Emotions involved in encountering classroom diversity: Beginning teachers’ stories

This article addresses emotions involved in encountering classroom diversity as appearing in beginning teachers’ stories. Previous research has pointed out that teachers’ emotions related to growing classroom diversity are seldom addressed, although increasing classroom diversity has been distinguished as a significant emotional challenge for teachers. In this article, teachers’ work is viewed as relational and moral work, in which emotions are inherently present. We conceptualise emotions as simultaneously social and individual. Instead of predefining the term ‘diversity’, we are interested in what kind of classroom diversity seems to become meaningful in teachers’ stories. The data consists of narrative interviews with seven Finnish beginning teachers. The findings illustrate how, in beginning teachers’ stories, students are both categorised and approached as unique individuals. Furthermore, the findings show diverse ways that emotions are present in teachers’ stories about classroom diversity, and how the working community also affects teachers’ emotions. We argue that teachers’ stories related to emotions and classroom diversity can be interpreted as moral negotiations, in which teachers’ own values and ideas of teaching are challenged. The findings of this article may add understanding of teacher–student relationships in diverse classrooms, and are also significant for teacher educators and teacher education programmes.     

Significant networks and meaningful conversations observed in the first-round applicants for the Teachers’ Academy at a research-intensive university

The University of Helsinki established a Teachers’ Academy to reward excellence in teaching. This study focuses on teachers’ significant networks and their meaningful conversations about teaching and learning before the establishment of the Teachers’ Academy. The research data consisted of answers to open-ended questions, and were examined using social network analysis. The teachers’ network consisted of significant relations with (1) colleagues and other teachers, (2) peers in pedagogical courses and pedagogical experts, (3) students, and (4) family members and friends. The conversations with different parties varied in nature, content and the level of confidentiality.     

Behavioral Regulatory Problems Are Associated With a Lower Attentional Bias to Fearful Faces During Infancy

To investigate the role of early regulatory problems (RP), such as problems in feeding, sleeping, and calming down during later development, the association between parent-reported RP at 3 months (no-RP, n = 110; RP, n = 66) and attention to emotional faces at 8 months was studied. Eight-month-old infants had a strong tendency to look at faces and to specifically fearful faces, and the individual variance in this tendency was assessed with eye tracking using a face-distractor paradigm. The early RPs were related to a lower attention bias to fearful faces compared to happy and neutral faces after controlling for temperamental negative affectivity. This suggests that early RPs are related to the processing of emotional information later during infancy.     

The Curriculum for Early Learning in the Context of Society L'orientation contextuelle de la croissance de l'enfant El programa por estudio basado en la orientacio´n contextual de la sociedad

Curriculum based on contextual orientation to child's growth consists of three aspects: contextual consciousness of child's growth, theory based early learning guidelines beyond teaching process and children as meaning makers for learning. Those issues form a hypothetical model indicating how theories that guide the early childhood practice--the teaching and early learning processes in a complex setting are connected to each other. The guidelines for teaching and tutoring early learning are: ” Child-centredness and acknowledgment of the child as an actor ” Recognition of the interactions within among the child's growth environments and ” Acceptance of the educator's responsibility to provide an active growth environment for children. According to the contextual curriculum theory early learning process is defined as a co-operation between people involved in curriculum implementation, where the child is seen as an actor having opportunities to meaningful, child-initiated experiences and tutored by peer group and by the adult is learning and growing up and finding out his own metacognition for learning and managing his own life. Important quality requirement for teachers is contextual consciousness about how the view of child and view of adults as well as the context are integrated and how the child finds out his own meaning making process. Le programme scolaire basé sur l'orientation contextuelle de la croissance de l'enfant comporte trois aspects: la conscience contextuelle de la croissance de l'enfant, les principes théoriques du premier apprentissage au-delà du processus d'enseignement, et les enfants en tant que fabricants de signification pour l'apprentissage. Ces questions forment un modèle hypothétique indiquant comment les théories guidant les pratiques de la première enfance--les processus d'enseignement et d'apprentissage dans un cadre complexe--sont liées les unes aux autres. Les principes d'enseignement et de tutorat du premier apprentissage sont les suivants: ” le pédocentrisme et la prise en considération de l'enfant en tant qu'acteur; ” la prise en conside´ration des interactions au sein des environnements de croissance de l'enfant; ” l'acceptation qu'il incombe à l'éducateur de fournir un environnement actif aux enfants. Selon la théorie du programme contextuel, le processus du premier apprentissage se définit comme une coopération entre des personnes chargées de la mise en application du programme, dans lequel l'enfant, considéré comme un acteur ayant des possibilités d'expériences constructives engagées par les enfants avec le tutorat de ses pairs et des adultes, apprend, grandit et trouve sa propre métacognition pour l'apprentissage et la gestion de sa propre vie. Il est essentiel que les enseignants aient une conscience contextuelle de la manière dont le point de vue de l'enfant et le point de vue des adultes, ainsi que le contexte, sont intégrés, et de la manière dont l'enfant trouve son propre processus de fabrication de signification. El programa de estudio basado en la orientación contextual del crecimiento del niño consta de tres aspectos: la conciencia contextual del crecimiento del niño, los principios teóricos del primer aprendizaje más allá del proceso docente, y los niños como creadores de significado para el aprendizaje. Estos temas forman un modelo hipotético indicando como las teorías que guían las prácticas de la primera infancia--los procesos de enseñanza y del primer aprendizaje en un entorno complejo--están relacionadas entre sí. Los principios de la docencia en la asignatura del primer apredizaje son los siguientes: ” El reconocimiento y la educación en torno a las inquietudes del niño como actor. ” El reconocimiento de las interrelaciones en el entorno del crecimiento del niño. ” La aceptación de la responsabilidad del educador para proporcionar un entorno activo para los niños. Según la teoría del programa de estudio contextual, el proceso del primer aprendizaje se define como una colaboración entre las personas encargadas de la puesta en práctica del programa, en el que el niño, es considerado como un actor teniendo posibilidades de experiencias constructivas iniciadas por los niños con la ayuda/tutoría de sus compañeros y de los adultos, aprende, crece y encuentra su propio metaconocimiento para el aprendizaje y la gestión de su propia vida. Es un requisitos indispensable que los profesores tengan una conciencia contextual sobre como el punto de vista del niño y el punto de vista de los adultos, además del contexto están integrados, y de como el niño encuentra su propio proceso de creación de significado.     

