Widening Perspectives of Teacher Education : Studies on theory-practice relationship, reflection, research and professional development

This dissertation examined the research-based teacher education at the University of Helsinki from different theoretical and practical perspectives. Five studies focused on these perspectives separately as well as overlappingly. Study I focused on the reflection process of graduating teacher students. The data consisted of essays the students wrote as their last assignment before graduating, where their assignment was to examine their development as researchers during their MA thesis research process. The results indicated that the teacher students had analysed their own development thoroughly during the process and that they had reflected on theoretical as well as practical educational matters. The results also pointed out that, in the students’ opinion, personally conducted research is a significant learning process. -- Study II investigated teacher students’ workplace learning and the integration of theory and practice in teacher education. The students’ interviews focused on their learning of teacher’s work prior to education. The interviewees’ responses concerning their ‘surviving’ in teaching prior to teacher education were categorized into three categories: learning through experiences, school as a teacher learning environment, and case-specific learning. The survey part of the study focused on integration of theory and practice within the education process. The results showed that the students who worked while they studied took advantage of the studies and applied them to work. They set more demanding teaching goals and reflected on their work more theoretically. -- Study III examined practical aspects of the teacher students’ MA thesis research as well as the integration of theory and practice in teacher education. The participants were surveyed using a web-based survey which dealt with the participants’ teacher education experiences. According to the results, most of the students had chosen a practical topic for their MA thesis, one arising from their work environment, and most had chosen a research topic that would develop their own teaching. The results showed that the integration of theory and practice had taken place in much of the course work, but most obviously in the practicum periods, and also in the courses concerning the school subjects. The majority felt that the education had in some way been successful with regards to integration. -- Study IV explored the idea of considering teacher students’ MA thesis research as professional development. Twenty-three teachers were interviewed on the subject of their experiences of conducting research about their own work as teachers. The results of the interviews showed that the reasons for choosing the MA thesis research topic were multiple: practical, theoretical, personal, professional reasons, as well as outside effect. The objectives of the MA thesis research, besides graduating, were actual projects, developing the ability to work as teachers, conducting significant research, and sharing knowledge of the topic. The results indicated that an MA thesis can function as a tool for professional development, for example in finding ways for adjusting teaching, increasing interaction skills, gaining knowledge or improving reflection on theory and/or practice, strengthening self-confidence as a teacher, increasing researching skills or academic writing skills, as well as becoming critical and being able to read scientific and academic literature. -- Study V analysed teachers’ views of the impact of practitioner research. According to the results, the interviewees considered the benefits of practitioner research to be many, affecting teachers, pupils, parents, the working community, and the wider society. Most of the teachers indicated that they intended to continue to conduct research in the future. The results also showed that teachers often reflected personally and collectively, and viewed this as important. -- These five studies point out that MA thesis research is and can be a useful tool for increasing reflection doing with personal and professional development, as well as integrating theory and practice. The studies suggest that more advantage could be taken of the MA thesis research project. More integration of working and studying could and should be made possible for teacher students. This could be done in various ways within teacher education, but the MA thesis should be seen as a pedagogical possibility.

Foreword for "Critical Literacy Practice: Applications of Critical Theory in Diverse Settings"

Given the impact of standardization and high-stakes testing on literacy education policy internationally, it is encouraging to read fresh accounts of critical literacy in practice being enacted in many different educational contexts. Critical Literacy Practice: Applications of Critical Theory in Diverse Settings delivers what its title promises, namely, serious scholarly accounts of educators working to practice critical literacy and address the complexity that it entails. Importantly, the contributors include both recognized and emerging researchers in critical literacy studies. Critical literacy needs input from culturally diverse and new scholars to address crucial and unfamiliar issues as well as perennial injustices relating to poverty, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and location...

