Browsing by Subject "diskurssianalyysi"

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what kind of ideals of a teacher and teaching con-structed in the curriculum texts of teacher education. The research questions are: 1) what kind of discourses can be read out from curriculum texts and 2) what kind of ideals and val-ues are attached in teachers in teacher education curriculum texts. The material of the thesis consists of general descriptions of the program catalogues of teacher education in the univer-sities of Helsinki, Lapland, Tampere and Turku, which were valid in the academic year 2017-2018. The theoretical background draws from curriculum research as well as research on the teacher ideals. The research method is discourse analytical reading of curriculum texts. There are three discourses on teacher education in the curriculum texts. The first discourse is discourse of science that relates teaching to academic teacher education. The second dis-course relates teaching to society considering teachers as actors of social change. I have named the second discourse as the discourse of social change. The third discourse empha-sises the effectiveness of teacher education in responding to the needs of the working life by producing teaching professionals. I have named the third discourse as Discourse of labour market and efficiency. The fourth discourse is an individual-centred discourse in which teaching is discussed as a means to the individual’s own development and the growth of in-dividual strengths. In general, all four discourses are present in each curriculum. The strong-est of these is the discourse of social change. The most significant exception is the University of Lapland where the teacher education cur-riculum text highlights locality, the significance of individual's own internal capabilities and problematisation of gender. The history of the University of Lapland provides the curriculum the specific nature. The question to be considered further is whether it is possible to find strength and new perspectives for teacher education from the strengths of each university in-stead of following the narratives and phrasing of educational ideologies alike in other univer-sities.

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.

Educational capital has a strong significance on a person's status in the society. The possibilities for individual choices in the field of education have increased and decisions concerning education are expected at a very early stage. Educational choices are mainly seen to be a phenomenon among the middle class: the lower social classes have less cultural capital to make choices. The study approached the topic of educational choices from low-educated parents' point of view. The purpose of this study was to understand how low-educated parents describe the principles and values that affect their educational choices. The descriptions are understood as life politics. Life politics include parents' understanding of the significance of education as well as the future scenarios the parents create for their children. This study participates in the discussion of social class and education, and suggests the use of the concept of life politics in the educational research. The research data includes ten thematic interviews carried out to sixth-graders parents' in the city of Espoo. The interviews were implemented as a part of the research project Parents and School Choice (PASC). The data has been analyzed with discourse analytical tools. The results of the study can be summarized in four discourses which can be understood as parents' life politics. First discourse emphasizes the significance of attitude in life, the second one sees education as a way to professional qualification and employment, the third discourse understands education as a way to social mobility and the fourth discourse defines education as an arena for personal development. Discourses include different conceptions of the importance of education and different future scenarios the parents create for their children. The study concludes that the concept of life politics is a useful tool for studying and describing families' educational strategies and the underlying principles and values. Life politics broadens the possibilities to understand the mechanisms of educational choices among parents: it pays attention to the individual life decisions. The concept also supports the former research on social class and education.

The aim of this master's thesis is to examine the formation of special in the speech of teachers. The theoretical framework is based on the stance that people try to make sense of the world by perspective of normal. However, to be normal is possible only if something is deviant from it. When it comes to schools, these lines between normal and deviant have been seen to be linked to the relation of mainstream education and special-education. The interest of this study is to analyse, how the special is formed in the speech of teachers when there is more and more students in special education and when the official direction is to bring mainstream education and special-education together by constructing teaching of all students in the same classroom. The research data is formed by interviewing special- and class-/subject-teachers. The interviews were constructed as groups, one included special -teachers and the other one class-/subject-teachers. There where total of seven interviewees. The interviews followed the rules of theme interview. I have analyzed the data by using discourse analysis. According to my results the special were formed as maladjustment, certain problems, imperfection and change. The lines between normal and special operated on the other hand between all students and on the other hand the lines were situated only between certain students, them being the students in the special education class and the students in the mainstream class. When it comes to the consequence of special it was the situation of the student that were concerned. The conclusions of this research suggest the persistence of some categories in schools and the place as an essential component for defining the lines between normal and special. Worth noticing is also the ways that showed the possibility of negotiation.

Aims. It is generally known fact that personnel training is the most extensive form of adult training in Finland, and for many organizations, competent personnel is mandatory and ensures competitiveness. The goal of the study was to find out what kind of meanings personnel training has for people working in the personnel service sector and what factors encourage and discourage them to participate in the training offered by the employer. The research examines the meanings employees attach to personnel training and their effects on the employees’ own, subjective experiences. The key here is how employees value personnel training. The review also includes what kind of factors guide employees to apply for training offered by the employer and, on the other hand, what factors slow down applying for training. Methods. The material used was the interview material, which consists of interviews with nine people working in a company in the personnel service sector. Five of the interviewees were female and 4 were male. The interviews were carried out using a Teams connection in the spring and summer of 2021. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The interviewees were treated anonymously throughout the research process, as was the company where they work. The analysis method of the data was material-based discourse analysis, and discourse categories containing different meaning systems were constructed from the speech of the interviewees. The starting point here was the speech of the interviewees and the social reality built up in their speech and its examination and analysis. Results and conclusions. The research showed that for all interviewees, personnel training is extremely important and is considered an intrinsic value and self-evident part of the organization. The interviewees see themselves and the organization as active and reciprocal actors and consider themselves responsible for their own competence. Many interviewees built their views on personnel training using the 70/20/10 model. The incentives for applying for training were seen as the development of one’s own competence and the efficiency of operations, as well as collectivity. On the other hand, online mediation, scheduling challenges and content and implementation irrelevance were seen as discouraging factors. On-site training that connects colleagues and develops one’s own core competence is seen as a desirable. On the other hand, online training offered a short notice with irrelevant content is one that you don’t want to participate in. The basis of all this is employee’s strong idea that learning and skill development are seen as positive self-values.

