urged to look at language uses in relation to practices in order to obtain a clearer overview of practices of interest; this will enable us to resolve the conceptual problems related to these practices. This questioning takes as its starting point the concept of psychosis, a central psychiatric concept during the twentieth century. The conceptual analysis of ‘psychosis’ shows that the concept is logically dependent on the concepts of ‘understanding’ and ‘person’. Following the lead found in this analysis, the logic of person-concepts in psychiatric discourse is analysed by a detailed textual analysis of a psychiatric journal article. The main finding is the ambiguous uses of ‘person’, enabling a specifically psychiatric form of concern in human affairs. The grammar of ‘understanding’ is then tackled from the opposite end, by exploring the logic of the concept of ‘incomprehensibility’. First, by studying the DSM-IV definition of delusion it is shown that its ambiguities boil down to the question of whether psychiatric practice is better accounted for in terms of the grammar of ‘incorrectness’ or ‘incomprehensibility’. Second, the grammar of ‘incomprehensibility’ is further focused on by introducing the distinction between positive and negative conceptions of ‘incomprehensibility’. The main finding is that this distinction has wide-ranging implications for our understanding of psychiatric concepts. Finally, some of the findings gained in these studies are ‘put into practice’ in studying the more practical question of the conceptual and ethical problems associated with the concept of ‘prodromal symptom of schizophrenia’ and the agenda of early detection and intervention in schizophrenia more generally.

Nursing Ethics Education in Finland from the Perspective of Codes of Ethics

The purpose of this study was to analyze nursing ethics education from the perspective of nurses’ codes of ethics in the basic nursing education programmes in polytechnics in Finland with the following research questions: What is known about nurses’ codes in practice and education, what contents of the codes are taught, what teaching and evaluation methods are used, which demographic variables are associated with the teaching, what is nurse educators’ adequacy of knowledge to teach the codes and nursing students’ knowledge of and ability to apply the codes, and what are participants’ opinions of the need and applicability of the codes, and their importance in nursing ethics education. The aim of the study was to identify strengths and possible problem areas in teaching of the codes and nursing ethics in general. The knowledge gained from this study can be used for developing nursing ethics curricula and teaching of ethics in theory and practice. The data collection was targeted to all polytechnics in Finland providing basic nursing education (i.e. Bachelor of Health Care). The target groups were all nurse educators teaching ethics and all graduating nursing students in the academic year of 2006. A total of 183 educators and 214 students from 24 polytechnics participated. The data was collected using a structured questionnaire with four open-ended questions, designed for this study. The data was analysed by SPSS (14.0) and the open-ended questions by inductive content analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data. Inferential statistics were used to estimate the differences between the participant groups. The reliability of the questionnaire was estimated with Cronbach’s coefficient alpha. The literature review revealed that empirical research on the codes was scarce, and minimal in the area of education. Teaching of nurses’ codes themselves and the embedded ethical concepts was extensive, teaching of the functions of the codes and related laws and agreements was moderate, but teaching of the codes of other health care professions was modest. Issues related to the nurse-patient relationship were emphasised. Wider social dimensions of the codes were less emphasized. Educators’ and students’ descriptions of teaching emphasized mainly the same teaching contents, but there were statistically significant differences between the groups in that educators assessed their teaching to be more extensive than what students had perceived it had been. T he use of teaching and evaluation methods was rather narrow and conventional. However, educators’ and students’ descriptions of the used methods differed statistically significantly. Students’ knowledge of the codes and their ability to apply them in practice was assessed as mediocre by educators and by students themselves. Most educators assessed their own knowledge of the codes as adequate to teach the codes, as did most of the students. Educators who regarded their knowledge as adequate taught the codes more extensively than those who assessed their knowledge as less adequate. Also students who assessed their educators’ knowledge as adequate perceived the teaching of the codes to be more extensive. Otherwise educators’ and students’ demographic variables had little association with their descriptions of the teaching. According to the participants, nurses need their own codes, and they are also regarded as applicable in practice. The codes are an important element in nursing ethics education, but their teaching needs development. Further research should focus on the organization of ethics teaching in the curricula, the teaching process, and on the evaluation of the effectiveness of ethics education and on educators’ competence. Also the meaning and functions of the codes at all levels of nursing deserve attention. More versatile use of research methods would be beneficial in gaining new knowledge.

