Elina Kuusisto

• ThD, MA (Education)
• Lecturer at Tampere University

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää, miten inkluusio toteutuu ammatillisessa oppilaitoksessa opettajien näkökulmasta. Aineistonkeruussa ja analyysissä hyödynnettiin Boothin ja Ainscow’n (2002) Index for Inclusion -mallia ja siitä suomalaiseen kulttuuriin ja kouluun soveltuvaksi käännettyä mallia (Booth ja muut, 2005). Malli avaa inkluusion osa al...

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan monikielisen oppilaan oman äidinkielen (OÄK) opettajien yhteiskunnallista päämäärätietoisuutta yhteiskunnallisten tavoitteiden ja yhteiskunnallisen toiminnan näkökulmista. Tutkimus perustuu oman äidinkielen opettajien haastatteluihin (N=20), jotka on analysoitu laadullisen sisällönanalyysin keinoin. Tutkimuksen peru...

Decades of research has demonstrated the power of growth mindsets (i.e. belief in the malleability of the qualities of humans) to shape people’s ways of making sense of their socio-cultural reality and influence their ways of thinking about and acting towards change. Yet, research which connects mindsets with climate action or sustainability behavi...

Task-related change in physiological arousal is suggested to reflect active involvement with the task. While studies often examine such task-related changes in arousal as averaged across the entire task, the present study focused on temporal changes in arousal during a task. More specifically, we investigated changes in elementary school students’...

There is a lack of research on students’ conceptions of giftedness and intelligence, despite recognition of their influence on real-life factors such as achievement and motivation. This paper presents a cross-sectional mixed methods study that investigated Finnish students’ (age 6–16 years; N = 1282) implicit conceptions of giftedness and intellige...

Kulttuureja koskevat asenteet ja uskomukset ovat kulttuurienvälisien valmiuksien keskeinen osa-alue. Artikkelissa peruskoulun opettajien (N = 273) kulttuurienvälisiä valmiuksia lähestytään sosiaalipsykologian kentällä laajemmin tutkittujen kulttuuria koskevien arkiteorioiden eli multikulturalismin, polykulturalismin ja värisokeuden näkökulmasta. Tu...

This study investigates the life purposes and values of higher education students in the Netherlands and Finland (nDutch = 663, nFin = 846). The theoretical framework is built on the conceptualisation of life purpose by Damon et al. as well as Schwartz’s values model. The study adopted a convergent mixed methods design analysing qualitative and qua...

Tämän tutkimuksen lähtökohtana on käsitys päämäärätietoisesta opettajasta opettajankoulutuksen tavoitteena. Päämäärätietoinen opettaja kokee työnsä henkilökohtaisesti merkitykselliseksi ja on pitkäaikaisesti sitoutunut antamaan panoksensa oppilaiden ja yhteiskunnan hyväksi. Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin opettajaopiskelijoiden (N=500) tulevalle työlle...

This chapter concerns purposeful learning and teaching in the Finnish context. Learning goals are established in the Finnish national curriculum, which identifies the core competences related to twenty-first-century skills. These goals call for committed teachers who can foster purposefulness in their students. We examined and discussed the life go...

Dynamic Assessment (DA) provides alternative strategies for assessing children in inclusive education but hasn’t been widely incorporated in teacher education as a tool for mediating learning in special education. This systematic literature review investigates empirical studies reported in the last decade to provide a comprehensive overview of the...

Given the increasing interest in academic citizenship in higher education, this study examines the civic purposes of higher education students in two European countries, namely the Netherlands and Finland, and relations between students’ worldviews and their civic purposes. The majority of students was categorized as so-called disengaged or dreamer...

Manifestations of educational inequity in diversifying societies have led to a wide acknowledgement of the need to develop all teachers’ competencies to work in the context of diversity. The domain of beliefs and attitudes is generally included as one key component of teachers’ intercultural competence, but there is little consensus over what the c...

