The Journal of Consumer Affairs.

Digital innovations are transforming financial services and resulting changes in consumer behavior and personal money management. Diffusion of pervasive digital technologies offers individuals quick and easy access to various digital services bringing opportunities and challenges into their personal money management. The study aimed to explore how digitalization affects individuals’ financial literacy and financial capability. As a result, we identified three main themes in the intersection of finance and digitalization: Fintech, Financial behavior in digital environments, and Behavioral interventions.

This study investigates the associations of adolescents’ financial socialization factors—financial education in school and families—with financial confidence. In addition, we examine how financial socialization factors indirectly relate to financial literacy skills through financial confidence and the role of demographic factors on financial socialization, financial confidence, and financial literacy scores. We used data on the 4 328 Finnish 15-year-olds participating in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

In this study, we examine the prevalence of income and career concerns among emerging adults in three different welfare states during COVID-19: Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. This study also delves into how factors such as one’s self-perceived financial situation, generalized mistrust, loneliness and socio-demographics are related to emerging adults’ income and career concerns. Results showed that individuals from the United Kingdom were more likely to experience increased income and career concerns than those in Finland and Sweden.

Journal of Gambling Studies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified several psychosocial risks and problem behaviors among vulnerable individuals. Given that gambling has high addictive potential, it is important to consider the underlying mechanisms of problem gambling. This study examined psychosocial factors associated with pandemic-time problem gambling.

Chapter in conference publication (A4)  In A. Güneyli, & F. Silman (Eds.), ICEEPSY 2022: Education and Educational Psychology, vol 3. European Proceedings of International Conference on Education and Educational Psychology (pp. 1-14). European Publisher.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is promoted by offering teachers’ SEL workshops worldwide. However, little is known about their short-term and long-term outcomes. We explored how teachers benefit from Lions Quest (Mitt Valg in Norwegian) training in the short and long term in Norway. The results indicated that the teachers felt to be more competent in teaching SEL after their Lions Quest (Mitt Valg) teacher training. This trend appeared to be continuing in the long run. In addition, findings showed that teachers were willing to implement LQ as part of their teaching.

Nordicom Review

Young people are perceived as heavy consumers of social media and less avid consumers of news. This study explores news consumption among Finnish adolescents through a representative survey of 15–19-year-olds. We seek to answer two research questions: What are the news repertoires of Finnish adolescents? And what factors predict different news repertoires?

Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 1–22.

This study uses latent profile analysis to identify boycotting subgroups within Finland and the UK and to explore their potential differences across countries. These subgroups are based on how young British and Finnish consumers assess that reference groups and their personal experiences have influenced their boycotting decisions.

This study is based on comparative data obtained from the UK (n = 1,236) and Finland (n = 1,219). We identified four boycotting profiles: unlikely to be influenced, influenced by personal things, likely to be influenced, and moderately likely to be influenced. Our findings are especially relevant to consumer researchers, brands, and companies.

Chapter in publication Responsible Finance and Digitalization Implications and Developments edited By Panu Kalmi, Tommi Auvinen, Marko Järvenpää

Copyright 2023

1st Edition, Copyright 2023
ISBN 9780367700614
296 Pages 22 B/W Illustrations
Published by Routledge

Responsible Finance and Digitalization offers a topical overview of the changes that are taking place in the financial sector and how the financial sector itself can contribute to solving global challenges. It equips both students (at MBA and other levels) and practitioners with analytical tools to reflect on this change and to take appropriate action to ensure that their organization can successfully navigate it and create value.

Workers in finance are paid about 20 percent higher wages than similar workers in other fields. This finance wage premium is larger for men than it is for women, and the gender difference in this premium becomes greater towards the top end of the wage distribution, indicative of a glass ceiling effect in finance.

University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, July 2022

What are financial literacy and financial capability?
The Covid-19 pandemic has increased personal concern over finances
Financial literacy may differ significantly among youth
How to promote youth financial capability and resilience?
Towards a new era in terms of financial literacy – and financial capability

(2022). British Journal of Educational Psychology, [12534]. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12534 ​

This study explored the physiological correlates of students’ self-reported emotions in ecologically valid settings by combining biosignal data (on physical and cardiac activity) and experience sampling method (ESM) data.