Polarographic and redox potential studies on copper(I) and copper(II) and their complexes. Part III. Copper (I and II)-ethylene diamine and edta complexes and theory of formation of step reduction waves in cupric copper systems

Polarographic and redox potential measurements on the cupric and cuprous complexes of ethylenediamine and EDTA have been carried out. From the ratio of the stability constants of the cupric and cuprous complexes, and the stability constant of the cupric complex, the stability constant of the cuprous-ethylenediamine complex is obtained. In the case of the EDTA complex it has been possible to obtain only βic/β2ous from the equilibrium concentrations of the cuprous and cupric complexes and the disproportionation constant. The inequalities for the appearance of step reduction waves have been given. The values of the stability constants of the cupric and cuprous complexes determined by the polarographic-redox potential method have been used to explain the appearance of step reduction waves in some systems and the non-appearance in other systems.

Tyttöjen toinen koti : Etnografinen tutkimus tyttökulttuurista ratsastustalleilla

Horseback riding is a popular activity in Finland, especially among young women and girls. For centuries, however, horse husbandry and horse culture in Finland had been dominated by men. Nowadays it is mainly the girls who ride as a hobby and take care of the horses. The stable has evolved into an important social sphere for girls, a semi-public room of their own where they spend time together. A study of the girl culture in the riding stable offers a unique perspective as well as new information on becoming a girl and a young woman in Finland. The subject of my research is the girl culture and girls communities at the horseback riding stables. In this thesis I discuss what kind of girl-cultural sphere the stable is, how girls organize their community, and what different aspects and meanings the hobby entails for girls while they are actively engaged in the hobby. I focus on the construction of gender and girlhood and examine how these gender constructions can be theorized as gender tradition. The research material consists of the interviews of 22 stable girls from different parts of Finland and an observation period at one of the stables. The informants were from 13 to 27 years of age. The theoretical background is based on the anthropological study of folklore, girls studies, feminist theory and post-humanist viewpoints. I am interested in how girls culture and girlhood are produced performatively in the interview narration and participant observation. I concentrate on four aspects of this culture: 1) what girls do at the stable, and what kind of relationships they create with horses; 2) social relations focusing on the ways girls construct their own groups, the way their hierarchy is constructed and how they use power; 3) the norms and social control regarding social behaviour; and 4) the reasons girls give for their involvement in the hobby, and girls interest in horses in general. In this girl culture, gender norms and boundaries are not only stretched or transgressed, but the culture also re-produces the hierarchical and stereotypical ideas of gender. The traditions of gender express both the hegemonic gender system and those ideas of gender which girls resist, at least momentarily. Constructions of gender and gender tradition are constituted at the intersections of historical and contemporary expectations of what it means to be a girl. Conscious of these societal demands, girls support, reproduce, challenge, and make comments on them.

The Gendered Social Organisation of Defence: Two Ethnographic Case Studies in the Finnish Defence Forces

In Finland the organising of defence is undergoing vast restructuring. Recent legislation has redefined the central tasks of the Finnish Defence Forces. At the same time, international security cooperation, economic pressures and new administrative paradigms have steered the military towards new ways of organising. National defence is not just politics and principles; to a large extent it is also enacted in day-to-day life in organisations. The lens through which these realities of defence are analysed in this study is gender. How is the security sector – and national defence as part of it – organised in the changing security environment? What is the new division of labour between different societal actors in the face of security challenges? What happens ‘at work’ within the military and the defence sector more broadly? How does gender affect the way in which defence is organised and understood, and how do the changes in the organising of security affect gender relations? The thesis searches for answers to these questions in the context of two organisational settings in the male-dominated defence sector. The case study on a Finnish peacekeeping unit in the Balkans opens a critical view on men’s social practices and the everyday life of crisis management organisations. In the second case study, reorganising of provisioning in the Finnish Defence Forces turns out to be a complicated process where different power relations and social divisions intermingle. Tallberg’s extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the two focal organisations has produced a detailed set of data that lays the basis for critical analysis and policy development in terms of defence organising, cooperation around peace and security issues, and gender equality in organisations. Observations and results are provided for understanding social networks, militarisation, authority relations, care, public-private partnerships, personnel policies, career planning, and humour.