Parallella, dynamiska representationer i gymnasiefysiken : implementering av ett interaktivt datorverktyg i didaktiska situationer och uppfattning av effektivt lärande

The computer is a useful tool in the teaching of upper secondary school physics, and should not have a subordinate role in students' learning process. However, computers and computer-based tools are often not available when they could serve their purpose best in the ongoing teaching. Another problem is the fact that commercially available tools are not usable in the way the teacher wants. The aim of this thesis was to try out a novel teaching scenario in a complicated subject in physics, electrodynamics. The didactic engineering of the thesis consisted of developing a computer-based simulation and training material, implementing the tool in physics teaching and investigating its effectiveness in the learning process. The design-based research method, didactic engineering (Artigue, 1994), which is based on the theoryof didactical situations (Brousseau, 1997), was used as a frame of reference for the design of this type of teaching product. In designing the simulation tool a general spreadsheet program was used. The design was based on parallel, dynamic representations of the physics behind the function of an AC series circuit in both graphical and numerical form. The tool, which was furnished with possibilities to control the representations in an interactive way, was hypothesized to activate the students and promote the effectiveness of their learning. An effect variable was constructed in order to measure the students' and teachers' conceptions of learning effectiveness. The empirical study was twofold. Twelve physics students, who attended a course in electrodynamics in an upper secondary school, participated in a class experiment with the computer-based tool implemented in three modes of didactical situations: practice, concept introduction and assessment. The main goal of the didactical situations was to have students solve problems and study the function of AC series circuits, taking responsibility for theirown learning process. In the teacher study eighteen Swedish speaking physics teachers evaluated the didactic potential of the computer-based tool and the accompanying paper-based material without using them in their physics teaching. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected using questionnaires, observations and interviews. The result of the studies showed that both the group of students and the teachers had generally positive conceptions of learning effectiveness. The students' conceptions were more positive in the practice situation than in the concept introduction situation, a setting that was more explorative. However, it turned out that the students' conceptions were also positive in the more complex assessment situation. This had not been hypothesized. A deeper analysis of data from observations and interviews showed that one of the students in each pair was more active than the other, taking more initiative and more responsibilityfor the student-student and student-computer interaction. These active studentshad strong, positive conceptions of learning effectiveness in each of the threedidactical situations. The group of less active students had a weak but positive conception in the first iv two situations, but a negative conception in the assessment situation, thus corroborating the hypothesis ad hoc. The teacher study revealed that computers were seldom used in physics teaching and that computer programs were in short supply. The use of a computer was considered time-consuming. As long as physics teaching with computer-based tools has to take place in special computer rooms, the use of such tools will remain limited. The affordance is enhanced when the physical dimensions as well as the performance of the computer are optimised. As a consequence, the computer then becomes a real learning tool for each pair of students, smoothly integrated into the ongoing teaching in the same space where teaching normally takes place. With more interactive support from the teacher, the computer-based parallel, dynamic representations will be efficient in promoting the learning process of the students with focus on qualitative reasoning - an often neglected part of the learning process of the students in upper secondary school physics.

Images of imagination : an aesthetic approach to education

Visual art practice has generally been described as a lonely affair, thinking about what an artist has experienced in the outside world. This study is an inquiry into a visual art practice of another kind: the relational one. The research purpose is twofold. The first purpose is to shed light on a visual artist’s conceptions of art, education and scholarship. The second purpose is to by reasoning on imagination and a rhizomatic formation interpret the relations created between art, multimodality and literacy learning as an aesthetic approach to education. By inquiry into a specific collaborated long-term art practice, the study conveys how the meaning making elements of an arts based learning practice gradually transform an artist’s and a teacher’s concepts of art education to an aesthetic approach to education. In the art practice examined the typical Finnish rye bread and a poem have represented a cultural theme that has been elaborated through art conventions. The poem and the rye bread have in the art practice been articulated as cultural representations of as well as symbolic projections on the Swedishspeaking minority culture in Finland. The study connects art informed inquiry to a hermeneutic research rationale where the research reasoning is generated through a rhizomatic alliance between empiric data and theories. The reasoning is constructed as an interpretation pattern that expands throughout the study. The study arguments that the rhizome as an aesthetic formation can be appropriate to refer to when articulating arts based meaning making and when creating arts based educational strategies, dialogues, aesthetic learning and multimodal literacy in education. The study investigates an aesthetic approach to research in education, which means that the art practice surveyed is interpreted through articulation appropriate to poetic aspects of art, education and research.