To feel at home in a new country:integration strategies and teacher perceptions on supporting immigrant students’ integration in basic education

Abstract. This thesis discusses immigrant students’ integration process in basic education in the Finnish context. Integration is described from inclusive point of view as being a two-way process which is affected both by the person integrating and the surrounding society. Integration process is approached on many levels: administrational, individual, cultural, psychological, and in the light of theories of integration. Thus, the focus is on the integration happening at the school world. The aim of this research is to familiarize oneself with the concepts related to integration and find out ways to support and understand immigrant students’ integration process at school. This study is useful especially for all teachers and educators in a more multicultural world and classrooms. This study is qualitative and the data is analyzed with thematic content analysis. The data was collected as half-structured interviews. The empirical part consists of interviews with preparatory class teachers and a cultural mentor. The approach to analysis was deductive; the empirical part was researched in relation to theoretical framework. The aim is to broaden and deepen already existing theories with empirical data. The results of the study show that integration is a process which is affected by the factors such as motivation, personality, families, cultures and background. It is important that immigrant children feel welcome and their roots are respected to be able to integrate into the new society. According to theories and the participants, there are ways to support immigrant students’ integration at school. It is especially important that teachers and the whole school community work together towards multicultural atmosphere and all can feel as being respected members of the community. Also families have a huge influence on integration process of their children and teachers should take this into consideration. Teachers’ intercultural competence is a considerably positive matter both in interaction with families and working with immigrant children. This is why intercultural competence should be enabled to develop during teacher education. Teachers can support their students through appreciating and utilizing different cultural backgrounds in the classroom and by using various teaching methods. Mother tongue education is an important way to support children’s identities and can work as a cultural link to former home country. In addition to the themes discussed in relation to theories, the participants consider functional learning important to support social integration between all children at school and so promoting multicultural atmosphere. Multi-professional network is also experienced important. In addition, participants demand concrete statements to preparatory curriculum including skills to achieve during the preparatory education. In administrational level, the decisions for example about the location of living have to be faster to enable feelings of stability and continuation in lives to develop which are necessary for integration.Tiivistelmä. Tämä Pro gradu -tutkielma pohtii maahanmuuttajaoppilaiden integraatioprosessia Suomen perusopetuksessa. Integraatiota lähestytään inklusiivisesta näkökulmasta. Integraation nähdään kaksisuuntaisena prosessina, jolloin integraatioon vaikuttavat niin integroituva henkilö kuin ympäröivä yhteiskunta. Integraatioprosessia käsitellään monella tasolla: hallinnollisella, yksilöllisellä, kulttuurisella, psykologisella, ja integraatioteorioiden valossa. Huomio on kuitenkin keskittynyt integraatioon koulumaailmassa. Tutkimuksen tarkoitus on tutustuttaa lukija integraation käsitteistöön ja etsiä keinoja tukea ja ymmärtää maahanmuuttajaoppilaiden integraatioprosessia koulussa. Tämä tutkimus on erityisen hyödyllinen kaikille opettajille ja kasvattajille monikulttuuristuvassa maailmassa ja luokkahuoneissa. Tutkimus on laadullinen ja tutkimusaineisto on analysoitu temaattista sisällönanalyysiä käyttäen. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin puolistrukturoidun haastattelurungon avulla. Empiirinen osa koostuu valmistavan luokan opettajien ja kulttuurimentorin haastatteluista. Analyysissä käytettiin deduktiivista lähestymistapaa: empiiristä osaa tutkittiin teoreettisen viitekehyksen pohjalta. Tarkoitus on laajentaa ja syventää jo olemassa olevia teorioita empiiristä tutkimusaineistoa käyttäen. Tutkimuksen tuloksista voi tulkita, että integraatio on prosessi, johon vaikuttavat useat tekijät. Näitä tekijöitä ovat muun muassa motivaatio, persoonallisuus, perhe, kulttuuri ja tausta. Jotta integroituminen uuteen yhteiskuntaan on mahdollista, on tärkeää, että maahanmuuttaja tuntee itsensä tervetulleeksi ja taustansakin arvostetuksi. Teorioiden ja haastateltavien mukaan maahanmuuttajaoppilaiden integroitumiseen koulussa löytyy keinoja. On erityisen tärkeää, että opettajat ja koko kouluyhteisö työskentelevät yhdessä kohti monikulttuurista ilmapiiriä ja kaikki voivat tuntea olevansa arvostettuja jäseniä yhteiskunnassa. Myös perheillä on suuri merkitys lastensa integraatioprosessissa, ja opettajien pitäisi ottaa tämä huomioon. Opettajien interkulttuurinen kompetenssi on positiivisesti vaikuttava asia yhteistyössä kodin kanssa ja myös työskenneltäessä maahanmuuttajalasten kanssa. Tämän takia interkulttuurisen kompetenssin pitäisi päästä kehittymään opettajakoulutuksen aikana. Opettajat voivat tukea oppilaitaan myös monipuolisilla opetustyyleillä ja kunnioittamalla ja hyödyntämällä erilaisia kulttuuritaustoja luokkahuoneessa. Oman äidinkielen opetus on tärkeä tapa tukea lapsen identiteettiä ja se voi toimia kulttuurisena linkkinä aiempaan kotimaahan. Teorioista nousseiden teemojen lisäksi haastateltavat kokivat toiminnallisen oppimisen tärkeäksi. Toiminnallinen oppiminen tukee oppilaiden sosiaalista integraatiota koulussa ja näin edistää monikulttuurista ilmapiiriä. Moniammatillinen verkosto koetaan myös tärkeäksi. Lisäksi haastateltavat vaativat lisää konkreettisia lausuntoja valmistavan luokan opetussuunnitelmaan, määritellen esimerkiksi taidot, jotka pitäisi saavuttaa valmistavassa luokassa opiskelun aikana. Hallinnollisella tasolla päätökset esimerkiksi asuinpaikasta tulisi olla nopeita, jotta jatkumon ja pysyvyyden tunne elämässä mahdollistuisivat. Nämä asiat ovat myös edellytyksiä kotoutumiselle