The aim of this study was to examine entrepreneurship in the context of future Finnish teachers’ readiness to teach 21st century (broad-based) competencies. Teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching entrepreneurial skills and financial matters is vital for their pupils to actively participate and flourish in future society. The study utilized survey data of future teachers’ expectancy-values in teaching seven broad-based competencies of the current national curriculum and their financial literacy.

An updated literature review by
Stefanos Mastrotheodoros, PhD, University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece | Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands and
Mette Ranta, PhD, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
June 2022

Youth Partnership

Technology in Society, Volume 70, August 2022, 102012

Highlights:

• The Dark Web is known to contain risky COVID-19 information and forged certificates.
• COVID-19 skepticism is related to Dark Web use as an information source.
• Loneliness and high engagement in online activities are related to Dark Web use as an information source.
• The unregulated nature of the Dark Web makes it a risky alternative to official COVID-19 information.
• The Dark Web poses various risks particularly for vulnerable individuals.

(2022, June 6). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication.

Social–emotional skills have been shown to be beneficial for many important life outcomes for students. However, previous studies on the topic have suffered from many issues. To address these limitations, this study used a multi-informant and multicohort perspective to study the association between 15 social–emotional skills and 20 educational, social, psychological health, and physical health outcomes.

Technological Forecasting and Social Change

Highlights

• We examine psychological detachment from the COVID-19 pandemic through SNS (social network sites) use.
• We place perceived isolation and work-family conflict as COVID-specific stressors.
• Work-family conflict drives psychological detachment through SNS use.
• Perceived isolation does not drive psychological detachment through SNS use.

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 16, [790478]. Peer-reviewed scientific article (A1)

Previous studies have examined the neural correlates of receiving negative feedback from peers during virtual social interaction in young people. However, there is a lack of studies applying platforms adolescents use in daily life. In the present study, 92 late-adolescent participants performed a task that involved receiving positive and negative feedback to their opinions from peers in a Facebook-like platform, while brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

SN Computer Science

Gamified software applications are omnipresent in everyday life. The idea of using game design elements in non-game contexts to engage and motivate tasks has rapidly gained traction in the human–computer interaction and the psychology fields, but scarcely in the artificial intelligence (AI) research area.

Consumption Markets & Culture

This study analyses the visual construction of girls and notions surrounding young femininities articulated by 15 contemporary advertisements of Nordic fast fashion companies, available on their public Facebook pages in Finland. A visual discourse analysis identifies some blatantly stereotypical and a few complex visual constructions of girls as heterosexual, caring, innocent, sexy posers, active self-presenters and self-surveyors, carefree and environmental activists.

Frontiers in Psychology 13:861437

Current educational reforms concerning curricula and digitalization challenge educators to meet new demands for learning and schooling. What is common for current educational reforms is that they tend to emphasize competencies that are not related to the traditional subject-matters and reflect a stance which presents learning as a naturally reflective and collaborative act.

Journal of Adolescence 94(3): 401-414.

The majority of adolescents engage with others online, and using social media is one of their top activities. However, there is little longitudinal evidence addressing whether active social media use is associated with study-related emotional exhaustion or delayed bedtime at the individual level of development during adolescence.

Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 817008. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.817008

The aim of this study was to investigate how job crafting, work engagement, and workaholism were related in public sector organizations. The participants (N = 213) were civil servants from three Finnish public organizations, representing different professions, such as school personnel, secretaries, directors, parking attendants, and ICT specialists.

This study highlighted the relevance of employees learning to balance their job resources and demands.

Highlights
• We conducted a 4-year follow-up study in adolescents.
• We assessed mental health indicators at 11 years of age.
• We assessed physical activity and different types of digital media use at 15 years of age.
• We identified four behavior profiles of digital media use and physical activity.
• Physical activity and related self-esteem were the strongest predictors for later behavior profiles.