Cultural heterogenisation of classrooms and existing achievement gaps have led to an acknowledgement of the need to develop teachers' intercultural competencies. A growth mindset (a belief that intelligence, personality and other such qualities can be cultivated) predicts positive intergroup attitudes and reduces stereotyping, but has not been rese...

The aim of this study was to examine the development of the associations between elementary school students’ mindsets and the attentional neural processing of positive and negative feedback in math. For this, we analyzed data collected twice from 100 Finnish elementary school students. During the autumn semesters of their 3rd and 4th grade, the par...

Universities worldwide are beginning to counter the prevailing neo-liberal ideology by paying renewed attention to the moral development of students and fostering their life purposes. This mixed methods study investigates the life purposes of higher education students in four institutions in the Netherlands (nDutch = 663) and Finland (nFinnish = 84...

This mixed methods study explored German (n = 477) and Finnish (n = 379) student teachers' color-blind, multiculturalist, and polyculturalist diversity beliefs. Statistical analyses identified polyculturalism and multiculturalism as the most prominent diversity beliefs among the student teachers and detected associations between diversity belief pr...

The purpose of this study was to investigate Finnish (n = 226) and Estonian (n = 347) teachers’ views on the nature of intelligence. The study utilized a survey that included a qualitative, open-ended question about teachers’ definition of intelligence and the quantitative inventory Implicit Theories of Intelligence (ITI). We then employed a conver...

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan oman äidinkielen (OÄK) opettajien kokemuksia osallisuudestaan työyhteisössä. Teoreettisena viitekehyksenä on kielellisesti ja kulttuurisesti vastuullinen pedagogiikka. Artikkeli perustuu kyselyaineistoon (N=47), joka on analysoitu laadullisen sisällönanalyysin keinoin hyödyntäen Atlas.ti-ohjelmaa. OÄK-opettajien osa...

Given the prominence of sustainability in current global crises and the commitment of societies to the Sustainable Development Goals, this mixed methods study ascertains how Dutch higher education students (N = 549) integrate sustainability into their life purposes. From quantitative data, we identified four purpose profiles: purposeful (33%), drea...

Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin opettajien kulttuuria koskevia arkiteorioita (värisokeus, multikulturalismi ja polykulturalismi), sosiaalisen oikeudenmukaisuuden orientaatiota ja kulttuurisesti moninaisten oppilasryhmien opettamiseen liittyvää motivationaalista orientaatiota kyselyaineiston (N = 504) sekä tilastollisten menetelmien avulla. Tarka...

Parental engagement is a central aspect of children’s holistic education, i.e., schooling-related and nonschooling-related learning. Parents’ role in supporting such integrative learning is increasingly necessary to develop students’ social, emotional, and intellectual skills. Nonetheless, it remains unclear which parental practices support holisti...

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan Tampereen kehyskuntien yhdeksäsluokkalaisten (N=843) elämäntarkoitusta sekä sitä, miten heidän ajatuksissaan näkyy William Damonin määritelmä elämäntarkoituksesta päämääränä, johon yksilö pyrkii pitkäjänteisesti ja joka palvelee itsen lisäksi ympäröivää yhteiskuntaa. Laadulliset vastaukset analysoitiin sisällönanalyysillä...

This article presents a study of five teachers at a Finnish elementary school who implemented and evaluated growth mindset pedagogy (GMP). The teachers received GMP training and conducted student interventions in their classrooms. We analyzed the impact of GMP on the teacher’s pedagogical thinking and practices and found significant differences bet...

The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ ethical sensitivity in Finland (N = 255) and Estonia (N = 412). The survey included the quantitative Ethical Sensitivity Scale Questionnaire and a qualitative open-ended question about successful teaching. In order to capture its essential characteristics, ethical sensitivity was examined using...

Neuroscientific research regarding mindsets is so far scarce, especially among children. Moreover, even though research indicates the importance of domain specificity of mindsets, this has not yet been investigated in neuroscientific studies regarding implicit beliefs. The purpose of this study was to examine general intelligence and math ability m...

