Kirsi Pyhältö

Pedagogical well‐being: reflecting learning and well‐being in teachers’ work

Teachers’ learning and occupational well‐being is crucial in attaining educational goals both in the classroom and at the school community level. In this article teachers’ occupational well‐being that is constructed in teaching–learning processes within the school community is referred to as pedagogical well‐being. The article focuses on exploring teachers’ experienced pedagogical well‐being by examining the kinds of situations that teachers themselves find either empowering and engaging or burdening and stressful in their work. The study aims to: (1) identify the primary contexts of teachers’ experienced critical incidents of pedagogical well‐being; and (2) determine the kind of action strategies teachers have adopted in these contexts when they are reported as empowering and engaging. The study included data collected from the teachers of nine case‐schools around Finland. Altogether, a selected group of 68 comprehensive school teachers, including both primary and secondary school teachers, were interviewed. Our results suggested that interaction with pupils in socially and pedagogically challenging situations constitutes the core of teachers’ pedagogical well‐being. Success in both the pedagogical goals and more general social goals seem to be fundamental preconditions for teachers’ experienced pedagogical well‐being. Further investigation showed that teachers’ approaches to socially challenging situations varied. Results suggest that teachers’ pedagogical well‐being is centrally generated in the challenging social interactions of their work. Moreover, the way in which a teacher acts in the situation is found to be a regulator for experienced pedagogical well‐being.

Teachers’ professional agency and learning – from adaption to active modification in the teacher community

The aim of this study was to examine teacher learning in terms of teachers’ professional agency in the professional community of the school. Altogether 2310 Finnish comprehensive school teachers completed a survey. Results showed that teachers’ active efforts to learn in the professional community and to promote school development cannot be explained, and hence reduced, to a single behavioral attribute. The findings indicated that teacher learning in terms of professional agency in the professional community consists of several elements including: skills, efficacy beliefs, and motivational factors, which entail transforming one’s teaching practices, experiencing collective efficacy, constructing positive interdependency, the appreciation of mutual agreements, and using active strategies of help-seeking. The investigation also suggests that the use of modifying strategies is characteristic of both the teacher’s professional agency as well as the strategies employed to reduce stress.

A Systemic Perspective on School Reform: Principals' and Chief Education Officers' Perspectives on School Development.

Purpose – This study aims to gain better understanding of the perceptions comprehensive school principals and chief education officers have about the implementation of school reform and the means they use to facilitate the development of such.Design/methodology/approach – This research project was carried out using a systemic design research approach. Open‐ended questionnaires provided the data for the study and these were completed by educational leaders operating in local school districts.Findings – The results demonstrated that pedagogy was emphasized most often as the core of school reform by principals but chief education officers considered technical and financial factors more often as the critical core of educational reform. Nevertheless, both groups had quite similar ideas on how to promote school development.Research limitations/implications – The findings reflect the Finnish educational system and capture only two levels of leadership within the system. Future research ought to focus on studying...

Fit Matters in the Supervisory Relationship: Doctoral Students and Supervisors Perceptions about the Supervisory Activities.

Although supervision has been identified as one of the central determinants of the doctoral experience, there is still an insufficient understanding of the ways in which supervisors and doctoral students perceive supervisory activities. The study focuses on exploring the fit between doctoral students’ and supervisors’ perceptions of who are involved in supervision, the frequency of supervision and the main task of the supervisor, and further, how the perceived fit contributes to students’ satisfaction and resilience in studies. Altogether, 1184 students and 431 supervisors from all the 11 faculties at the University of Helsinki completed the survey. The results suggest that the fit between the students’ and supervisors’ perceptions of the supervisory activities in different faculties was related to the students’ satisfaction with their studies and the supervisory relationship.

What Contributes to First-Year Student Teachers' Sense of Professional Agency in the Classroom?.

This study explores Finnish first-year primary teacher students’ (N = 244) sense of professional agency in the classroom. In addition, the interrelation between student teachers’ sense of professional agency and the perceptions of teacher education as a learning environment is explored. The sense of professional agency in the classroom simultaneously requires the motivation to learn, efficacy beliefs about learning and intentional acts for facilitating and managing new learning in the classroom. The results showed that these basic elements are embedded in the contextualised components of student teachers’ professional agency, entailing judgements of one’s competence in teaching, transformative and collaborative practice, reflection in the classroom and modelling as a learning orientation. The results further suggested that teacher education provided an encouraging learning environment for student teachers. However, only peer relations in the learning environment were positively related to perceived professional agency.

