Doing better? : children's and their parents' and teachers' perceptions of the malleability of the child's academic competences
Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This study examined children's and their parents' and teachers' perceptions of the malleability of the child's academic competences.It investigated how children, parents, and teachers perceive the child's potential for improvement and how these perceptions are related to each other.The study is based on the following theoretical viewpoints: first, it leans on the psychology of education, especially on earlier research on beliefs about ability and intelligence and the expectations set for children's academic achievement.Second, the study rests on social-psychological research, especially the research examining notions of intelligence as social representations, which highlights the contextual and positional aspects of the construction of individual beliefs.Third, it leans on the sociology of education, particularly its analysis of the societal functions of the school, which include not only the ranking and ordering of pupils' academic achievement but also the development of every child's learning and competences.For these contradictory functions, the school system taps different assessment structures and notions of intelligence.In the restrictive sphere of education, assessment is differential and pupils' abilities are considered relatively stable, whereas in the promotional sphere of education, assessment is individual and the possibility of improving one's abilities is acknowledged.Since the school houses diverse views of intelligence, this study also examined the perceptions of the school's actors twodimensionally: interpersonal perceptions refer to normative views of the child's potential for improvement in relation to her/his peers' performance, and intrapersonal perceptions refer to the views of the child's potential for improvement in relation to his/her current individual competences.This study sought to find out whether the interpersonal and the intrapersonal perceptions form distinct domains in children's, parents', and teachers' views of the malleability of competences.The perceptions of the malleability of competences were examined in regard to two academic school subjects, mathematics and Finnish.These school subjects are pivotal I wish to warmly thank my supervisors, Professor Hannu Räty and Kati Kasanen, PhD, for all your great help, conversations, and expert comments over these years that I have been working on my dissertation.Thank you for your encouragement, especially at times of challenges in my work.I would also like to express my gratitude to Professors Kaisa Aunola and Luisa Faria for reviewing the dissertation and for your important comments and proposals for improvement.My warmest thanks to the people of the Department of Psychology, with whom I have been able to share not only matters of research but also of the rest of life
Author: Riitta Kärkkäinen
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3097717757