Browsing by Author "Halsti, Jenni-Elisa"

In this study I examine the discussion of school choice in Helsingin Sanomat in early 2010s. School choice has been part of the finnish comprehensive school system since 1990s. In the earlier studies school choice has been linked to educational inequality. It causes segregation of schools when taking into account students' socio-economical backgrounds, learning results and school's reputations. In 2010s Finnish media has also started to publish more articles about school choice from this point of view. Research literature considers that media has power to control discussions in the society: it defines which topics are important and what should be thought about them. The aim of this study is to examine what kind of discourses can be found in Helsingin Sanomat during 2011–2015 and discover if some of the discourses are hegemonical. The research material consisted of 52 articles about school choice. The articles can be found from the internet archives of Helsingin Sanomat. I used rhetorical discourse analysis as a method. Discourse analysis is based on the idea of language as social actions that reconstructs reality. From this point of view newspaper discourses are crucial part of school choice phenomenon. There were four discourses in this material: segregation discourse, trust discourse, parenthood discourse and realism discourse. First three of the discourses were more critical towards school choice than realism discourse. Segregation discourse emphasized the consequences of school choice to equality. Trust discourse represented trust to the Finnish comprehensive school system and parenthood discourse described parental actions. Realism discourse questioned connection between school choice and segregation. It doesn't believe in denying school choice as a solution to segregation. Segragation discourse and parenthood discourse were in hegemonical position, whereas realism discourse in marginal. The study concludes that the Finnish comprehensive school system has strong position in Finnish society and that there were concerns about growing segragation. In addition to that parents' growing interest in their children's education were essential part of school choice phenomenon.