The current educational reforms in Finland and Portugal require a holistic engagement of parents with learning, bringing parents and teachers together as partners. This qualitative study, which interviewed Finnish (N = 10) and Portuguese (N = 9) parents, aimed to explore parents’ views on the role of teachers in supporting parent–teacher partnershi...

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore parental engagement in the home learning environment, and parents’ implicit beliefs about learning underlying such engagement. Nineteen parents of school children between 7 and 12 years old were interviewed in two different cultural contexts, Finland (N = 10) and Portugal (N = 9). The interviews...

The purpose of this study was to find out what current challenges successful principals in Estonia and Finland identify in developing their schools. The strategies used in dealing with these challenges were also analyzed within the framework of “growth-mindset pedagogy” as an educational approach to school leadership. The principals were interviewe...

This article discusses the challenges of educating teachers in Finland. As a goal in teacher education for the 21st century we propose the purposeful teacher, referring to a teacher who has a long-term moral commitment to serve students, the school community and society. Our data collected from student (N = 912) and practising (N = 77) teachers yie...

Given that little is known how peer feedback reflects adolescents’ academic well-being in different cultures, this study investigates, by means of multiple-group structural equation modeling (SEM), the influence of peer feedback on the mindset and academic motivation of Chinese (N = 992) and Finnish (N = 870) students in the fourth to the ninth sch...

Given that little is known about the correlations between teachers’ mindset and their pedagogical strategies, in this article, we explore Chinese and Finnish teachers’ mindsets and their pedagogical strategies from the perspective of praise and adaptive teaching. This study was conducted in two Chinese schools (N = 50) and one Finnish school (N = 7...

Abstract. This study investigates how a growth mindset is actualised in one first-grade teacher’s classroom. Mindset refers to implicit beliefs that individuals hold about basic human qualities. A person with a growth mindset sees these qualities as malleable and subject to development, whereas a person with a fixed mindset sees these qualities as...

Inspired by previous research indicating implicit beliefs about the malleability of human qualities, namely mindset, to affect learning outcomes, this article compares how Chinese and Finnish students’ mindsets and attributions for success reflect their cultural values and predict their academic achievement. The study was conducted in one Chinese (...

Over the past two decades, gratitude as a scientific topic has been growing in interest. Little is known about its importance in educational environments and classroom interactions. The present article offers an account of a qualitative study that identifies gratitude as a moral value and uses stimulated recall methodology to explore the exper...

This study investigates how moral virtues create purpose for ethical leadership. Four exemplary principals, two from Estonia and two from Finland, were interviewed to study their perceptions of critical incidents in their work and how moral virtues are manifest in their reflections. The results of qualitative content analysis showed that the critic...

This article examines moral conflicts identified by students (N = 302) and teachers (N = 20) in the context of Iranian schools. The data were gathered in 2016 fromtwo lower secondary schools in Tehran, one for girls and one for boys. The content analysis of students’ essays and teachers’ interviews reveal that moral conflicts in Iranian secondary s...

The present study investigates the nature of Iranian student teachers’ reflections and their professional development in the context of teacher education practicums. The participants were student teachers (N = 41) enrolled in teacher education colleges at Farhangian University in Tehran, Iran. A total of 620 reflective writing excerpts were coded u...

This mixed methods study introduces the concept of purpose in the social pedagogical education of Finnish social services students ( N = 151). The aim of this study is to specify the purpose profiles of the students and to investigate how students with different profiles define the intended outcome of having a purpose in life and why they want to h...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the kinds of field education experiences that social services students (N = 113) regard as meaningful. The theoretical structure was based on a ”purpose of life” framework (Damon, Menon & Bronk 2003). Pursuing a helping profession is identified as a life purpose whenit is a personally meaningful long-ter...

In this article we take up the two-fold task of creating a framework for a growth mindset pedagogy on the basis of our previous studies and exploring the critical points of this pedagogy in the classroom of a mixed-mindset teacher. The data include classroom observations and stimulated recall interviews. The results show how a teacher who is social...

