Janne Lepola

University of Turku | UTU · Department of Teacher Education

Currently, teacher resilience is a significant and developing field of inquiry that has important implications for teacher education (Hascher et al., 2021), including acute crisis situations (e.g., both “pandemic” and “post-pandemic” scenarios). Nonetheless, the concept remains somewhat obscure, especially from the perspective of practicum pedagogi...

Research Findings: The present study examined children's listening comprehension during a two-semester-long dialogic reading. We explored the extent to which the development of children's listening comprehension was accounted for by initial listening comprehension and whether children's engagement and the amount and level of their verbal participat...

This study evaluated 130 Finnish-speaking children’s pre-reading skills, teacher-rated task orientation, and self-rated interest in adult-given tasks, reading, and play activities in their day care. In addition, parents rated their children’s interest in reading and play activities at home. Five groups of children with different pre-reading skill...

The role of teacher-child interaction and opportunities provided by the teacher to encourage all children's active participation in conversation about story ideas are important. In the present study, we report results from the last two years of a three-year long coaching project on teachers' dialogic reading. The model of 7-minutes-to-stories (Orva...

This is a study of early picture book comprehension, its determinants and later development through primary school. More specifically, picture book comprehension was analyzed longitudinally from age 5 to age 9, delineating the unique contributions of vocabulary, metacognitive knowledge and task orientation to the initial level as well as to the gro...

Before children learn to read, they develop their skills to construct a coherent representation of a story. However, many preschool-age children have difficulties related to early story comprehension that put them at risk for later motivational and reading comprehension challenges. Optimal scaffolding of story comprehension targets specific skills...

In this 3-year longitudinal study, we examined the interplay of children’s motivational orientations, spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) and number sequence and arithmetical skills from kindergarten (at age 6) to grade 1 (at age 7). We also examined the direct and indirect contributions of motivation and SFON to the acquisition of arithmetic...

This study elaborates the theoretical framework of PTs. The interviews with five teachers were analysed through the concepts of choice, reasoning, and disposition. The results indicated that choices in PTs mainly related to the division of instructional responsibility. PTs containing higher degrees of complex reasoning included a broad range instru...

This international study compared motivational tendencies among pre-school children from Israel, Finland and the Netherlands. Teachers were asked to rate students’ behaviours during semi-structured tasks using the Child Behaviour Motivational Scale (CBeMo) which measures task orientation, task avoidance, and social dependence. Motivational tendenci...

This case study investigates the variety of constructivist approaches to teaching evident in classroom practice. Teaching practices associated with constructivist perspectives have been prevalent in curriculum reforms for some time. Meanwhile, constructivist approaches have been critically discussed in scholarly literature, revealing problematic an...

This study examines children's early motivational orientation profiles and their probability of belonging to a certain motivational profile group from preschool to kindergarten. We also explore the extent to which previous language comprehension skills act as indicators of a child's subsequent motivational profile at the individual level and how mo...

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 lan...

Li and Baroody presented a study in which they investigate children' spontaneous attention to exact quantity without acknowledging how previous studies of spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) are related to their concept and methods. The authors' reaction to our pointing this out makes it is clear that SFON research has had foundational role i...

Li and Baroody present a study in which they investigate toddlers’ spontaneous attention to exact quantity without acknowledging how previous studies of spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) are related to their concept and methods. In this commentary requested by the European Journal of Developmental Psychology, we argue that the concept and t...

The aim of this study was to analyse the role of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) and language skills (vocabulary, listening comprehension) in predicting preschool and kindergarten-aged children’s ability to solve mathematical word problems presented orally. The participants were 116 Finnish-speaking children aged 4–7 years. The results...

Tutkimuksessa analysoitiin opettajan havaintoihin perustuvan arviointimenetelmän luotettavuutta ja soveltuvuutta tutkittaessa lasten motivaation kehitystä. Tutkimukseen osallistui 130 lasta. Lasten motivaatiota arvioitiin päiväkodissa 4, 5 ja 6 vuoden iässä. Konfirmatorinen faktorianalyysi (CFA) osoitti, että kolmen faktorin malli kuvasi parhaiten...

