Browsing by Subject "diskursiivinen luenta"
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(2017)Home-school collaboration has become a truism in educational policy and practice. Cooperation between home and school is considered particularly important when a child has challenges with school attendance. However, not much critical research has been conducted on the quality of that cooperation. The point of view of the parents, in particular, has often been overlooked. In my study I examined how negotiations between school and parents are seen from the parents' perspective in cases in which a decision concerning special support is being considered. I interviewed eight parents with children in special education. I analyzed the data by drawing from discursive theories. In my analysis I asked how the parents position themselves in the interview talk when they tell about negotiations between home and professionals. I also explored how "special needs" and special education are seen and made understandable from the positions available to the parents. The negotiations between parents and professionals were described as strained in the parents' narration. The parents described experiences of having been set aside in decision-making processes and told that getting information about the support system was difficult. The interviewees also talked about experiences of having been evaluated as parents. In their narration, the parents also constructed resistance in relation to the definitions and positions offered to them by the professionals. On the basis of my analysis, I suggest that it is hard for the parent to achieve the position of a knowing subject in the power/knowledge relations between the parents and the professionals. The professional knowledge produced within medical and psychological discourses is considered as predominant at school, whereas the parents' knowledge is understood as informal and inferior. I suggest that schools should critically examine their practices of labeling children as "having special needs" and locating challenges with school attendance primarily within the individual. In addition, the asymmetric nature of the power relations between professionals and parents should be recognized. In my view, this would contribute towards a home-school cooperation in which parents feel that they are heard better.
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(2019)The Guides and Scouts of Finland is the biggest youth organization in Finland. Organization has its own values and ideals. The Scout Method is a way of reaching the Educational Goals of Scouting and the goal is to support children’s growth and also to notice that everyone has their own characteristics. The vision of the Guides and Scouts of Finland for years 2019-2020 is “Everyone builds a better world - Guiding and Scouting is the most influential youth movement in Finland”. The Guides and Scouts of Finland have named disabled scouts as “sisupartio-laiset”. Nowadays disabled scouts are named as scouts that has special needs, but still “sisupar-tio” is the prevalent term to describe disabled people in the Guiding and Scouting. In this study the focus is how scouts with special needs speak about their own place as scouts and how they are seeing their capabilities to be part of the Scouting. I have interviewed five scouts with special needs. I used the theme interview as a method of in-terview. In this study I use discourse analysis as a method to analyze. To analyze the speak of the interviewee about their opinions of their place and capabilities in Scouts and to use dis-course analysis I can examine the dominant discourses that are affecting to the experiences of the disabled scouts about their own place and own capabilities. As an analytical concept I am using marginality and subjectification and also I rest my notions about disability to the social model of disability. It seemed that scouts with special need took the subjectification of a “sisupartiolainen” as a self-evident and took the category “sisupartio” as a given position. I understand that this happens because it also seemed that subjectification of a “sisupartiolainen” was something that has to be adopted that it was even possible to work in the Scouts as disabled. On the other hand the scouts with special needs questioned the discourses that are related to disablement and their po-sitioning to the marginal group of the Scouts. The discursive field of Scouts in my study seemed to be enabling and limiting factor. Limiting because it seemed that scouts with special need were understood as a common group because of the naming as “sisupartio” and that limited some of the scouts possibilities to act in the Scouts. Also society´s physical boundaries and lack of re-courses seemed to be restrictive when it comes to the possibilities to be part as an equal mem-ber of the Scouts. In the study I was able to see that with the discursive field of Scouts, the scouts with special needs were able to build their own agency in their speak and in the light of this the procedures, ideals and practices of the guiding and scouting seemed to build the their agency as a constructive way. I suggested that the Guides and Scouts of Finland should draw at-tention what can be done to person when some group is named and categorized.
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