Browsing by Subject "Foucault"
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(2017)The aim of this study is power strategies that children use in play situations. In my work as a kindergarten teacher, I noticed that children use power over each other during their interaction with peers. Previous studies have focused on interaction between children, marginalization, bullying and power between adults and children. These studies have showed that negative use of power in interaction between children can lead to bullying, marginalization and can promote inequality. Theoretical frame of reference is based on Michel Foucault's theory of power. According to him, power is universal and can be represented through social interaction. This study is focused on power strategies. These strategies are totalities of means through which one can influence others attitudes, emotions and action. Critical discourse analysis was used as a method of analysis and the research data consist of video and audio material. The data was collected outside and inside play situations in day care centre. The study involved 10 children from one day care centre in metropolitan area in Finland. Children were two to three year olds and six of them were girls and four were boys. Children used leading, play negotiations and forbidden as power strategies in play. Through leading children shared and stayed in the same play idea, they were committed to play and the play was rich. In play negotiations children created common understanding on play and developed the play further. Through play negations the play enriched and got new features. Forbidding as a power strategy diminished children possibilities to influence on play and in the end the play was suffocated. Curriculum of Early Childhood education (2016, 29) says that early childhood educators have the means to indentify factors that limit play and develop factors that promoted play in early childhood education settings. My study offers information on children power strategies. With this information the staff can promote play in day care centers and supports children as they investigate and learn to practice power through play.
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(2015)Goals Goal of this study is to analyze the rationality guiding the Finnish educational policy, especially the reformation programs of basic education. In previous studies it has been shown, that the texts guiding these reformations are less and less about school as an institution, and that the national educational discourse is more about the abstract individual subject, learning and idealistic goals detached from the everyday context of school life. In this study the goal was to find out what kind of rationality lies underneath the basic education reforms from the viewpoint of the context – the world – and the goal of education – the man. Method The method of this study is based on the foucauldian analysis of governmentality, which is a form of discourse analysis. Rationality was divided in three different levels of analysis – epistemic, rhetoric and moral analysis. Research material, altogether 11 pages, was chosen from a publication of the Future Affairs Committee of Finnish Parliament called Uusi oppiminen "The New Learning" and it included the publications' introductory chapter and the first part of chapter 1. Results As a result of the analysis it was shown, that the rationality guiding the Finnish basic education reforms is based on a view of a rapidly changing world, to which school reforms must react without delay. In order to produce compatible, flexible, eagerly educable people with required ITC-skills the school must be reformed in a way that makes pupils' development possible in the areas of autonomy, self-guidance and leadership. The role of the teacher becomes an instructor, and in the active center of the school work is the pupil. Similar principles as in the previous studies is shown – individualization and decontextualization – was also found.
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(2015)Aims: My main problems of research are: How neoliberalism is producing obediant citizens through special pedagogy? How discourse of exclusion as a apparatus power and a result of collective mentality of governing strengthens the hegemony of neoliberalism and special pedagogy? How special pedagogy as a tool of neoliberalism produces social exclusion and inequality? The aim of my study was to find out, in a foucauldian way, with the help of the speech of special pedagogists, how discourse of special pedagogy as a tool of our neoliberalistic state, produces inequality, social exclusion and obedient citizens. The structure of my study consisted on special pedagogy, theory of Foucault, neoliberalism, empirical material and the phenomenon called social exclusion which encompassed also the thematic interviews of teachers. These forementioned five elements were interacting with each other in the analysis producing new knowledge about action of discourses in our society. Methods: With digital recorder I interviewed five special pedagogists by halfstructural method. My theme was social exclusion in our society. After written down the interviews I analyzed the texts with the help of foucauldian theoretical concepts. In this way I was able to deconstruct different discourses and "naturalities". In the field of qualatative methods my method of research represented the foucauldian way of analyzing the empirical material. In this manner the producers of the speeches were seen as representatives of certain discourse. Those producers of speeches were seen, in turn, as producing and reproducing certain kind of discourse and discoursive talk. Results and conclusions: Analysis of the material engendered following results; special pedagogy produced, pathologized, normalized and categorized its objects as obediant and vulnerable monolithic subjects which were to be stored as socially excluded proletarian labour force for our neoliberalistic nationstate. Medicalization, therapization, and psy-sciences as products of neoliberalism were addressing individual "liberties". Together with the discourse of special pedagogy they created inequality and social exclusion. This was made possible by making people to believe in their individual and "innerborn" qualities instead of seeing the changing and dynamical structures of our neoliberalistic society which produce and reproduce injustice.
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(2016)The purpose of this pro gradu thesis is to find out what kinds of value and power discourses are constructed in teacher discourse. According to previous research, teachers' unity, exemplarity and teachership as a profession have been emphasized in Finnish teacher discourse. The theoretical framework of this thesis draws from critical pedagogy, Foucault's analysis of power, critical discourse analysis (CDA), as well as the tradition of social constructionism, according to which language is seen as social action. The research was qualitative and data-driven, utilizing approaches associated with CDA. The data consisted of 250 opinionated texts containing teacher discourse in Opettaja (The Teacher) magazine published by OAJ, the Trade Union of Education in Finland. The texts were collected from magazines published in 1994, 2014, and 2015. In the analysis, the power relations between and within discourses, as well as the transformation between the different years and various contexts, were examined. Four power discourses emerged from the data. The discourses were comprised of discoursive units that construct the power relations of teachership. These discourses belong to two metadiscourses, which were named the renewing discourse and the preserving discourse. Furthermore, four value discourses concerning teachership were distinguished from the data. From these four value discourses, a synthesis of the ideal teacher was constructed. The ideal teacher is versatile, professional, and collegial, and has adopted an ethical and research-based working method. According to the results of the study, The Teacher magazine defines teachership as the kind of idealized teachership that is mainly traditional, strives for consensus, and positions the teacher as a passive subject. Thus, as a significant political agency, OAJ should problematize the traditional and ideal image of the teacher. Moreover, the teacher discourse of OAJ ought to give prominence to the multivoicedness of teachership, as well as teachership as an ideological activity.
Now showing items 1-4 of 4