International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 87, 193. [0147-1767].

The focus in the present study is on how experienced discrimination, being able to discuss personal matters with parents, and having someone to discuss personal worries with relate to symptoms of depression and generalized anxiety among first- and second-generation immigrant-background adolescents (aged 14–15) living in Finland.

It was alarming that 42 per cent of the first-generation immigrant group reported that they could not discuss their personal worries with anyone, and more than one-fifth of these youth hardly ever talked about personal matters with their parents.

The Journal of Economic Education

The authors focused on three different game-based interventions using a pre- and post-intervention survey design. They found robust effects with respect to knowledge gained from game-based approaches. However, the effects on self-reported financial behaviors were weak.

University of Jyväskylä

This study examines how young people’s materialistic values connect with status-seeking impression management on social media, and subsequently to social capital, within the same model. Eight hundred Finnish participants aged 15–19 participated in our structured phone survey.

Traditional media have merged with social media and pursue to produce engaging content and form relationships with online audiences.

The study produces valuable, detailed information regarding young people’s online participation preferences and the potential of traditional media in engaging with online youth audiences.

The Routledge Handbook of Financial Literacy
Edited By Gianni Nicolini, Brenda J. Cude
Copyright 2022
1st Edition

Chapter 17  Education or Entertainment? On the Potential of Games in Financial Education

The aim or the present study was to examine the relative importance of financial education in school and families and dispositional factors (competitiveness, work mastery, meta-cognition) in predicting financial literacy among Finnish adolescents. The data on the 4328 Finnish 15-year-olds was drawn from the PISA 2018 assessment.

Large-scale Assessments in Education  9, Article 24  (open access)

Teachers’ epistemic beliefs may have consequences for their pedagogical work. We used previously developed scales to assess epistemic beliefs that teachers hold about learning, knowledge and knowing, and how they report putting such ideas into practice. The scales consisted of self-reported Likert-type statements considering collaborative knowledge building, valuing metacognition, certainty of knowledge, and a surface approach to learning.

Routledge, Taylor & Francis. ISBN (painettu) 9780367553319, (elektroninen) 9781003093053.

This book explores the importance of social and emotional learning (SEL) in schools to foster supportive environments and good relationships. It presents research from nine different countries with discussion of how teachers, student teachers and policymakers can ensure successful SEL at school.

The book stresses the importance of social and emotional learning to allow students to become more autonomous and active in their own learning and presents very innovative ways of learning and teaching the skills.

In M. Talvio, & K. Lonka (Eds.), International Approaches to Promoting Social and Emotional Learning in Schools: A Framework for Developing Teaching Strategy (pp. 207-219). Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

Many teachers seek their ways to the continuous teacher training to increase their pedagogical skills in SEL. But how sustained such benefits are in the long-term? This original empirical study aimed at investigating stability and change of teachers’ perceived competence, importance, and knowledge in SEL before, immediately after, and in six months follow-up of a Lions Quest (LQ) teachers’ SEL workshop.

In International Approaches to Promoting Social and Emotional Learning in Schools: A Framework for Developing Teaching Strategy. Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

Promoting social and emotional learning (SEL) is widely recommended in literature, because it promotes good relationships. It also helps to foster supportive and student-engaging instruction and to design learning environments accordingly. Through SEL students learn to become more autonomous and active in their own learning processes, which often leads them to improved academic performance (Zins, 2004). However, there are many challenges influencing the implementation of the social and emotional learning in the school context. It is important to understand various processes of the development of SEL and how it works in various cultural contexts.

In International Approaches to Promoting Social and Emotional Learning in Schools: A Framework for Developing Teaching Strategy. Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

The authors who contributed to the chapters in the present book volume expanded our horizons about the richness and variation in the ways of approaching the complex phenomenon of social and emotional learning (SEL) in the school context. They described in various ways, how readiness to teach SEL is essential in fostering human growth and flourishing in teachers, their students and in the whole community. In this last chapter, it is time to give an integrated perspective of the SEL theory and the challenges of the future.