Dimensions of leadership in the childcare context

The contextual leadership theory provides a frame to investigate the leadership phenomenon in a childcare context. According to the contextual leadership theory, leadership is perceived of as a socially constructed, situational and interpretive phenomenon. The purpose of the study was to investigate leadership in a Finnish childcare context based on the views of those people who are involved with it. The focus group method was used to gather data for the study. The results showed that the leadership context defines the leadership language and the culture. In most focus group discussions leadership was described as the position of a leader. Centre directors were seen to have multiple role positions. All in all, it seemed that the tasks and duties connected to leadership on all contextual levels were unclear.     

Cross-cultural interpretations of changes in early childhood education in the USA,Russia, and Finland

The purpose of this study was to examine changes that have taken place in centre-based early childhood education (ECE) in the USA, Russia, and Finland between 1991 and 2014. The cross-culturally conducted study aimed to identify and contrast socio-cultural differences and similarities of the perceived changes in the context of the studied societies. The country-wise qualitative data were acquired using focus group discussions targeted at childcare centre directors. The directors interpreted the quantitative results of quality assessments collected as part of the larger research project from each context under review. This process was called the ‘Reflective Emic Analysis’, with an aim to enhance the cultural aspects of the data. The results suggest that the field of ECE has faced significant changes in each society. Country-specific sub-categories from each discussion were merged and four main themes common to all countries were formulated: (1) the changed role of parents as customers, (2) the change in external factors and regulations affecting the services, (3) the change in the pedagogic orientation, and (4) the changed role of the director.     

University Applicants’ Critical Thinking Skills: The Case of the Finnish Educational Sciences

This study investigates the quality of the critical thinking skills of applicants (n?=?77) seeking entry to the faculty of educational sciences in a Finnish university and how these skills are associated with the applicant’s age, previous higher education experience, and matriculation and entrance examination scores. The data consist of the applicants’ responses to problem-solving tasks and their matriculation and entrance examination scores. Critical thinking skills were measured with comparison and argumentation tasks. The results indicate that comparison of the texts and analysis of the arguments they contained were more difficult tasks than putting forward arguments both for and against of one’s personal standpoint. In addition, previous experience of higher education predicted participants’ comparison skills and their matriculation examination grades predicted their argumentation skills. The feasibility of using critical comparison tasks in the entrance examination tests is discussed.     

A dual-route cascaded model of reading by deaf adults: evidence for grapheme to viseme conversion

There is an ongoing debate whether deaf individuals access phonology when reading, and if so, what impact the ability to access phonology might have on reading achievement. However, the debate so far has been theoretically unspecific on two accounts: (a) the phonological units deaf individuals may have of oral language have not been specified and (b) there seem to be no explicit cognitive models specifying how phonology and other factors operate in reading by deaf individuals. We propose that deaf individuals have representations of the sublexical structure of oral-aural language which are based on mouth shapes and that these sublexical units are activated during reading by deaf individuals. We specify the sublexical units of deaf German readers as 11 "visemes" and incorporate the viseme set into a working model of single-word reading by deaf adults based on the dual-route cascaded model of reading aloud by Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, and Ziegler (2001. DRC: A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108, 204-256. doi: 10.1037//0033-295x.108.1.204). We assessed the indirect route of this model by investigating the "pseudo-homoviseme" effect using a lexical decision task in deaf German reading adults. We found a main effect of pseudo-homovisemy, suggesting that at least some deaf individuals do automatically access sublexical structure during single-word reading.     

Issues of responsibility when conducting research in a northern rural school

This article focuses on how interaction meetings between researchers and research participants in a northern Finnish village and its village school develop the researchers’ sense of responsibility as part of their research ethics. The ethics of caring is often seen as the root of the ethics of responsibility, but the authors suggest listening to both the “justice voice” and “caring voice.” Reflecting on the research project and on events in the field, three senses of responsibility are distinguished and described: one, the responsibility for relationships; two, political responsibility; and three, the responsibility to maintain a democratic process when presenting results. We argue that the local and bodily experiences of a researcher in the field give a researcher new emplaced knowledge that transforms his or her sense of responsibility.