Small But Slow World: How Network Topology and Burstiness Slow Down Spreading

Communication networks show the small-world property of short paths, but the spreading dynamics in them turns out slow. We follow the time evolution of information propagation through communication networks by using the SI model with empirical data on contact sequences. We introduce null models where the sequences are randomly shuffled in different ways, enabling us to distinguish between the contributions of different impeding effects. The slowing down of spreading is found to be caused mostly by weight-topology correlations and the bursty activity patterns of individuals

Multiscale Analysis of Spreading in a Large Communication Network

In temporal networks, both the topology of the underlying network and the timings of interaction events can be crucial in determining how some dynamic process mediated by the network unfolds. We have explored the limiting case of the speed of spreading in the SI model, set up such that an event between an infectious and susceptible individual always transmits the infection. The speed of this process sets an upper bound for the speed of any dynamic process that is mediated through the interaction events of the network. With the help of temporal networks derived from large scale time-stamped data on mobile phone calls, we extend earlier results that point out the slowing-down effects of burstiness and temporal inhomogeneities. In such networks, links are not permanently active, but dynamic processes are mediated by recurrent events taking place on the links at specific points in time. We perform a multi-scale analysis and pinpoint the importance of the timings of event sequences on individual links, their correlations with neighboring sequences, and the temporal pathways taken by the network-scale spreading process. This is achieved by studying empirically and analytically different characteristic relay times of links, relevant to the respective scales, and a set of temporal reference models that allow for removing selected time-domain correlations one by one

Viral and Bacterial Pathogens in Bovine Respiratory Disease in Finland

Pathogens causing bovine respiratory tract disease in Finland were investigated. Eighteen cattle herds with bovine respiratory disease were included. Five diseased calves from each farm were chosen for closer examination and tracheobronchial lavage. Blood samples were taken from the calves at the time of the investigation and from 86 calves 3–4 weeks later. In addition, 6–10 blood samples from animals of different ages were collected from each herd, resulting in 169 samples. Serum samples were tested for antibodies to bovine parainfluenza virus-3 (PIV-3), bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV), bovine coronavirus (BCV), bovine adenovirus-3 (BAV-3) and bovine adenovirus-7 (BAV-7). About one third of the samples were also tested for antibodies to bovine virus diarrhoea virus (BVDV) with negative results. Bacteria were cultured from lavage fluid and in vitro susceptibility to selected antimicrobials was tested. According to serological findings, PIV-3, BAV-7, BAV-3, BCV and BRSV are common pathogens in Finnish cattle with respiratory problems. A titre rise especially for BAV-7 and BAV-3, the dual growth of Mycoplasma dispar and Pasteurella multocida, were typical findings in diseased calves. Pasteurella sp. strains showed no resistance to tested antimicrobials. Mycoplasma bovis and Mannheimia haemolytica were not found