A year of COVID-19 in three countries – A study on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on everyday life, consumption and digital behaviour in Finland, Sweden, and Great Britain
(2021). A year of COVID-19 in three countries – A study on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on everyday life, consumption and digital behaviour in Finland, Sweden, and Great Britain. YFI julkaisuja.9. Jyväskylän yliopisto.

The results indicated that there was a favorable development in the intervention group in some of the measured skills among students, but the effects were different for the two age groups. This study adds to both theoretical and practical development of continuing teacher training about SEL and its possible role in reducing problem behavior among the students.

Gender has a strong association with energy-related financial literacy. Our results also indicate that households of respondents with higher levels of energy-related financial literacy tend to consume less electricity when we control for other factors such as dwelling and household characteristics. This implies that measures to promote energy-related financial literacy might guide consumers’ decisions toward energy efficiency and conservation.

Virtual reality (VR) refers to technologies for substituting the perceived reality. With the recent proliferation of consumer-grade head-mounted VR displays, several industries have started to wake up to the possible potential of virtual reality. One typical area in the early stages of the adoption of these technologies is marketing, and especially its sub-areas of retail and shopping.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted students’ opportunities to learn worldwide. Students and teachers have been forced to shift from traditional classrooms to emergency online / remote learning. They face key challenges in adapting practices away from a focus on face-to-face learning to an online learning environment mediated by various forms of technology. The pandemic reveals the urgent need to augment the educational system’s technological infrastructure, expand the teachers’ pedagogical expertise and the students’ learning repertoire.

Teoksessa E. Kuusisto, M. Ubani, P. Nokelainen, & A. Toom (toim.), Good Teachers for Tomorrow’s Schools: Purpose, Values, and Talents in Education (111-128). (Moral Development and Citizenship Education; Vuosikerta 16). Brill.

Individuals’ conceptions and understandings of the sacred illustrate the deepest levels of their identity and spiritualty. Our chapter presents the findings of our research based on representative data from Finnish youth.

The present study examined the multiple micro- and macro-level factors that affect individuals’ financial behaviour under economic strain. The following sociodemographic and economic factors that predict financial behaviour were analysed: age group, year of data gathering, and attitudes towards consumption (economical, deprived, and hedonistic). Journal of Consumer Policy.

In M. Bauer Edstrom, & K. Renwick (Eds.).
Proceedings of the Canadian Symposium XVI Issues and Directions for Home Economics/Family Studies/Human Ecology Education, February 27-28 2021 Virtual Symposium. Vancouver, B.C., Canada: University of British Columbia, 7-18.

Future horizons, shaped by unpredictable ecosystems and exponential automation, require discipline-specific as well as transdisciplinary skills to navigate. In the context of political science education, negotiation simulations, for example in the form of board games, can aid in developing both.

Teaching and Learning. European Political Science volume 20, pages698–722 (2021)

Future horizons, shaped by unpredictable ecosystems and exponential automation, require discipline-specific as well as transdisciplinary skills to navigate. In the context of political science education, negotiation simulations, for example in the form of board games, can aid in developing both.

As a plausibility probe for wider investigations, we set out to research whether an International Relations course concept utilizing the classical board game Diplomacy with pedagogically altered rules and gaming conditions enhances students’ (n = 23) understanding of discipline-specific knowledge and future skills.

The rise of modern socio‐digital technologies has fundamentally changed the everyday environments in which young people communicate with each other and cultivate interests. To gain a more sophisticated understanding of this phenomenon, this study provides in‐depth, qualitative insights into adolescents’ experiences of their socio‐digital developmental ecologies.  Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.

COVID-19 pandemic by investigating their personal concerns about mental well-being, career/studies and economic situation. The authors investigated how young adults’ (aged 18–29) personal concerns differ from older people’s concerns (aged 30–65) and which person- and context-related antecedents relate to personal concerns.

Edita publishing (2018). Translated in Chinese and Russian in 2021, and Spanish, Croatian, Korean, and Thai in 2020.