Leadership through the Gender Lens: Women and Men in Organisations

Leadership and management remain highly gendered. Recent decades have seen a major international growth of studies on gender relations in leadership, organisations and management, in both empirical research and theoretical analysis. The differential relations of women and men to leadership and management are a key question for both theory and practice. Recent research and discussion on the gendering of leadership have been influenced by and have addressed: feminism; recognition of women and women’s situations, experiences and voices in leadership; organisational culture; communication; divisions of labour, hierarchy, power and authority; imagery and symbolism; information technology; sexuality, harassment, bullying and violence in organisations; home-work relations; men and masculinities in leadership; globalisation, transnationalism, intersectionality and post¬¬colonialism – amongst other issues. Having said that, the vast majority of mainstream work on leadership retains little or no gender analysis. In most business schools and other universities the position of gender-explicit work on leadership is still not well established. Leadership through the Gender Lens brings together critical analyses and debates on gender, leadership and management with contributions from 13 countries and five continents. How leadership and management are gendered can mean more gender equal or more gender unequal conditions for women and men. This includes how education and training can contribute to gendered leadership and management. The volume is organised in three main sections, on: careers and leadership; management, hierarchy and leadership: and interventions in leadership.

Theoretical gain‐optimization studies in CO2–N2 gasdynamic lasers. I. Theory

Based on a method proposed by Reddy and Daum, the equations governing the steady inviscid nonreacting gasdynamic laser (GDL) flow in a supersonic nozzle are reduced to a universal form so that the solutions depend on a single parameter which combines all the other parameters of the problem. Solutions are obtained for a sample case of available data and compared with existing results to validate the present approach. Also, similar solutions for a sample case are presented.

The Biopolitics of Gender

This dissertation inquires into the relationship between gender and biopolitics. Biopolitics, according to Michel Foucault, is the mode of politics that is situated and exercised at the level of life. The dissertation claims that gender is a technology of biopower specific to the optimisation of the sexual reproduction of human life, deployed through the scientific and governmental problematisation of declining fertility rates in the mid-twentieth century. Just as Michel Foucault claimed that sexuality became a scientific and political discourse in the nineteenth century, gender has also since emerged in these fields. In this dissertation, gender is treated as neither a representation of sex nor a cultural construct or category of identity. Rather, a genealogy of gender as an apparatus of biopower in conducted. It demonstrates how scientific and theoretical developments in the twentieth century marshalled gender into the sex/sexuality apparatus as a new technology of liberal biopower. Gender, I argue, has become necessary for the Western liberal order to recapture and re-optimise the life-producing functions of sex that reproduce the very object of biopolitics: life. The concept of the life function is introduced to analyse the life-producing violence of the sex/sexuality/gender apparatus. To do this, the thesis rereads the work of Michel Foucault through Gilles Deleuze for a deeper grasp of the material strategies of biopower and how it produces categories of difference and divides population according to them. The work of Judith Butler, in turn, is used as a foil against which to rearticulate the question of how to examine gender genealogically and biopolitically. The dissertation then executes a genealogy of gender, tracing the changing rationalities of sex/sexuality/gender from early feminist thought, through mid-twentieth century sexological, feminist, and demographic research, to current EU policy. According to this genealogy, in the mid-twentieth century demographers perceived that sexuality/sex, which Foucault observed as the life-producing biopolitical apparatus, was no longer sufficiently disciplining human bodies to reproduce. The life function was escaping the grasp of biopower. The analysis demonstrates how gender theory was taken up as a means of reterritorialising the life function: nature would be disciplined to reproduce by controlling culture. The crucial theoretical and genealogical argument of the thesis, that gender is a discourse with biopolitical foundations and a technology of biopower, radically challenges the premises of gender theory and feminist politics, as well as the emancipatory potential often granted to the gender concept. The project asks what gender means, what biopolitical function it performs, and what is at stake for feminist politics when it engages with it. In so doing, it identifies biopolitics and the problem of life as possibly the most urgent arena for feminist politics today.

