At present, Finland has fewer immigrants than the other Nordic countries. However, for the last two decades, the foreign population inside the country has increased significantly. As Finland is becoming multicultural, immigrants’ cultural inclusion and, consequently, increasing equality is becoming the goal of many public and non-governmental organizations.
Dr. Zahra Hosseini’s doctoral dissertation focuses on the important role of access to information in immigrants’ cultural inclusion. From her point of view, the culture of the host country is an issue that immigrants should learn in digital and non-digital ways for their cultural integration.
“Immigrants are newcomers to the host countries and need reliable sources of information to acquire knowledge, attitudes, and skills. Websites are responsible for providing and facilitating access to information that immigrants need to increase their cultural inclusion”, Hosseini states.
Pedagogical Interface Development and Testing
The dissertation develops the concept of a pedagogical interface (PI) as a multidisciplinary knowledge in user-centred website design for multiple user groups (e.g., immigrants). PI provides the knowledge of how the human mind receives, processes, transforms, stores, stores and remembers information and reflects them in the user's behaviour in a coordinated and integrated manner.
The research proposes the concept of PI, by making technological pedagogy/pedagogical technology (TP/PT) more applicable in the technological pedagogical content design (TPCD), which spans both educational and non-educational settings. The TPCD model was tested among multicultural entrepreneurs in collaboration with Suomen Yrittäjät. The process of development of PI and TPCD is presented in detail within nine articles in the dissertation.
Public defence on Friday 1 September
The doctoral dissertation of Dr. Zahra Hosseini in the field of Communications and Media An Integrative Technology Design Model (TPCD) for Cultural Inclusion of Immigrants in Finland will be publicly examined at the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences at Tampere University at 12 o’clock on Friday 01.09.2023 at Kalevantie 5 in the auditorium K103 of the Linna building, Tampere. The Opponent will be Associate Professor Teemu Leinonen from Aalto University, Finland. The Custos will be Professor Sirkku Kotilainen from the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences.
The doctoral dissertation is available online.
The public defence can be followed via remote connection.
Photo: Zahra Hosseini