Browsing by Subject "discourse analysis"

The study examined a bilingual child's agency in the context of a bilingual school. Previous research has shown that supporting a pupil's agency improves his or her motivation and engagement towards school and hence also enhances learning results. The traditional roles of teacher and pupil can be changed by encouraging pupils to agency. Bilingualism is a pervasive phenomenon in the world and affects the Finnish school worlds as well. The need for language proficiency and the demands for bilingual education increase perpetually. The study sees language as a base for human action and that it is used as a tool in the expressions of agency. The study strived to find out how children express agency and how they use their mother tongues if they have two mother tongues instead of just one. The goal of the study is to examine how the agency of an English?Finnish-bilingual child is expressed through verbal communication in a classroom. The study also strived to investigate what kinds of tasks the two mother tongues are used for in interaction. The case study centers on one 11-year-old American Finnish focus student who speaks English and Finnish as her mother tongues. The data of the study were collected by videotaping in a fifth grade of a bilingual school. In addition, a semistructured interview was used to interview the focus student and her mother in order to find out what kind of language choices the child makes and how was the development of the child's bilingualism and two mother tongues supported. The data consisted of approximately 8 hours of video material. Agency and language were examined from the viewpoint of the sociocultural framework. The results were interpreted using qualitative discourse analysis. The main result of the study is that the focus student's agency was expressed in verbal communication in a classroom through three different ways: through expertise, providing humor, and playing with institutional roles. Another finding was that agency was created partly through language. The focus student used her two mother tongues consistently for different tasks, of which communicating with family, friends, and teachers was the most significant one.

Objectives. This study examines the way Finnish handcraft blogs approach handcrafting. By exploring handcraft blogs, one can find out how handcrafting is approached in them and how the phenomenon of craft is transmitted through them. It is important to become aware of the ways in which handcrafting is approached, as these ways build and shape our common reality actively. Handcraft blogs are an important part of the Finnish craft culture and they help build handcraft-related phenomena and promote the spread of various ideas and ways of thinking. This study examines what kind of handcrafting discourses could be interpreted in the writings and comments of Finnish craft blogs and what those discourses could tell about the broader representation of handcrafting and being a maker. Methods. The blogs chosen for this study were four popular Finnish craft blogs. The data consisted of a total of 32 blog entries published in October 2016 and their related comments. The data were analysed inductively with discourse analysis. Results and conclusions. Four dominant handcrafting discourses were interpreted from the data. The discourses were related to dreaming, community, success and being a maker. The discourses appeared in the data as their own entities, but overlap and shared attributes could also be found. In the data, handcrafting was approached by discussing completed and unfinished products or processes along with dreaming about doing, especially in the pursuit of finished craft products and the sense of succeeding in something. Based on the set of discourses, handcrafting is a communal activity through which crafters can encounter others and communicate. Handcrafting was approached by both positive and negative ways, but the main thought was the importance of handcrafting and the positive things and experiences that can be achieved with it. Based on the data, the mere fact of dreaming and planning is a significant activity. The discourse-based image of a handcrafter, who has to cope with different expectations and pressures, is complicated and conflicting.

Objectives. Internationally, concern for public health trends, such as the spread of STIs and the prevalence of early and unintended pregnancies, has driven the development of school-based sexuality education programmes. Transnational organisations produce policy recommendations for sexuality education, often published as part of broader documents. Previous research has shown that moralising discourses remain prevalent in health promotion, and that political processes shape the work of transnational organisations. Through a document analysis, I aim to explore the problematisations and discourses that ground normative claims by transnational organisations on school-based sexuality education. Methods. Bacchi’s poststructural What’s the Problem Represented to be? (WPR) approach was used to analyse four documents authored by four transnational organisations (the EC, the EWL, the OECD and UNESCO), by means of a critical discourse analysis approach to document analysis. The WPR approach was complemented with reference to Jones’s sexuality education discourse framework. The documents, published between 2020 and 2021, were freely accessible online in English, and their geographical scope included Europe. Results and conclusions. My analysis found that recommendations are strongly grounded in a preventive ethos that views young people as vulnerable, yet assigns them responsibility over decision making in matters related to their sexuality. While the authoring organisations are aware of a need to diminish the focus of sexuality education on risks and disease, they employ the language of health pervasively. The language of health dominates discussion of not just physical well-being, but also of mental and social dimensions. The analysis found a liberal discourse orientation to be prevalent in the data, despite the presence of some critical discourses in documents by the EWL and the OECD. This range of discourses coincides with the use of cis-heteronormative language. The contribution of this thesis is an invitation to envision sexuality education policy possibilities beyond the dominant discourses.