Cu-II-Azide Polynuclear Complexes of Three Different Building Clusters with the Same Schiff-Base Ligand: Synthesis, Structures, Magnetic Behavior, and Density Functional Theory Studies

Three copper-azido complexes Cu-4(N-3)(8)(L-1)(2)(MeOH)(2)](n) (1), Cu-4(N-3)(8)(L-1)(2)] (2), and Cu-5(N-3)(10)(L-1)(2)](n) (3) L-1 is the imine resulting from the condensation of pyridine-2-carboxaldehyde with 2-(2-pyridyl)ethylamine] have been synthesized using lower molar equivalents of the Schiff base ligand with Cu(NO3)(2)center dot 3H(2)O and an excess of NaN3. Single crystal X-ray structures show that the basic unit of the complexes 1 and 2 contains Cu-4(II) building blocks; however, they have distinct basic and overall structures due to a small change in the bridging mode of the peripheral pair of copper atoms in the linear tetranudear structures. Interestingly, these changes are the result of changing the solvent system (MeOH/H2O to EtOH/H2O) used for the synthesis, without changing the proportions of the components (metal to ligand ratio 2:1). Using even lower proportions of the ligand, another unique complex was isolated with Cu-5(II) building units, forming a two-dimensional complex (3). Magnetic susceptibility measurements over a wide range of temperature exhibit the presence of both antiferromagnetic (very weak) and ferromagnetic exchanges within the tetranuclear unit structures. Density functional theory calculations (using B3LYP functional, and two different basis sets) have been performed on the complexes 1 and 2 to provide a qualitative theoretical interpretation of their overall magnetic behavior.

Discrete Vortex Method-Based Model for Ground-Effect Studies

A discrete vortex method-based model has been proposed for two-dimensional/three-dimensional ground-effect prediction. The model merely requires two-dimensional sectional aerodynamics in free flight. This free-flight data can be obtained either from experiments or a high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics solver. The first step of this two-step model involves a constrained optimization procedure that modifies the vortex distribution on the camber line as obtained from a discrete vortex method to match the free-flight data from experiments/computational fluid dynamics. In the second step, the vortex distribution thus obtained is further modified to account for the presence of the ground plane within a discrete vortex method-based framework. Whereas the predictability of the lift appears as a natural extension, the drag predictability within a potential flow framework is achieved through the introduction of what are referred to as drag panels. The need for the use of the generalized Kutta-Joukowski theorem is emphasized. The extension of the model to three dimensions is by the way of using the numerical lifting-line theory that allows for wing sweep. The model is extensively validated for both two-dimensional and three-dimensional ground-effect studies. The work also demonstrates the ability of the model to predict lift and drag coefficients of a high-lift wing in ground effect to about 2 and 8% accuracy, respectively, as compared to the results obtained using a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solver involving grids with several million volumes. The model shows a lot of promise in design, particularly during the early phase.

Segregation: theoretical approach. an empirical analysis of gender segregation in undergraduate studies at the University of the Basque Country.

The aim of this study is to analyze the gender segregation in undergraduate studies in the University from Basque Country (UPV/EHU). We use data from UPV/EHU for the period 2003-2013. We focus on the period from 2003 to 2013 to analyze the changes in the segregation over ten years. We analyze the tendencies of the men and the women inside undergraduate studies. Undergraduate studies are decomposed into five fields: Legal and social sciences, experimental sciences, engineering, arts and humanities, and health sciences. We draw segregation curves and compute the Gini segregation index within the Lorenz approach. Our results show that the gender segregation in undergraduate studies in the UPV/EHU has decreased from 2003 to 2013.

Gender segregation in technological undergraduate studies in the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)

In this work we study the gender segregation in technological undergraduate studies in the University of The Basque Country (UPV/EHU). For this study we use the data of new admissions at the UPV/EHU. They are from the time period of the years 2003-2013. We focus on the first and last year to check if the segregation has changed over these ten years. We build segregation curves within the Lorenz approach. Our results show that the gender segregation in technological undergraduate studies in the University of the Basque Country has increased over the last ten years. We also show that the distribution between men and women has changed.  

Coulomb drag and tunneling studies in quantum Hall bilayers

The bilayer quantum Hall state at total filling factor ν_T=1, where the total electron density matches the degeneracy of the lowest Landau level, is a prominent example of Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons. A macroscopically ordered state is realized where an electron in one layer is tightly bound to a "hole" in the other layer. If exciton transport were the only bulk transportmechanism, a current driven in one layer would spontaneously generate a current of equal magnitude and opposite sign in the other layer. The Corbino Coulomb drag measurements presented in this thesis demonstrate precisely this phenomenon.

