This spring the AGORA Research Centre’s community has grown with two new brilliant researchers as Saara Vainio and Ivan Zamotkin have started their PhD research in the Doctoral Programme of School, Education, Society and Culture (SEDUCE).
Ivan Zamotkin’s PhD research topic is Theory of Anarchism in the Future Trajectories of Education.
“The aim of my doctoral research is to examine the relevance of the theory of anarchism to the field of education, and thus create conceptual tools for interrupting problematic trajectories in prevailing educational practices. In the context of this research, anarchism refers to a radical theory of social justice and equality in which the fundamental political and economic preconditions of the state and their interconnectivities are challenged, this extending to the sphere of education. One of the recent and most problematic trajectories in education has been recently defined as precision education governance (PEG) — a specific form of organizing education, aimed at making it personalized and individually tailored rather than social, political and public.
The theory of anarchism provides a consistent critique of the forms of governance embedded in state-run education, and thus offers particularly fruitful new theoretical and conceptual tools for analyzing and interrupting PEG and creating forms of counterpolitics to it. By reclaiming the public role of education and examining the tensioned relation between the state and education, the anarchist perspective helps to create forms of political agency that are necessary for promoting equality and justice in education.
Saara Vainio’s PhD research topic is Rethinking Life Skills-based Education as a Form of Precision Education Governance.
“The aim of my PhD research is to examine life skills-based education (LSBE) in youth transitions in Finland. Traditionally life skills have been defined through psychological understanding as skills related to competence, sense of coherence, and self-efficiency, as well as coping and mastery. However, in this study I’m examining LSBE in youth transitions as a form of precision education governance. By youth transitions I mean various types of short-term education and training interventions, programmes, youth support systems and projects focusing on young people with various backgrounds. By PEG I mean tailored and personalised forming of youth education and the whole new set of theories and interests to shape the future of education of young people.
The rapid rise of LSBE, as reflected by the analysis of its incidence in youth policies and programmes, corresponds to the embrace of the concept in social, health and educational policy in many countries. In the developmental logic underpinning much educational and youth policy, intervening early to promote life skills is seen as vital. Framed by the genealogical approach, my aim is to make the present strange, with an overall strategy of problemisation and defamiliarisation of the rise of LSBE in youth transitions.
Ivan and Saara will be conducting their research as part of AGORA’s ongoing research project Interrupting Future Trajectories of Precision Education Governance (FuturEd). You can read more about the broader scope and aims of the research project at FuturEd’s own website.
The Helsinki University Press has chosen three most current and thought-provoking books from HU scholars which they want to publish as Open Access publications – and among them is Youth on The Move. Tendencies and Tensions in Youth Policies and Practices, edited by Kristiina Brunila and Lisbeth Lundahl.
Where is the book launch: Tiedekulma Fönsteri, Yliopistonkatu 4
When is it: Wednesday 26th Feb, 14:00– 16:00
What is the book about?
The book addresses one of the most urgent social problems in many countries, the uncertain school-to-work transitions of young people. As a result, a ‘transition machinery’ has been created, consisting of various education and training measures realised by e.g. teachers and youth workers.
The volume demonstrates that discourses related to youth transitions do not simply describe young adults but create them. For example, young people are expected to be active citizens who make themselves attractive to employers, and those who fail in doing so may be labelled having psychological deficiencies. When failing transitions, resulting in lack of higher education or unemployment, are treated as individual’s problems rather than rising from structural factors, the solutions are likewise individualized. The book thus underlines the importance of analysing power relations reflected by gender, health, social class, and ethnicity.
The articles of the book combine perspectives from young people, policymakers, teachers, and youth workers in Iceland, Finland, Sweden, and England.
The editors of the book are Kristiina Brunila, professor of social justice and equality in education at University of Helsinki, and Lisbeth Lundahl, professor of educational work at Umeå University.
Please join us for interesting conversations with some of the book’s authors!
AGORA kasvatuksen ja koulutuksen tasa-arvon ja oikeudenmukaisuuden tutkimuskeskus haluaa onnitella lämpimästi Ruskeat tytöt -yhdistystä ja mediaa tiede- ja kulttuuriministerin vuoden 2019 Suomi-palkinnosta! Palkinto myönnetään vuosittain merkittäville taiteilijoille ja yhteisöille.
Ruskeat tytöt on poliittisesti ja uskonnollisesti sitoutumaton ”ruskeilta ihmisiltä ruskeille ihmisille” tarkoitettu yhdistys, jonka tavoitteena on laajentaa representaatioita kulttuurin, erityisesti median, viestinnän ja kirjallisuuden alueella, normalisoida ruskeista ihmisistä kerrottavia tarinoita sekä toimia alustana ruskeille kulttuuriammattilaisille ja asiantuntijoille toteuttaa omia luovia ja merkityksellisiä projektejaan. Ruskeilla ihmisillä tarkoitetaan tässä yhteydessä kaikkia Suomessa rodullistetuiksi tulevia ihmisiä, eli sellaisia henkilöitä jotka nähdään ei-valkoisina ja ei-suomalaisina.
