Browsing by Author "Stenlund, Saida"

Touching is an important part of everyday interaction between students (Karvonen, ym., 2018a; Tainio, 2016; Herkama, 2012; Goodwin, 2006), but only some of these touches prevail as memories after the school years. In this research my main focus was to find out what kind of touching between students is memorized from the school years: what kind of touches are chosen to be recalled and how gender is visible in the touching memories. Touching memories related to school years have been studied (Karvonen ym., 2018b; Kinnunen, 2013), but no research has earlier focused on touching memories between students. The research data consists of written school memories collected by The Finnish Literature Society (SKS). From the data I analysed the nature of touching described, how the touching roles were divided by gender and how boys and girls were described to touch and being touched. This study was a qualitative study and as a loose methodological approach I applied oral history. The analysis was made by content analysis. The most common ways of touching among student memorized from the shool years were playful touching, touching related to harassment and violent touching. Differences between boys and girls in touching roles and the ways of touching were discovered. A boy touching a girl was the most commonly recalled touching situation, following by a boy touching a boy -situation. Touching among girls was rarely recalled. The most common ways of touching by boys were described as bullying, fighting and teasing. For the girls the most common ways of touching were touching while playing and defending by touching.