The present study investigates the qualitative level of Iranian student teachers' reflections in the context of teacher education practicum applying guided reflective narrative method. The guided reflective narrative method includes questions and prompts in a structured form that student teachers can use them to writing their narratives about their...

This exploratory mixed methods case study examines the life goals of Finnish social services students (N = 151) and whether they justify their goals with self- or other-focused reasoning. Purpose is understood as reflecting the students’ life goals that benefit not only oneself but also others. On the basis of this study, close relationships, pursu...

Implicit theories concerning the malleability of human qualities are known to have a powerful impact on motivation and learning, but their role in moral education is an under-researched topic. In this qualitative case study, we examined the impact of implicit theories on four Finnish teachers' practices of teaching morally and in teaching morality....

This chapter studies how in Iranian schools the power of resistance is evident in female students' moral dilemmas. The Islamic Revolution of Iran was a turning point in Iranian educational system in which the role of religion and the desire for Islamization of all aspects of the society was emphasized. The data was gathered from one girl and one bo...

This article examines how school children and adolescents ( N=607 ) perceive the nature of talent development. More particularly it is investigated whether students perceive intelligence and giftedness as developing or as inherent and how students’ perspectives on talent development are related to their learning outcomes. Participants were students...

This article examines Iranian secondary students’ (N = 336) life purposes. Economic and hedonistic life goals were the most valued. Relationships in terms of having a family and children were also appreciated. In the students’ views, religiousness was associated with social goals such as helping others in need and volunteering in the community. Gen...

In this article, we argue that education is a moral activity and that teaching has a strong moral core. Teachers need a sense of purpose in their work to make their teaching purposeful for themselves and for their students. In this article, we present goals and methods intended to promote purposeful teaching in different educational contexts. We us...

This paper investigated Finnish youth’s perceptions on what supports or prevents understanding between people holding different worldviews, especially religious and non-religious ones. A survey using projective, open-ended questions was conducted examining factors that enhance or damage inter-worldview dialogue among Finnish lower secondary school...

Empirical research on mindset has indicated that mindset can predict numerous individual achievement, including academic, cognitive, motivational, affective and even socioeconomic, through mediation of social-cognitive approaches. The purpose of this paper is to compile and synthesize articles published from 1998 to 2017 on the relationship between...

This qualitative case study examines teachers’ implicit meaning systems built around their core beliefs on the malleability of human qualities. Previous research has demonstrated the influence of students’ implicit theories on motivation and achievement and has presented successful interventions for students. However, research on teachers’ implicit...

In scholarly discussions, developing intercultural competencies, with intercultural sensitivity as their core, is an acknowledged aim of teacher education. Religion forms a foundational part in many cultures, and its prominence in the public sphere is increasing. However, educational research and practice have largely disregarded religious diversit...

This study identifies the nature of the purposes that Finnish student teachers of different subjects (N = 372) have for teaching and how these perceptions could inform teacher education. Earlier studies have shown that both American and Finnish students have found the role of their teachers to be very important in teaching and learning purpose. Fin...

This paper examines Finnish (n = 464) and Iranian (n = 556) teachers’ views on their competence to teach purpose. ‘Purpose’ is defined as a stable intention to accomplish something that is both meaningful to the self and of consequence beyond the self over time. The study revealed that all Iranian teachers evaluated their competence for teaching pu...

This article presents two independent studies of Finnish teachers' conceptions of giftedness and considers whether it is a malleable or fixed quality. The first qualitative study examined elementary school teachers' (N = 212) conceptions via inductiveoriented content analysis, whereas the second study measured teachers' (elementary n = 184, seconda...

This article examines intercultural sensitivity of Finnish teachers (N = 1008) and students (N = 1000) with a 23-item Intercultural Sensitivity Scale Questionnaire (ICSSQ). The questionnaire is based on Bennett’s (Education for the intercultural experience, Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, 1993) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, which...