Artikkeli esittelee tutkimusta, jossa tarkasteltiin kuullun ymmärtämisen taidoissa keskitasoa heikompien lasten tehtäväsuuntautuneisuuden kehittymistä päiväkodeissa toteutettujen Jänistarinat-interventioiden aikana. Jänistarinat-intervention ensisijaisena tavoitteena oli tukea 4–5-vuotiaiden lasten kuullun ymmärtämisen taitoja. Interventio-ohjelma...

In this two-year longitudinal study, we sought to examine the developmental relationships among early narrative listening comprehension and language skills (i.e., vocabulary knowledge, sentence memory, and phonological awareness) and the roles of these factors in predicting narrative listening comprehension at the age of 6 years. We also sought to...

Altogether 1,285 Finnish children were followed up from the end of kindergarten through Grade 1. All were nonreaders at school entrance. The aim was to delineate predictors of resistance to treatment that are evidenced as little or no reading progress during Grade 1. On the basis of reading achievement in Grade 1 spring, four subgroups were formed....

The aim of this 2 year longitudinal study was to explore whether children's individual differences in spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) in kindergarten predict arithmetical and reading skills 2 years later in school. Moreover, we investigated whether the positive relationship between SFON and mathematical skills is explained by children's i...

In this exploratory study we conceptualized and explored sociocognitive, emotional and motivational regulatory processes displayed in scaffolding interaction between parents and their non-task and taskoriented children. Based on the dynamic systems view and findings from developmental research, we assumed that parents with non-task oriented and tas...

This 3-year longitudinal study examined how motivational tendencies, that is, task orientation and social dependence orientation, as well as cognitive-linguistic prerequisites of reading and math skills (i.e., phonological awareness, rapid naming, oral language comprehension skills, number sequence and basic arithmetic skills) measured in kindergar...

In this 2-year longitudinal study the developmental relationships among letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming, and task orientation were examined, and linguistic-motivational pathways of word reading acquisition were traced from kindergarten to Grade 1 by means of structural equation modeling. The participants were 100 Finnish-spea...

This chapter discusses the development of subnormal performance in children from a motivational-interactionist perspective. Most developmental theories presuppose that the growth of the child's adaptive capacity is based on the increasing organization and differentiation of mental and behavioral structures, progressively leading to growing self-reg...

This longitudinal study examined gender differences in motivation and the role of reading prerequisites, that is phonemic and comprehension skills, in the formation of motivational tendencies from kindergarten up to grade 1. The longitudinal sample consisted of 157 Finnish-speaking children. Teachers rated children's adaptive goals, (i.e. task orie...

Although the relationship between motivation and learning problems has been studied in older children, little is known about how these factors interact during the first years of schooling or even earlier. To compare the development of motivational-emotional profiles from preschool to grade 2 between groups classified as poor readers, good decoders...

Examined gender differences in the development of math, reading and writing self-concept of attainment (SCA) from grades 2–6, and investigated the relationships between self-concept and academic achievements and self-concept and motivation. The sample included 101 Finnish students. Students' SCAs were assessed in the 2nd, 3rd and 6th grades, and wo...

In this study, we examined the developmental relationship of children's motivational orientations and reading skills from pre-school to the 2nd grade. Forty-eight children with differing word reading careers were identified from 115 pre-school non-readers. Pre-schoolers were assessed for cognitive–linguistic skills and motivational orientation (rat...

Diss. -- Turun yliopisto.

The focus of this study was on the question, `Are there differences among young (third grade) students who are poor learners in their metacognitive (in)competence and motivational vulnerability that are crucial for better self-regulation?’ This question was studied in an intervention context, where an effort was made to mindfully implement teaching...

This study examined the development of reading skill during the first school year. The predictors were pre-school motivational orientations, coping tendencies, knowledge of the alphabet and phonemic awareness. From 151 pre-school children (6 years of age) rated by pre-school teachers on motivational orientations, 32 non-readers were allocated accor...