Successful in Science Education and Still Popular: A pattern that is possible in China rather than in Germany or Russia

Across several countries, science is often regarded as unpopular and a male-dominated domain. Furthermore, the number of students who are interested in science education or intend to work in the field of science is relatively low. This might be due to expectations adolescents hold towards science and successful scientists. The current cross-national study investigates the expectations of students in relation to highly achieving peers in science education in the three countries China, Germany and Russia (N?=?420). Students were asked to indicate their expectations about two fictitious new classmates with respect to three categories: intelligence, social competence and eagerness. Besides national differences, differences concerning the gender of the participating students, the gender of the target students (fictitious highly achieving students in science education) and interaction effects were investigated. Whereas the effects of gender and target gender are inconsistent and negligible, there are significant national differences. Notably, Chinese students hold the most positive expectations about successful peers in science education. The results are discussed with regard to possible explanations and educational consequences.     

University students' situational reaction tendencies: Reflections on general study orientations,learning strategies,and study success

The purpose of the study was to bridge the gap between situational and more general measures in investigating university students' studying. More precisely, the aim was to establish a connection between students' situational reaction tendencies and their general study orientations. Furthermore, situational reaction tendencies were related to the applied learning strategies and actual study success. The participants in the study were 578 second year students in a multi-disciplinary Finnish university. A questionnaire was used including the Inventory of General Study Orientations (IGSO) and measures concerning situational reaction tendencies, learning strategies, self-efficacy and self-evaluated expertise. Archive data from the university's student register were utilized to objectively examine study success. The following four groups of students with differing situational reaction tendencies were distinguished: performance-oriented students, task-oriented students, socially oriented students and avoiders. It was found that the groups differed from each other regarding general study orientations, applied learning strategies and study success.     

Adult Questions and Children's Responses: Coordination of perspectives in studies of children's theories of other minds

The main aim of this study is to shed light on the issue of how children learn to identify what is meant by what is said in communicative practices. The study replicates and extends the well-known work on what is referred to as children's 'theories of other minds'. The focus in the present study is on the interplay between the adult and the child, the nature of the task and the child's position in the communicative encounter. Rather than assuming that children have or do not have 'theories of other minds', we explore the communicative conditions under which children can be made sensitive to the nature of other people's (mistaken) beliefs. The empirical work was carried out amongst children aged three to five, since this is the critical age at which it is claimed that children become sensitive to the fact that other people's perspectives of a situation may differ from their own. The results show that whether or not children 'are able' to adopt other people's perspectives is very much a situated affair and reflects the manner in which they are brought into a position where they can share the framing of the adult. The questions posed are interpreted differently by the children in ways that go beyond the intended difference that concerns perspectivity. The test situation is polysemous in many respects and the variation in responses cannot be reduced to such a simple distinction as the one implied in the theory of mind research paradigm, which represents a monological conception of communication.     

Parents’ Participation in Their Child’s Schooling

The present study set out to survey Finnish parents’ participation in their child’s schooling and related experiences. The subjects were a nationally representative group of academically and vocationally educated fathers and mothers (N = 391) who had a child on the fifth grade. A great majority of the parents reported that they attended the parent evenings and saw them in a positive light. Most parents helped their child in her/his schoolwork, though some of them were doubtful of their own competence for it. The choice of schools, which was considered mainly by urban parents and academically educated parents, seemed to introduce a new private element into parental participation without changing the existing communal forms of participation.     

Quality of Vocational Literacy: how Finnish vocational school students learn from text

The article concentrates on the essential prerequisite for future continuing education—the skill of independent learning from text in the light of an evaluation study carried out in Finnish vocational schools. The research task was to elucidate how learning from text can be explained, what kinds of results students achieved and above all what kinds of learning strategies they applied. Furthermore, students’ learning orientation was studied. The results of the empirical study indicated that learning from text is a transactional process of many factors related to cognition and motivation. Seventy‐five percent of the qualitative level of the learning outcomes could be explained. The qualitative level of the results proved on average fairly low even though individual differences were notable. Information processing in the learning process was mostly superficial. Such processing was generally related to atomistic structuring of knowledge, limited and text‐bound use of knowledge as well as haste. With the help of cluster analysis of the learning process variables students were placed in five groups relating to their learning orientation. The groups differed from each other in relation to the aims of activities, learning process and results.     