Characterizing the community structure of complex networks

Community structure is one of the key properties of complex networks and plays a crucial role in their topology and function. While an impressive amount of work has been done on the issue of community detection, very little attention has been so far devoted to the investigation of communities in real networks. We present a systematic empirical analysis of the statistical properties of communities in large information, communication, technological, biological, and social networks. We find that the mesoscopic organization of networks of the same category is remarkably similar. This is reflected in several characteristics of community structure, which can be used as ``fingerprints'' of specific network categories. While community size distributions are always broad, certain categories of networks consist mainly of tree-like communities, while others have denser modules. Average path lengths within communities initially grow logarithmically with community size, but the growth saturates or slows down for communities larger than a characteristic size. This behaviour is related to the presence of hubs within communities, whose roles differ across categories. Also the community embeddedness of nodes, measured in terms of the fraction of links within their communities, has a characteristic distribution for each category. Our findings are verified by the use of two fundamentally different community detection methods.Comment: 15 pages, 20 figures, 4 table

Message-Passing Methods for Complex Contagions

Message-passing methods provide a powerful approach for calculating the expected size of cascades either on random networks (e.g., drawn from a configuration-model ensemble or its generalizations) asymptotically as the number $N$ of nodes becomes infinite or on specific finite-size networks. We review the message-passing approach and show how to derive it for configuration-model networks using the methods of (Dhar et al., 1997) and (Gleeson, 2008). Using this approach, we explain for such networks how to determine an analytical expression for a "cascade condition", which determines whether a global cascade will occur. We extend this approach to the message-passing methods for specific finite-size networks (Shrestha and Moore, 2014; Lokhov et al., 2015), and we derive a generalized cascade condition. Throughout this chapter, we illustrate these ideas using the Watts threshold model.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Do large-scale associations in birds imply biotic interactions or environmental filtering?

Aim There has been a wide interest in the effect of biotic interactions on species' occurrences and abundances at large spatial scales, coupled with a vast development of the statistical methods to study them. Still, evidence for whether the effects of within-trophic-level biotic interactions (e.g. competition and heterospecific attraction) are discernible beyond local scales remains inconsistent. Here, we present a novel hypothesis-testing framework based on joint dynamic species distribution models and functional trait similarity to dissect between environmental filtering and biotic interactions. Location France and Finland. Taxon Birds. Methods We estimated species-to-species associations within a trophic level, independent of the main environmental variables (mean temperature and total precipitation) for common species at large spatial scale with joint dynamic species distribution (a multivariate spatiotemporal delta model) models. We created hypotheses based on species' functionality (morphological and/or diet dissimilarity) and habitat preferences about the sign and strength of the pairwise spatiotemporal associations to estimate the extent to which they result from biotic interactions (competition, heterospecific attraction) and/or environmental filtering. Results Spatiotemporal associations were mostly positive (80%), followed by random (15%), and only 5% were negative. Where detected, negative spatiotemporal associations in different communities were due to a few species. The relationship between spatiotemporal association and functional dissimilarity among species was negative, which fulfils the predictions of both environmental filtering and heterospecific attraction. Main conclusions We showed that processes leading to species aggregation (mixture between environmental filtering and heterospecific attraction) seem to dominate assembly rules, and we did not find evidence for competition. Altogether, our hypothesis-testing framework based on joint dynamic species distribution models and functional trait similarity is beneficial in ecological interpretation of species-to-species associations from data covering several decades and biogeographical regions.Peer reviewe

Self-reported lifestyle behaviours in families with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes across six European countries: a cross-sectional analysis from the Feel4Diabetes-study

BACKGROUND: A healthy lifestyle decreases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus. The current cross-sectional study aimed to describe self-reported lifestyle behaviours and compare them to current health guidelines in European Feel4Diabetes-families at risk for developing type 2 diabetes across six countries (Belgium, Finland, Spain, Greece, Hungary and Bulgaria). METHODS: Parents and their children were recruited through primary schools located in low socio-economic status areas. Parents filled out the FINDRISC-questionnaire (eight items questioning age, Body Mass Index, waist circumference, PA, daily consumption of fruit, berries or vegetables, history of antihypertensive drug treatment, history of high blood glucose and family history of diabetes), which was used for the risk assessment of the family. Sociodemographic factors and several lifestyle behaviours (physical activity, sedentary behaviour, water consumption, fruit and vegetable consumption, soft drink consumption, sweets consumption, snack consumption, breakfast consumption) of both adults and children were assessed by parental questionnaires. Multilevel regression analyses were conducted to investigate families'' lifestyle behaviours, to compare these levels to health guidelines and to assess potential differences between the countries. Analyses were controlled for age, sex and socio-economic status. RESULTS: Most Feel4Diabetes-families at risk (parents and their children) did not comply with the guidelines regarding healthy behaviours, set by the WHO, European or national authorities. Less than half of parents and children complied with the physical activity guidelines, less than 15% of them complied with the fruit and vegetable guideline, and only 40% of the children met the recommendations of five glasses of water per day. Clear differences in lifestyle behaviours in Feel4Diabetes-families at risk exist between the countries. CONCLUSIONS: Countries are highly recommended to invest in policy initiatives to counter unhealthy lifestyle behaviours in families at risk for type 2 diabetes development, taking into account country-specific needs. For future research it is of great importance to focus on families at risk in order to counter the development of type 2 diabetes and reduce health inequity. © 2022. The Author(s)

