Paljon melua tyhjästä

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Fiktiivisen kirjallisuuden maailmasta monikulttuuriseen Suomeen. Ennakointikertomus kirjallisuudenopetuksen ja monikulttuurisuuskasvatuksen välineenä

From the world of fiction literature into multi-cultural Finland. Anticipatory story as an educational tool in teaching of literature and multiculturalism The research clarifies the relationship between reading fiction literature and multicultural value education in basic education. The research focuses on the subject didactics of mother tongue and literature and on the literature teaching in particular. The objective is to develop a method that is easily transferable into a teaching context so as to intensify the educational discussion based on fiction literature. In essence, understanding fiction literature and the ethical and moral thinking resemble one another, because both of them aim at empathizing with the thinking of a person or with a situation foreign to oneself. For this reason fiction literature is ideally suited for the discussion on ethical and moral values within a subject entity in the basic education. The empirical unit of the research consists of two parts. The first part explains how youth novels published in the years 1993 – 2007 describe multiculturalism in Finnish society. Books on multiculturalism are still few in number within youth literature, and people with a foreign background are mainly minor or background characters in such literary works. Nevertheless, youth novels serve well as a starting point for an educational discussion about multicultural issues. More often than not characters in youth novels are stereotypes and even opposite to each other. The juxtaposing makes a young reader question the stereotypes associated with immigrants. Besides the stereotype, reference to a prototype or a model is possible. The second part tests the usefulness of an anticipatory story based on a fictive text for an educational discussion about multicultural issues. The empirical material was collected from the eighth-grade teaching groups in basic education as follows: one teaching group was an immigrant group, the second one a group of Finns with experience of immigrants while the third group of students had hardly any experience of immigrants. The anticipatory stories were written on the basis of extracts from youth novels with multicultural themes. The material collected for a total of 120 anticipatory stories was analysed by using meaning cue analysis. Using the meaning cue analysis, the anticipatory stories were divided into three groups: stories with predominantly positive meaning cues of interculturalism, ambivalent stories with both positive and negative meaning cues of interculturalism and the stories with predominantly negative meaning cues of interculturalism. The meaning cues produced by girls and boys differ from one another, in particular, by the negative meaning cues of interculturalism. For girls, the predominant meaning cue is fear whereas for boys, it is that of violence. It would also seem that the students, in particular, boys with little experience of immigrants produce more negative meaning cues of interculturalism than do immigrants or Finnish students with experience of immigrants. Further still, it seems that active reading of fiction literature affects the meaning cues of interculturalism in an ambivalent direction. In the way of youth novels this is understandable, because youth novels in general are made up of opposite characters and meaning cues. The less the student takes an interest in reading, the more he used meaning cues from outside the parent text for his anticipatory story. No doubt it would be possible to use fiction literature in the literature education to a much higher extent than it is being used today whereby the literature could be used in basic education for reviewing subject entities or study contents of other study subjects. By way of an anticipatory story and the meaning cue analysis, it is possible to intensify the educational discussions based on fiction literature. However, using fiction literature in the literature education requires consideration of the specific genre of fiction literature.

Peruskoulun neljäsluokkalaisten lukuharrastus ja luovan kirjoittamisen taidot

Tämä tutkimus on pääosin kvantitatiivinen tutkimus peruskoulun neljäsluokkalaisten lukuharrastuksesta ja luovan kirjoittamisen taidoista. Tarkoituksena on selvittää, kuinka paljon ja mitä tutkimusjoukkoon kuuluvat neljäsluokkalaiset lukevat sekä minkälaisia kirjoitelmia he kirjoittavat. Tavoitteena on myös tutkia, miten lukuharrastuneisuudelta erilaisten oppilaiden kirjoitelmat eroavat toisistaan. Lisäksi halutaan saada tietää, poikkeavatko tyttöjen ja poikien lukemisharrastukset, lukemiskulttuurit ja kirjoitelmat toisistaan. Tutkimusjoukkoon kuuluu 68 oppilasta yhteensä kolmesta peruskoulun neljännestä luokasta. Kaikki koulut ovat Pirkanmaan alueella. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin kyselylomakkeella ja oppilaiden kirjoitelmista. Tutkimuksen tulosten mukaan tytöt lukevat kirjoja ja lehtiä enemmän kuin pojat. Poikiin verrattuna tytöt myös lukevat useammin kavereiden tai sisarusten kanssa. Sekä poikien että tyttöjen lempikirjoja ovat vitsikirjat, sarjakuvakirjat ja -lehdet sekä kirjasarjat. Vastaajat lukevat paljon myös erilaisia tietokirjoja. Tutkimukseen osallistuneet oppilaat etsivät ja valitsevat luettavansa mieluiten itse. Tässä tutkimuksessa neljäsluokkalaisten kirjoitelmissa yleisin piirre on havainnollisuus, joka ilmenee hahmojen ja tapahtumien tarkkana kuvailuna. Tytöt suoriutuivat kirjoitelmien kirjoittamisesta paremmin kuin pojat. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että ne, jotka lukevat paljon taitavat kirjoittamisen paremmin kuin ne, jotka lukevat vähän. Tutkimuksen tulokset nostavat esiin kysymyksen siitä, miten pojat tai muuten vähän lukevat saataisiin lukuharrastuksen piiriin ja siten kehittämään omaa kielenkäyttötaitoaan sekä keskusteluin että kirjoittamalla.

Kongressikokemuksia Pariisista ja vähän muualtakin

IAGG:n (International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics) kansainvälinen gerontologian ja geriatrian kongressi pidettiin 5.-9.7.2009 Pariisissa.

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.

Customer reference marketing and utilization of social media as an integral part of customer references

The objective of this Bachelor's Thesis is to find out the role of social media in the B-to-B marketing environment of the information technology industry and to discover how IT-firms utilize social media as a part of their customer reference marketing. To reach the objectives the concepts of customer reference marketing and social media are determined. Customer reference marketing can be characterized as one of the most practically relevant but academically relatively overlooked ways in which a company can leverage its customers and delivered solutions and use them as references in its marketing activities. We will cover which external and internal functions customer references have, that contribute to the growth and performance of B-to-B firms. We also address the three mechanisms of customer reference marketing which are 'status transfer', 'validation through testimonials' and 'demonstration of experience and prior performance'. The concept of social media stands for social interaction and creation of user-based content which exclusively occurs through Internet. The social media are excellent tools for networking because of the fast and easy access, easy interaction and vast amount of multimedia attributes. The allocation of social media is determined. The case company helps clarify the specific characteristics of social media usage as part of customer-reference-marketing activities. For IT-firms the best channels to utilize social media in their customer reference marketing activities are publishing and distribution services of content and networking services.

Asiakaslähtöisyydestä asiakasläheisyyteen : uusia tuulia geriatriseen kuntoutukseen ja vähän vanhojakin

7. Gerontologian päivät Kuopiossa 15. -17.4.2010.

Metodien matkassa

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Ennakkoluulottomia metodologisia sovelluksia peruskysymyksiä unohtamatta

Kirja-arvio