Contemporary life poses challenges for the aspirations of young people all over the globe. How are today’s youth finding positive and meaningful purposes? What can be done to help them live out happy and purposeful lives? This webinar is Part 1 of a two part series involving international perspectives on youth purpose and well-being.

Although there is much discussion of educational needs and how to integrate Muslim students into modern Western contexts, there is a shortage of research on teachers’ attitudes about these issues. Finland offers a particularly interesting context for research, given its relatively new, small, yet rapidly growing Muslim population, its prominence of...

The purpose of this study is to explore social relationships, especially disagreements, among five gifted science students during their group work in an enrichment summer program. The data consist of five hours of videotaped and transcribed teamwork sessions. The level of disagreement was analyzed deductively utilizing Netz’s (2014b) taxonomy and t...

This paper examines, through a non-probability sample of 451 Finnish lower secondary-school pupils belonging to the 15- to 16-year-old age group, how interreligious sensitivity is related to religiousness profiles of Finnish youth. The data were gathered in two geographical locations: Helsinki, Finland’s capital, and a smaller municipality in the w...

This article investigated the core of religious education (RE) by examining Finnish student teachers’ pedagogical aims in the context of Lutheran RE. The data consisted of essays (N=82) analysed in a deductive manner using the main concepts of the didactic triangle together with the aims of the Finnish National Core Curriculum. The student teachers...

Having a sense of purpose is part of a life well lived.How do young people around the world come to identify a positive purpose in life, and what is the role of education in providing the momentum to realize it? In this webinar, experts from six countries explore these questions.

In this study, we investigated the culture-invariant and culture-dependent nature of teachers’ ethical sensitivity in two countries. Our case study involves teachers from Finland (n = 864) representing Western culture, and from Iran (n = 556) representing Eastern culture. Culturally bound elements of ethical sensitivity were studied with the Ethica...

This paper examines gender variance in the interreligious sensitivity among Finnish children and youth using a non-probability sample of 1000 Finnish lower secondary school pupils representing the age group 12–16. The data were gathered in three geographical locations: the capital city of Helsinki area, and two smaller municipalities in other parts...

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the ways gifted and talented pupils are served in Finland. The trend toward individualism and freedom of choice as well as national policy affecting gifted education are discussed. Empirical research on Finnish teachers’ attitudes toward gifted education with respect to the national discussio...

The aim of this chapter is to discuss what kind of learning would be interactive as well as meaningful in teaching gifted science students. Students are identified as being gifted based on their earlier school achievements and projects (see Table 1). The research reported here is a multiple-case study of five international students who attended the...

In this volume, we take a holistic approach to education, viewing human beings as lifelong learners who need interaction in all educational domains – cognitive, affective, psychomotor – to actualize their full potential. The chapters are based on presentations given at the 2012 conference of the Finnish Educational Research Association (FERA), whos...

The study examined the ethical sensitivity of Finnish teachers ( N = 864 ) using a 28-item Ethical Sensitivity Scale Questionnaire (ESSQ). The psychometric qualities of this instrument were analyzed, as were the differences in self-reported ethical sensitivity between practicing and student teachers and teachers of different subjects. The results s...

This study investigated the number and nature of gifted female and male students' scientific, societal, and moral questions concerning science. The participants ( N = 658 ) of this study were 16–19-year-old international students from 55 countries and two continents, Asia and Europe. They applied to participate in the Millennium Youth Camp held in...

Tutkimus koskee lähetystyöhön liittyvää vapaaehtoistyötä lähetysharrastuksen ja lähetyskasvatuksen ilmentäjänä. Tutkimuskontekstina on kristillinen opiskelijajärjestö Opiskelijain Lähetysliitto (OL). Tutkimuskysymykset ovat: Millainen lähetysharrastuksen konteksti OL on ollut vuosina 1972–2000? Millaista on OL:n antama lähetyskasvatus? Miksi nuoren...