The effect of a cluster-randomized controlled trial on lifestyle behaviors among families at risk for developing type 2 diabetes across Europe: the Feel4Diabetes-study

Background: This study investigated the effect of the Feel4Diabetes-intervention, a 2-year multilevel intervention, on energy balance-related behaviors among European families at risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Intervention effects on self-reported physical activity, sedentary behavior and eating behaviors were investigated across and within the participating countries: Belgium, Finland, Greece, Spain, Hungary and Bulgaria. Methods: Families were recruited through schools, located in low socio-economic status areas. In total, 4484 families at risk for developing type 2 diabetes were selected using the FINDRISC-questionnaire. Parents’ and children’s energy balance-related behaviors data were collected by questionnaires at three time points (baseline, mid- and post intervention). Families assigned to the intervention group were invited to participate in a 2-year school-, community-, and family-based intervention to promote a healthier lifestyle, including counseling sessions (first intervention year) and text messages (second intervention year). Families assigned to the control group received standard care, including medical check-up results and recommendations and tips regarding a healthy lifestyle. To assess the intervention-effects, Mixed Models were conducted using the R-Package “lmer “with R v3.2. Results: Significant intervention effects were found on a certain number of families’ lifestyle behaviors. Significant favorable intervention effects were detected on parents’ water consumption and consumption of fruit and vegetables, and on children’s consumption of sweets and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Analyses by country revealed significant favorable intervention effects on water consumption and on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in Belgian parents and on fruit and vegetable consumption among Belgian children, on sweets consumption among Spanish parents and children, and on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity among Finnish children. Unfavorable intervention effects were found on the consumption of soft drinks and sugar-containing juices among Hungarian children and parents, while when examining the intervention effects for the overall population and per country, 10 from the 112 investigated outcome variables were improved in the intervention group compared to the control group (9%). Conclusions: The Feel4Diabetes-intervention managed to improve a certain number of targeted lifestyle behaviors while the intervention was not effective on a large number of targeted lifestyle behaviors. The findings of the current study are encouraging, but further research is needed on how we can further improve effectiveness of lifestyle interventions to prevent type 2 diabetes in families at risk. Trial registration: The Feel4Diabetes-study is registered with the clinical trials registry http://clinicaltrials.gov, ID: 643708. © 2021, The Author(s)

Lifestyle changes observed among adults participating in a family- and community-based intervention for diabetes prevention in Europe : the 1st year results of the Feel4Diabetes-study

The Feel4Diabetes intervention was a school and community-based intervention aiming to promote healthy lifestyle and tackle obesity and obesity-related metabolic risk factors for the prevention of type 2 diabetes (T2D) among families at risk of developing this disease. The current study aims to present the results on lifestyle behaviors obtained from parents during the first year of the Feel4Diabetes intervention. This multicomponent intervention had a cluster randomized design and was implemented in Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Hungary and Spain over two years (2016–2018). Standardized protocols and procedures were used by the participating centers in all countries to collect data on parents’ lifestyle behaviors (diet, physical activity, sedentary behavior). The Feel4Diabetes intervention was registered at clinicaltrials.gov (registration number: NCT02393872). In total, 2110 high-risk parents participated in the baseline and 12-month follow-up examination measurements. Participants allocated to the intervention group reduced their daily consumption of sugary drinks (p = 0.037) and sweets (p = 0.031) and their daily screen time (p = 0.032), compared with the control group. In addition, participants in the intervention group in Greece and Spain increased their consumption of breakfast (p = 0.034) and fruits (p = 0.029), while in Belgium and Finland they increased their water intake (p = 0.024). These findings indicate that the first year of the Feel4Diabetes intervention resulted in the improvement of certain lifestyle behaviors in parents from high-risk families