Month: September 2014

Viime perjantaina eli 19.9. sukupuolentutkimuksen verkosto Hilman feministisen yliopistopedagogiikan kurssilla opiskelevat tutkijat tulivat tutustumaan AGORAan. Kohtaaminen järjestettiin Minerva-torilla. Tilaisuus oli kaikille avoin ja paikalle saapuikin feministisen pedagogiikan opiskelijoiden lisäksi hyvä joukko muita asiasta kiinnostuneita.

Puheenvuoroja pitivät AGORAssa toimivat tutkijat Kristiina Brunila, Sirpa Lappalainen, Hanna Guttorm, Ina Juva sekä Anna-Leena Riitaoja. Lisäksi Aino-Maija Hiltunen Hilma-verkostosta puhui FemPeda-kurssien historiasta. Puheenvuorojen jälkeen käydyssä keskustelussa korostettiin halukkuutta yhteistyöhön jatkossakin.

Kasvatustieteissä tehtävä tutkimus herätti mielenkiintoa FemPeda-kurssilaisissa. Erityisen paljon keskustelua heräsi kirjoittamisesta ja arvioinnista. Puolestaan Hilma-verkostossa järjestettävä feministisen yliopistopedagogiikan opetus kiinnosti niitä, joille verkoston toiminta ei ollut ennestään tuttua. Keskustelua käytiin myös yliopistopedagogiikan opetuksen eroista ja yhtäläisyyksistä Hilma-verkostossa ja käyttäytymistieteiden laitoksella. Yliopistopedagogiikan opetusta käyttäytymistieteiden laitoksella kommentoi yleisön joukossa ollut professori Sari Lindblom-Ylänne.

Tietoa Hilma-verkostosta löytyy täältä ja Hilma-verkoston FemPeda-kursseista voi lukea lisää täältä.

TROUBLING SPECIAL
An ethnographic study on practices of special education and formation of special in the everyday life of lower secondary school

The study focuses on the formation of the conceptions of special in the everyday life of school, especially in the practices of special education and student welfare services. It analyses definitions of special and normal/ordinary in the discursive practices of everyday life. The relationship between normal and deviant is approached as a formation constantly re-built, re-defined and re-conceptualized in the everyday practices of the school. The study is positioned in the fields of sociology of education, cultural studies, gender studies, youth studies and disability studies. Theoretically it draws from feminist poststructuralist theories. Key analytical concepts of the study are subject position, subjectivity and subjectification.

Methodologically the study is ethnographic. A year-long fieldwork took place in one lower secondary school, following the everyday schooling of 9th graders in special education. Data consists mainly of field notes and interviews.

The report is divided into four thematically separate analytical chapters. These focus on (1) school space and spatial practices, (2) definitions of ordinary and special made in the discussions of members of the multidisciplinary student welfare team, (3) discursive practices of the special education teachers and in special education classes, and (4) hierarchies constructed in the student culture, and how students positioned as  special  negotiate their position and meaning in relation to these hierarchies.

Main results of the study are drawn from these four themes, and how these different dimensions intertwine in the process of defining what and who is special in the school. Special and ordinary were found as very clearly demarcated and fixed in the everyday life of school, and the difference between these positions is both wide and steep. The negative images and stigma connected to special education still dominates everyday sense-making, even if the school culture has also become more sensitive to stigmatization and works to challenge and deconstruct it. The division between special and ordinary is steepest in the student culture. Student culture is very sensitive to the dividing practices and divisions made by the school institution. The special that is formed and reformed in everyday practices and repetitions of the school culture appears as a fixed position with no alternative, defined by cemented cultural meanings. The study suggests that in order to change the division between normal and special and challenge the meanings connected to special, schools needs to look for new ways of explicitly discuss and work on these meanings and the practices producing them.

In Finnish

Reetta Mietolan väitöskirja Hankala erityisyys: Etnografinen tutkimus erityisopetuksen käytännöistä ja erityisyyden muotoutumisesta yläkoulun arjessa tarkastettiin Helsingin yliopistossa 16.8.2014. Tutkimus osoittaa, että erityisyyteen liittyvät negatiiviset merkitykset ovat yhä olemassa koulun arjessa ja erityinen rakentuu suhteessa tavalliseen tai normaaliin selvärajaisesti. Tutkimuksen johtopäätöksenä Mietola esittää, että muutoksen aikaansaamiseksi merkityksistä ja niitä tuottavista käytännöistä tulisi keskustella ja näitä työstää.

Väitöskirja on julkaistu E-thesiksessä.

Fellow researcher Karen Pashby from the University of Oulu will be giving a lecture next Tuesday 9.9.2014, 12 o’clock at lecture room 229.

Critical Global Citizenship and Ethical Internationalization in Higher Education

For Whom, By Whom? A strategic mapping of internationalization in higher education strategies
When you think of international students, who do you think of? Who needs global citizenship education and why? What does it mean to be international and is it the same thing as being a global citizen? In the current era of both pushes for global citizenship education (e.g. by the UN in its post-2015 sustainable development goals agenda) and an imperative to internationalize higher education, what theoretical frameworks can we use to recognize possibilities and foreclosures in our good intentions to include others in a global or local community? How can we find strategic ways of highlighting an ethical and complex approach?

This presentation uses a variety of media text and shares scholarly research to illustrate the main factors in the growing momentum towards a critical approach to global citizenship education in theory and practice. It identifies and analyses the central critical impulses in moves towards critical global citizenship education in NGO work and school curriculum. It then connects this movement to the growing rush for internationalization in higher education by using a strategic mapping exercise to identify foreclosures and possibilities in how university documents position the role of international students in their internationalization strategies.