The Experienced Meaning of Working with a PhD Thesis

There is a variation in terms of how researchers perceive the nature of research work. Previous research has mainly looked at the members of academia who already have established themselves in the scholarly community. We aimed at exploring the ways in which doctoral students perceived their thesis project and further, the relations of such perceptions to well-being and study engagement. The participants were 669 doctoral students from medicine, humanities, and behavioral sciences from a Finnish university who answered a questionnaire, including both structured and open-ended questions. The analysis was conducted by triangulating qualitative and quantitative data. The results showed that students' perceptions varied, ranging from perceiving the thesis as a product to viewing it as a process of developing expertise. Further, the results indicated that perceiving work on the thesis as a process was most advantageous in terms of experienced well-being and study engagement.     

In Search of Quality in Finnish Pre‐School Education

This study was conducted during the academic year 2002–2003 in a municipality in Eastern Finland. It focuses on pre‐school education assessing its quality factors from the parents’, teachers’ and children’s points of view. Theoretically, the study focuses on analyses of the purposes of the national core curriculum and pedagogical issues that are related to understanding quality in pre‐school education. According to this study, parents, pre‐school teachers, and children are satisfied with pre‐school education in general. They all emphasize its importance for children’s development in the areas of cognitive and social skills and development. Results clearly show that pre‐school education should be revised to meet the needs of improvement in the area of co‐operation, the expectations of modern society, and the aims of the national curriculum. In addition, pre‐school education is still searching for its own cultural position in the area of Finnish school and daycare systems.     

Language and Mathematical Performance: a Comparison of Lower Secondary School Students with Different Level of Mathematical Skills

This study investigated the connection between language (i.e., word comprehension, reading comprehension and spelling skills) and mathematical performance. The sample consisted of grade nine students (N?=?810) in 14 lower secondary schools in the Swedish speaking areas of Finland. Standardized tests for reading and writing skills, and mathematical performance were used. Based on the mathematics test the students were categorized into eight performance groups. Many students had problems in both mathematics and language performance. On the whole data level reading skills were a powerful predictor for math performance, the reading factor explained 52% of the variance in the model. Hence, the reading skills focusing on understanding of the text are important in solving mathematical tasks at the end of compulsory school.     

The Role of Regulation and Processing Strategies in Understanding Science Text Among University Students

The aim of the study was to investigate the role of regulation and processing strategies in understanding science text. A total of 91 student teachers answered open-ended questions concerning photosynthesis before and after reading either a traditional or a refutational science text. After this, they also answered parts of the Inventory of Learning Styles. Understanding of photosynthesis increased after the text reading among all the students. However, deep and independent learners reached a better understanding than reproductive and support-dependent students. The refutational text seemed to promote understanding more than the traditional text. The study supports the assumption that personal characteristics play a role in learning complex scientific concepts. Further, refutational texts seem to facilitate high quality learning.     

Relations of power and knowledge: university–industry relations in business studies in Finland

In the globalized neoliberal economy, business schools and business science has become a dominant societal institution and discourse. However, this has not directly strengthened the position of business schools in the societal networks of power. This paper examines this paradox by depicting who are the actors in the field and how these actors seek to influence what passes as legitimate knowledge in the discipline of business studies. Informed by actor network theory (Latour in Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005) and drawing on the antenarrative analysis (Boje in Narrative methods for organizational and communication research. Sage Publications, London, 2001), the paper considers the understated dynamics of negotiation over the form and content of academic knowledge in a local context (cf. Alferoff and Knights in Br J Manag 20(1):125–142, 2009). The paper depicts the change that has occurred from the early 1990s till today. First, the potentially influential actors will be identified. Second, two maps of networks in different points of time will be traced. In the contemporary network, the gatekeeper role of business schools is undermined by new prominent actors. The paper shows how business schools, instead of gaining a high power position, are now more dependent on a variety of other actors, who increasingly define what passes as relevant and valid knowledge in business studies.