Ruskeat tytöt on toimittanut yhdessä Radio Helsingin kanssa Kaikkien koulu? -podcast-sarjaa, jossa pureudutaan koulun rakenteisiin ja haastetaan suomalaisen koulun normatiivista valkoisuutta ja keskiluokkaisuutta. Sarjassa kootaan yhteen niin tutkittua tietoa kuin tavallisten ihmisten kokemuksia sekä käydään keskustelua koulutuksen yhdenvertaisuudesta poc (people of color) -näkökulmasta käsin. Sarjaa toimittaa opettajataustainen vapaa kirjoittaja, Mona Eid.
AGORA:n tutkija Tuuli Kurki vieraili tutkija Anna-Leena Riitaojan kanssa syksyllä 2019 Kaikkien koulu? -sarjan toisessa jaksossa “Koulun toiseuttavat rakenteet”, jossa luotiin katsaus koulun toiseuttamisen mekanismeihin sekä oppilaan ohjaukseen. Tuuli keskustelee rasismista, rodullistamisesta ja maahanmuuttajaistamisesta oman väitöskirjansa ja käynnissä olevan tutkimustyönsä pohjalta.
AGORAfor the study of social justice and equality in education-Research Centre,Society, Culture and Education (SEDUCE)Doctoral Program and Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki invite you a seminar by Dr. Ansgar Allen, University of Sheffield.
Time and place: Thursday 23 January, 14:15-16:00, Siltavuorenpenger 3A, Athena, room 261
Medieval Sickness and Modern Education
“In this seminar I will outline a new project investigating links between education and sickness. This project will contrast medieval Christian conceptions of sickness as education with modern conceptions of education and health. In the medieval context sickness provided opportunities to learn about the fallen condition of humanity. It performed a positive role in the education of the individual as a form of divine intervention and tutelage. In the modern context, sickness loses its educative function. As the forces of secular education are allied with the promotion of health, sickness becomes something education must combat. Sickness is only allowed to perform an educative function as a negative force, or example, against which the forces of education are stacked.
This seminar argues that sickness still performs an important, if disavowed, function in modern education. Given that educational critique is blindsided by its commitment to educational health, other forms of analysis are required. Through a reading of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Blanchot, this seminar will consider how alternative modes of analysis might function, and how educational critique might be transformed, drawing from genealogy, literary theory and experiments in post-critical analysis.”
Discussant: Johanna Sitomaniemi-San, University of Oulu
The seminar is open to all interested scholars but due to the available space, we kindly ask you to secure your place by registering online.Space will be filled in order people sign up.
Ansgar Allen works at the intersections of education, philosophy and literary theory. He is the author of several books including Cynicism (MIT forthcoming), and co-edits Risking Education, an imprint of Punctum Books. He is based in the University of Sheffield, UK.
Johanna Sitomaniemi-San engages genealogically oriented forms of inquiry at the intersections of education, history, and geography. Her work examines the national, moral and colonial order of things in cultural-educational practices.
Antti Teittisen ja Touko Vaahteran kannanotto 7.12.2016.
Nyt kerätään nimiä kansalaisaloitteeseen eutanasian laillistamiseksi. Eutanasian sallimista pidetään usein edistyksellisenä, koska sen nähdään vähentävän kärsimystä ja mahdollistavan arvokkaan kuoleman. Onpa puhuttu jopa kuolemanpelon ehkäisystä eutanasian yhteydessä. Kuitenkin tässä keskustelussa on jäänyt taustalle kysymys siitä, miten käsitykset vammaisten ihmisten asemasta yhteiskunnassa ohjaavat sitä, mistä näkökulmasta eutanasian sallimista katsotaan. Vammaistutkimus, jossa vammaisuus nähdään yhteiskunnallisten valtasuhteiden muokkaamana ilmiönä, voisi auttaa näkemään eutanasian sallimiseen liittyvien kysymysten monimutkaisuuden.
Liberaalista näkökulmasta eutanasiaa puolustetaan itsemääräämisoikeuteen vedoten. Myös vammaistutkimuksessa ja -aktivismissa ihmisten itsemääräämisoikeus kehoihinsa ja elämäänsä on tärkeä tavoite. Kuitenkin juuri itsemääräämisoikeuden toteutuminen vammaisilla ihmisillä on todettu useissa tutkimuksissa erittäin heikoksi. Vammaisten eutanasian osalta on vaarana ajautua tilanteeseen, jossa itsemääräämisoikeuden toteutuminen muuttuisi arvomoralistiseksi kysymykseksi siitä, tietääkö viranomainen vai henkilö itse, mikä on vammaiselle ihmiselle paras ratkaisu. Tämä kysymys on tosin läsnä aina vammaispalvelutilanteissa. On myös kysyttävä, miten toteutuisi oikeasti eutanasiaa haluavan oma tahto. Miten esimerkiksi dementoituneet ja kehitysvammaiset, joilla on edunvalvojat, voivat ilmaista oman tahtonsa?