The Supervisory Relationship as an Arena for Ethical Problem Solving

Doctoral supervision involves the analysis of situations and decision making, some of which include ethical perspectives. This research endeavoured to gain a better understanding of the nature of the ethical problems encountered by supervisors. We have interviewed fourteen supervisors in two disciplines: the natural sciences and the behavioural sciences. We have identified the ethical issues in light of five ethical principles, namely respect for autonomy, non maleficence, beneficence, justice, and fidelity. We have located the ethical issues within the supervisory activity in two locations: the dyadic supervisor-student relationship and the academic community. The study shows that supervisors encounter a plethora of ethical issues. Many of the supervisors were highly aware of the ethical challenges in supervision and actively worked to anticipate and prevent ethical problems. The supervisors described a number of sustainable solutions, but at the same time, ethical problems and malpractice were reported. This suggests that the complexities of ethics are not always evident to the actors themselves. We claim that in order to expose and scrutinize supervision practices, it is insufficient to analyse the ethical issues only on dyadic level. What appears to boil down to a dyadic relationship may in fact be indicative of the values, attitudes, norms, and practices of the community.

A Horizontal Approach to School Transitions: A Lesson Learned from Finnish 15-Year-Olds.

Various school transitions provide both challenges and opportunities for pupils. The ways in which pupils cope with these transitions can have a significant impact on their everyday lives and futures. This study focuses on exploring the kinds of transitions pupils face during their comprehensive school path. The aim is to gain a better understanding of horizontal and vertical school transitions faced by Finnish ninth graders (n = 518) who are 15‐ to 16‐years‐old during their school careers. These transitions are empirically examined through two complementary aspects: (1) determining the horizontal and vertical transitions in the pupils’ school career; and (2) identifying the challenges faced by the pupils in these transitions. By introducing a horizontal and vertical school transition model and exploring the transitions in this framework we aim at contributing to breaking down the complexity of the transfer process.

Ethical Issues in Doctoral Supervision: The Perspectives of PhD Students in the Natural and Behavioral Sciences

Our aim was to identify the ethical issues faced by students in the behavioral and natural sciences during their doctoral programmes. The participants were 28 PhD students who were interviewed about their doctoral study and supervision experiences. We identified a total of 102 ethical issues compromising the principles of nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, justice, or fidelity. There were some differences in emphases, with the students in the behavioral sciences displaying a broader range of ethical compromises than the students in the natural sciences. Ethical problems emerged in the individual supervisor–student relationships, but often problems involving the scholarly community appeared in the background.

Strategy process as an innovative learning environment

Purpose – In many organisations a lot of effort is put into the formation of a strategy, but the implementation of strategies is lacking. This paper aims to explore the preconditions for a successful strategy process (i.e. a process which results in implementation) in the context of municipal services in Finland. As a case study, the implementation of the city strategy in the home care services in one Finnish municipality is to be examined. The practical goal is to explain, why the implementation of strategy is lacking. The theoretical purpose is to find prerequisites for successful strategy implementation.Design/methodology/approach – The project was carried out by using an action research approach. The data collection and analysis methods were qualitative, including semi‐structured interviews, visual modelling of the strategy processes and observation of group discussions during the intervention day. The content of all the ten transcribed interviews and the transcription of the intervention were systema...

Early career teachers’ sense of professional agency in the classroom: associations with turnover intentions and perceived inadequacy in teacher–student interaction

ABSTRACT Teachers’ capacity to learn intentionally and responsively in the classroom is particularly vulnerable during the first years in the profession. This study investigated the interrelations between early career teachers’ turnover intentions, perceived inadequacy in teacher–student interaction, and sense of professional agency in the classroom. The survey data were collected from 284 in-service teachers with not more than 5 years of experience and analysed by structural equation modelling (SEM). The results showed that the negative relation between turnover intentions and early career teachers’ sense of professional agency was completely mediated by perceived inadequacy in teacher–student interaction. The results indicate that experiences of insufficient abilities to solve pedagogically and socially challenging student situations have a crucial effect on early career teacher’s capacity for adaptive reflection and active transformation of instruction.