Search results for "301"
showing 10 items of 14241 documents
Distributed leadership in practice in Finnish schools
2017
ABSTRACTThe aim of this study is to explore what aspects the principals and the members of the management teams in the primary and upper secondary education schools in Vantaa support distributed leadership in their school and how necessary they see that distributed leadership is extended to the students in matters concerning the curriculum and the development of teaching practices. The research method was a survey based on a questionnaire of 48 questions, where the respondents evaluated the preconditions of distributed leadership in their school. The principals and members of the management teams in the primary and upper secondary schools in Vantaa see distributed leadership mostly as deleg…
Making the case for policy : persuasiveness in higher education, science and technology policy discourse
2015
Policy texts present problems, propose solutions to those problems and persuade multiple audiences of the legitimacy of the proposed problems and solutions. The rhetorical analysis of two decades of higher education and science and technology discourse in Finland, Germany, UK, Portugal and USA highlights the discursive elements that contribute to persuasiveness of policy, construe it as rational and logical, and create a sense of urgency in bringing it about. I argue that the analytical and hortatory registers of policy discourse foreground competitive and hierarchical relations of countries and their higher education systems. By construing certain state of affairs and courses of action as …
Does Finland Need Raciolinguistics?
2017
A growing number of applied linguists and language educators in the US/North American context advocate for and from a scholarly perspective which views language issues in relation to racial issues and vice versa. The emergent field of raciolinguistics highlights the relationships between language and race/racism and has brought about research that investigates their intersections. Should scholars in Finland adopt (and adapt) such an approach to scholarly work? Three Finland-based scholars explore this question in a question ("prompt") - response format.
The role of temperament in children's affective and behavioral responses in achievement situations
2013
Abstract Although students' affects and behaviors in achievement situations have been shown to be influenced by their previous learning experiences, less is known about how they relate to students' dispositional characteristics, such as temperament. This study examined to what extent children's temperament is related to their affective and behavioral responses in achievement situations. Teachers rated first-graders' ( n = 153) temperamental characteristics in the Fall semester. Children's active task avoidance, anxiety, and helplessness were rated in test situations in the Fall and Spring semesters. The results showed that the more easily distracted the children were, the more task avoidan…
Early Oral Language Comprehension, Task Orientation, and Foundational Reading Skills as Predictors of Grade 3 Reading Comprehension
2016
The present five-year longitudinal study from preschool to grade 3 examined the developmental associations among oral language comprehension, task orientation, reading precursors, and reading fluency, as well as their role in predicting grade 3 reading comprehension. Ninety Finnish-speaking students participated in the study. The students’ oral language comprehension (vocabulary knowledge, listening comprehension, and inference making) and task orientation were assessed in preschool, kindergarten, and grade 3. Reading precursors (letter knowledge and phonological awareness) were assessed at the first two timepoints and reading fluency at the third timepoint. Structural equation modeling sho…
Additions to terrestrial flora of Tunisia: occurrence and taxonomic notes
2020
We document new records of 11 vascular taxa. Some were found in the wild for the first time and, therefore, are new reports to terrestrial flora of Tunisia. One species, Ranunculus acris L., is reported for the first time for North Africa. Parietaria cretica L. is confirmed for North Africa. Details about the distribution and habitats of the 11 species are provided, and comments on their status and taxonomy are included.
Teachers’ Changing Attitudes and Preferences around Inclusive Education
2020
Inclusive education as an alternative to traditional separate special education has gained recognition since the approval of the Salamanca Statement in 1994. The success of inclusion is considered to be highly dependent on the teachers’ positions on inclusion. In this study Finnish comprehensive school teachers’ opinions were investigated in order to evaluate the prospects of inclusion in Finland, and also to study the variables associated with these attitudes. A total of 2,276 teachers and principals participated in the email survey. The final sample contained 1,041classroom teachers, 755 subject teachers and 445 special education teachers. The results confirmed the existence of a large va…
Scaffolding teachers to foster inclusive pedagogy and presence through collaborative action research
2017
Teachers can be influential change agents in transforming their schools if they regularly reflect on their pedagogical practices, looking for improvements that will help all learners reach their fu...
Scaffolding through dialogic teaching in early school classrooms
2016
The present study examines what types of dialogic teaching patterns can be identified in the early school years, and how teachers scaffold children's participation and shared understanding through dialogic teaching. Thirty recorded lessons from preschool to Grade 2 in Finnish classrooms were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Two teacher-initiated and two child-initiated dialogic teaching patterns were identified. Teacher's scaffolding in teacher-initiated dialogues was characterised by high responsibility in maintaining the interactional flow and utilisation of diverse strategies. In the child-initiated dialogues, the teachers' scaffolding consisted of listening and inquiry, and …
Quality of educational dialogue and association with students’ academic performance
2018
The study used a mixed-methods approach to examine the associations between the quality of educational dialogue and students' academic performance and to analyse what kinds of dialogic teaching patterns of different levels of quality can be identified in classroom lessons. A total of 158 Grade 6 lessons were video-recorded, and the quality of the educational dialogue was assessed using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System-Secondary (CLASS-S) observational instrument. Multilevel modelling indicated that the quality of educational dialogue was positively associated with students’ academic performance (grades) in language arts and physics/chemistry. Qualitative analysis was subsequently use…