Tällä hetkellä pitäisi myös tarkemmin pohtia, miten eutanasia voi toimia siinä yhteiskunnallisessa tilanteessa, jossa terveydenhuollosta tehdään leikkauksia. Ei voi välttyä ajatukselta, että leikkauspolitiikka ja eutanasiakeskustelu tukevat toisiaan. Eutanasian kustannusvaikutuksista ei ole julkisuudessa juurikaan keskusteltu. Kuitenkin niillä voi olla merkitystä tässä kokonaisuudessa, vaikka tämä ei vastaisi eutanasiakeskustelun julkisuuteen nostaneiden henkilöiden aikomuksia. Pitäisikin tarkastella laajemmin niitä yhteiskunnallisia tilanteita, jotka tekevät mahdolliseksi eutanasiakeskustelun voimistumisen ja vammaisuuden aseman siinä keskustelussa. Mitä esimerkiksi se kertoo suomalaisesta yhteiskunnasta, että tällä hetkellä osa ei-vammaisista ihmisistä ajattelee eutanasian olevan yksi vaihtoehto laitoksessa asuvalle vanhukselle?
Pohjoisamerikkalainen aktivistiryhmä Not Dead Yet on tuonut esiin, kuinka lääkäreiden käsitykset hyvästä elämästä ovat mukana siinä, keille eutanasia sallitaan. Oregonin osavaltiossa, jossa eutanasia on sallittu kestämättömän kärsimyksen lopettamiseksi, lääkäreiden tärkeimmissä syissä eutanasian sallimiseen potilaalle korostuu kuitenkin potilaan alentunut toimintakyky ja arvokkuuden tunteen väheneminen.
Nämä perustelut liittyvät kiinteästi myös vammaisuuden ilmiöön. Kun vammaisuuden astetta määritellään lääketiedeperustaisesti WHO:n ICF-luokitusjärjestelmän avulla, korostuu vammaisen ihmisen fyysinen ja kognitiivinen toimintakyvyttömyys. Sen sijaan suhde ympäristöön, sosiaalisiin ja kulttuurisiin ulottuvuuksiin jää näissä määrityksissä sivurooliin. Tällöin voidaan aiheellisesti kysyä, onko näin mitattu toimintakyvyn alentuminen riittävä kriteeri eutanasialle.
Entä voidaanko vammautumisen aiheuttamaa tunnetta arvokkuuden vähenemisestä erottaa vammaisten ihmisten historian kuluessa kokemasta syrjinnästä? Yhteiskunnassa, jossa vammaiset ihmiset olisivat yhdenvertaisia, kaikki ihmiset voisivat kokea olevansa arvokkaita toimintakyvyistään riippumatta.
On tärkeää erottaa vammaisliikkeiden näkökulma eutanasiaan kuoleman toivomisen moraalisesta paheksunnasta. Meidän näkökulmastamme eutanasian ongelmallisuudessa ei ole siis kysymys siitä, että ihminen ei saisi päättää omasta kuolemastaan. Sen sijaan haluamme kysyä, onko mahdollista samanaikaisesti ajaa oikeutta tarkoin rajattuun eutanasiaan ja luoda kulttuuria ja todellisuutta, jossa myös vaikeasti vammaisten elämä ja arki on resursoitu siten, että vammaisuus sinänsä ei enää assosioituisi elämään, joka ei ole elämisen arvoista. Voidaan myös kysyä, kuinka kaukana sellaiset eutanasiaa vastustavat pyrkimykset, jotka eivät samanaikaisesti pyri lisäämään resursseja terveydenhuoltoon ja vammaispalveluihin lopulta ovat siitä politiikasta, jossa vammaisuus rinnastetaan kuolemaan.
Kirjoittajat ovat vammaistutkijoita. Antti Teittinen toimii tutkimuspäällikkönä Kehitysvammaliitossa ja hän on Ihmisoikeusvaltuuskunnan jäsen ja Suomen Vammaistutkimuksen Seuran puheenjohtaja. Touko Vaahtera on tohtorikoulutettava Helsingin yliopiston AGORA-tutkimuskeskuksessa.
AGORA and FuturEd project together with the Helsinki University Department of Education and Education and society research network organized a two-day international event to discuss some of the on-going and future changes in education, 23–24 September 2019.