Finland’s PISA results have raised world-wide interest in Finnish schools and teacher education. What will happen next? Phenomenal Learning from Finland presents Finland’s path to 21st century competences and the exciting concept of phenomenon-based learning as part of the new curriculum.

International order: https://www.booky.fi/product.php?id=9789513773083

Finnish order: https://www.editapublishing.fi/muut/tuote/phenomenal-learning-from-finland

Spanish order: https://www.amazon.com/Aprendizaje-extraordinario-Finlandia-Kirsti-LONKA/dp/9586656195

Chinese order: https://www.amazon.com/Phenomenal-learning-interpretation-methods-education/dp/7521732286

University students’ epistemic beliefs may have practical consequences for studying and success in higher education. Such beliefs constitute epistemic theories that may empirically manifest themselves as epistemic profiles. This study examined university students’ epistemic profiles and their relations to conceptions of learning, age, gender, discipline, and academic achievement.

Digitalisation has placed retail stores under re-examination due to the changing servicescape (i.e. the shopping environment) and social interactions with store personnel and other customers that are experienced across both online and offline stores. This interdisciplinary dissertation seeks to fill a research gap in the marketing literature concerning the servicescape and the sociological theory of social capital, including how interpersonal relationships and social networks constitute the service experience and how the digital–physical servicescape facilitates trust, human contact and communities.

The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of achievement goal orientation profiles among Finnish sixth- and seventh-graders, the stability and change in these profiles across the transition from elementary to lower secondary school, and the profile differences in academic achievement (grades) and academic well-being (school engagement and school burnout).

Technology-driven change has generated new, even revolutionary business models, characterized by high levels of user participation. In the finance field, business models based on crowdfunding have seen significant growth and entered use as an alternative means of extending access and gaining financing for various types of projects.

This article examined digital learning engagement as the out-of-school learning component that reflects informally emerging socio-digital participation. The gap hypothesis proposes that students who prefer learning with digital technologies outside of school are less engaged in traditional school. Frontline Learning Research, 8(1), 33 – 55.

The main reason for the existence of social banks is to fund other social enterprises. On that basis, Simon Cornée from the University of Rennes 1, Panu Kalmi from the University of Vaasa and Ariane Szafarz from the Université Libre de Bruxelles propose that social banks can operate profitably and still lend to their borrowers at attractive interest rates when their owners and depositors accept lower returns on their investments.

Families mobilize psychosocial resources to attune negative consequences of economic hardship, but research is lacking among youth. We propose an Economic Stress Model in Emerging Adulthood (ESM-EA) conceptualizing age-salient social relationships and financial capability as mediators between economic hardship and well-being.

The ESM-EA was tested in a three-wave prospective study following the 2008 economic recession, as part of the Finnish Educational Transitions studies. The sample consisted of 551 emerging adults (55.5% female) who participated at ages 23, 25, and 28. Economic pressures and financial capability mediated the effect of economic hardship on well-being, whereas social relationships did not. Individuals with an unfavorable financial situation at age 25 were more likely to show lower life satisfaction and higher depressive symptoms at 28 when they reported a higher level of economic pressures and a lower level of financial capability.

(2019).  Creative Education, 10(10), 2283–2310.

Along with the rapid development of digital technology and the increasing proportion of knowledge work, work is becoming decreasingly defined by time and place, and more diverse in terms of both. As digital tools and multi-locational spaces become focal parts of human performance, the optimal use of these resources requires not only the ability to mechanically use them, but also the ability to develop useful behavioral strategies and practices related to them.

(2019).   Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology 17 (2), 465-494.

The global trend of new curricula in many OECD countries indicates that social interaction skills are becoming increasingly important. Educators need to start fostering the development of learners’ social competences, which requires development of their own knowledge and skills. This study investigated the possible change in teachers’ knowledge, their applied knowledge and their sense of competence during the Lions Quest (LQ) workshops. For us to measure this, the participants responded to the LQ inquiry.