Excitonic superfluidity has been long sought in the ν_T=1 state. The tunneling between the two electron gas layers exihibit a dc Josephson-like effect. A simple model of an overdamped voltage biased Josephson junction is in reasonable agreement with the observed tunneling I-V. At small tunneling biases, it exhibits a tunneling "supercurrent". The dissipation is carefully studied in this tunneling "supercurrent" and found to remain small but finite.

1. Ultrasonic studies of binary liquid structure in the critical region. Theory and experiment for the 2,6-lutidine/water system. 2. Hartree-Fock calculations of electric polarizabilities of some simple atoms and molecules, and their practicality. 3. Calculation of vibrational transition probabilities in collinear atom-diatom and diatom-diatom collisions with Lennard-Jones interaction

Part 1. Many interesting visual and mechanical phenomena occur in the critical region of fluids, both for the gas-liquid and liquid-liquid transitions. The precise thermodynamic and transport behavior here has some broad consequences for the molecular theory of liquids. Previous studies in this laboratory on a liquid-liquid critical mixture via ultrasonics supported a basically classical analysis of fluid behavior by M. Fixman (e. g., the free energy is assumed analytic in intensive variables in the thermodynamics)--at least when the fluid is not too close to critical. A breakdown in classical concepts is evidenced close to critical, in some well-defined ways. We have studied herein a liquid-liquid critical system of complementary nature (possessing a lower critical mixing or consolute temperature) to all previous mixtures, to look for new qualitative critical behavior. We did not find such new behavior in the ultrasonic absorption ascribable to the critical fluctuations, but we did find extra absorption due to chemical processes (yet these are related to the mixing behavior generating the lower consolute point). We rederived, corrected, and extended Fixman's analysis to interpret our experimental results in these more complex circumstances. The entire account of theory and experiment is prefaced by an extensive introduction recounting the general status of liquid state theory. The introduction provides a context for our present work, and also points out problems deserving attention. Interest in these problems was stimulated by this work but also by work in Part 3.

Part 2. Among variational theories of electronic structure, the Hartree-Fock theory has proved particularly valuable for a practical understanding of such properties as chemical binding, electric multipole moments, and X-ray scattering intensity. It also provides the most tractable method of calculating first-order properties under external or internal one-electron perturbations, either developed explicitly in orders of perturbation theory or in the fully self-consistent method. The accuracy and consistency of first-order properties are poorer than those of zero-order properties, but this is most often due to the use of explicit approximations in solving the perturbed equations, or to inadequacy of the variational basis in size or composition. We have calculated the electric polarizabilities of H₂, He, Li, Be, LiH, and N₂ by Hartree-Fock theory, using exact perturbation theory or the fully self-consistent method, as dictated by convenience. By careful studies on total basis set composition, we obtained good approximations to limiting Hartree-Fock values of polarizabilities with bases of reasonable size. The values for all species, and for each direction in the molecular cases, are within 8% of experiment, or of best theoretical values in the absence of the former. Our results support the use of unadorned Hartree-Pock theory for static polarizabilities needed in interpreting electron-molecule scattering data, collision-induced light scattering experiments, and other phenomena involving experimentally inaccessible polarizabilities.

Part 3. Numerical integration of the close-coupled scattering equations has been carried out to obtain vibrational transition probabilities for some models of the electronically adiabatic H₂-H₂ collision. All the models use a Lennard-Jones interaction potential between nearest atoms in the collision partners. We have analyzed the results for some insight into the vibrational excitation process in its dependence on the energy of collision, the nature of the vibrational binding potential, and other factors. We conclude also that replacement of earlier, simpler models of the interaction potential by the Lennard-Jones form adds very little realism for all the complication it introduces. A brief introduction precedes the presentation of our work and places it in the context of attempts to understand the collisional activation process in chemical reactions as well as some other chemical dynamics.