What is Precision Education?
Kristiina Brunila setting the scene of the event by talking about precision education governance. Caption: Venla Järvensivu
After Dean Johanna Mäkelä had opened the event by underlining the importance of looking at educational policies and practices through critical lenses, professor Kristiina Brunila outlined the focus of the following days with an introduction to precision education governance (PEG).
Precision education promotes the idea that human subjects are no longer defined by cultural and societal aspects, but as distributed cognitive systems with human, biological, technical and profitable components. Marketization and privatization, digitalization and datafication, psychologization and neurologization of education has brought new actors, new paradigms, and new ideas of knowledge, various services and products, and changing cultures and practices in education which all point towards a new engineering of learning.
In these knowledge regimes and practices children and youth are being positioned as objects for psy-knowledge, psycho-emotional interventions, neurotechnologies and plasticity programming. What is important for scholars in education, is to conduct critical research about the consequences of outsourcing essential parts of education into a private market, with new stakeholders and new paradigms.
Global changes and educational ‘futures’
Fazal Rizvi discusses changes in education in a global context. Caption: Venla Järvensivu
Professor Fazal Rizvi in his talk focused on global transformations and how these reflect educational futuresthinking. Currently, a common global ethos concerning the future of education is in a sense of crisis in education, created by pressures to adapt to social forces. Educational values are no longer considered on their own terms but have become derivative of neoliberal economic thinking. In the desired future, according to policy texts, education is to meet the needs of the accelerating and rapidly changing global economy, satisfy the requirements of the labour market, meet the rapid growth in demand for education and align education to developments of technology and distributed processes of knowledge production and dissemination. Professor Rizvi talked about educational futures in the plural, referring to the existence of a multiplicity of ways for imagining the future. These ways of thinking about the future are possible, even if one of them might take the dominant position. Neoliberal discourses imagine only one future of education, but these imaginaries can be transformed through collective political agency.
From education towards science of learning
Ben Williamson talking about datafication in education. Caption: Venla Järvensivu
Dr. Ben Williamson from the University of Edinburgh talked about how data-intensive technologies, neuroscience, genetic sciences and bioinformatics are reformulating the idea of education toward that of precision education. New psychological and neuroscientific theories and genetic science are reshaping the understandings of learning and have also begun to animate ed-tech development. Organizations with expertise in algorithmic systems are becoming new legitimized authorities in diverse educational matters. Commentator Associate professor Nelli Piattoeva reminded us that educational sociologists and governance researchers need to become interested in the digitalization and technologization of education. She called for more research on the sociology of edu-technologization.
Edu-technologies and the new subjectivies of teachers and students
Malin Ideland talked about edu-technologies and their re-structuring impact on teacher and student subjectivities. Caption: Venla Järvensivu
Professor Malin Ideland from the University of Malmö in her presentation “Google and the end of the teacher?” talked about an ongoing research project on edu-preneurs. She described the new cultural figurations of a teacher, the “googlified” teacher, which is also becoming a normative and more-than-a-discourse inscription concerning the teacher’s role and activities. The rise of a playful, fun, flexible, innovative, collaborative, engaging, anytime, anywhere, creative, dreaming, innovative learner – the new “googlified” teacher – is also de-politizing the idea of education. The new image of the teacher also offers an idea of education which is personalized, individualized, tailored and atomized. What is missing when the aim of education is seen only through individualized learning outcomes? What are the alternatives? How can we think about school, which is also about participatory practices, community building and social fostering? Professor Ideland concluded that there is a need for a profound discussion about the values and meaning of education. Education is more than individual learning outcomes constituting the flexible worker-citizen; it is also about learning to be in a community and becoming socialized into a democratic society.
Impacts of privatisation on early childhood education
Jaana Pesonen and Satu Valkonen mapping out the impacts of privatisation on early childhood education in Finland. Caption: Venla Järvensivu
Dr. Satu Valkonen and Dr. Jaana Pesonen presented their ongoing research on privatization and marketisation of early childhood education and care in Finland.
Private companies have already established a strong position in early childhood education in Finland. The right to make profit through early childhood education has led to significant changes and variability in the quality and equality of provision of early childhood education and care services. In many ways, the priority of the child’s best interest, as emphasized in Law on Early Childhood Education, is jeopardized.
Messages to take home
The two-day event with its different critical views on the ongoing changes in education was an eye-opener in many ways: it made clear that there is a need to scrutinize and problematize current processes of privatization, edu-technologization and learnification which are changing the ways we think about education. One aim of the FuturEd project is also to pay attention to the counterpolitics of precision education, which also means keeping our eyes open for the different forms of the political agency of children, young people and professionals. Democratic education can also be intentionally developed as a form of counterpolitics for precision education governance.
University of Helsinki