This thesis examines the discourse of future working life and working skills as advanced liberal government. The aim of the thesis is to create understanding regarding what the discourse of future working life and working skills include and what are they about to produce. As empirical material I chose to use two reports of Ministry of Education and Culture, two reports of Finnish Government and one report published by STTK Union of employees. They all examine the phenomenom of changing working life and factors related to it such as digitalization, knowledge, employment and lifelong learning. In my thesis I use critical discourse analysis as a methodological framework. I examine discourses from the point of view of the theory of advanced liberal government considering what kind of governance, relations of power or drives of influence can be found in these discourses. As a framework for the analysis I use the concept of political rationalities by Nikolas Rose and the process of translation by Michel Callon. As a result of my thesis I found that the discourse of future working life and working skills is determined by a few themes that stand out repeatedly from reports. These themes were for example the theme of inevitability, business-focused discussion and that the change of work is seen as a threat and ideal employee is seen as eternally adaptive multi talent. One conclusion of the analysis is that the empirical material of the thesis expresses rationality of the adaptive employee. By applying the process of translation developed by Callon, it is possible to see how individuals are conducted and worked towards the ideal subject of employee via different steps of the process. The point of view of my thesis is consciously critical, because I hope to question things that might otherwise be seen as natural and inevitable and by doing this I wish that contrary thinking becomes possible.

Wellbeing and its development has gained a remarkable position in welfare policy. Although as an objective for politics it is far from new, I argue, that the objective itself has found new forms and meanings. In my masters dissertation, I see wellbeing as an intrinsically philosophical concept, that when translated to politics takes rather normative forms. Wellbeing as an ideal for education has in itself normative ideas on how children and youths should be and how they should behave. Questioning the concept of wellbeing itself creates a space to examine what do we really improve when improving wellbeing in education and to what ends. By pointing out to the late changes in the welfare state, I suggest that the welfare state has changed to a ‘competitive society’. This, for example, manifests itself as a way of educating children to be self-responsible self-entrepreneurs gaining skills with which to compete in the future labour market. Equality has no space in competition, where only the best are rewarded. This goes against the core values of the welfare state, hence the competitive society. I take to closer examination the OECD report ‘Skills for Social Progress’ (2015), which I analyse discoursively from the point of view of governance. In a future of global challenges, accordinf to the OECD other attributes than cognitive skills will have more meaning in ‘life success’. Cognitive skills are important, but according to the report I have analyzed socioemotional skills have importance in bringing up a ‘happy and successful citizen’. I ask my data the questions (1) what kind of subjectivity takes form for youths in the OECD’s Skills for Social Progress report and (2) how is the developing of wellbeing (socioemotional) skills justified. I argue, that wellbeing as an educational ideal or objective is, instead of actually improving wellbeing, contributing to the neoliberal rationale of creating hard-working, self-entrepreneurial subjectivities. I do not deny that wellbeing could not be improved by these skills, but I argue that wellbeing takes a performative ultra-active form of a way of being. It contributes to the liberal, out-of-date illusion of the American dream ‘work hard and you will succeed’ and does not take into account the various embedded obstacles for ‘life success’.

The purpose of this study is to find out how Karelian language and culture are described in Finnish primary school textbooks. Karelian is one of the minority languages of Finland, used by approximately 30 000 people in Finland at different levels. More speakers of Karelian are found in Russia. Karelian language is different from the various dialects of Karelia. The research approach of the study is based on the methods of the European language diversity for all (ELDIA) research project, which has been used to study the status of Finno-Ugric minority languages in particular and the possibilities for language learning and revitalisation. Karelian language is highly endangered, although there has been some increase in revitalisation efforts in recent years. ELDIA's findings suggest that the availability of language products (e.g. textbooks), improves both the access of language speakers to their language and the status of the language in general. It was therefore decided to investigate how Karelian language and culture are presented in Finnish textbooks for basic education. Previous studies have shown that textbooks have a major impact on pupils' perceptions and attitudes. The research method used was discourse analysis with thematic analysis, which divided the references to Karelian language and culture found in textbooks into three different groups. The study included all primary school textbooks from three Finnish publishers (Sanoma Pro, Otava, Edukustannus) in the following subjects: Finnish language and literature, history, religion and environmental studies. The total number of books studied was 146 and they were in line with the 2014 basic education curriculum. Included were pupils' books, exercise books and teachers' guides. A total of 25 references to Karelian language and culture were found in the textbooks examined. These findings were divided into three different discourses according to the topic in which Karelian was mentioned. These three discourses are history, Kalevala and minority languages. There were 10 mentions related to history, 7 related to Kalevala and 8 related to minority languages. Most of the mentions were in the same textbooks. The mentions of the history theme were either related to the geographical area of Karelia, treaty of Nöteborg or the Karelian tribes. In connection with Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot was mentioned as having made collecting trips to Viena Karelia. Karelian poem singers were also mentioned. Mentions of minority languages were mostly part of a longer list of minority languages. All the findings were no more than two sentences long. Karelian language is therefore not described in a comprehensive way in this study. Based on ELDIA and other previous research presented, textbooks could play their part in improving the status of minority languages by telling more about them, giving a voice to speakers of the languages, and telling about minority languages and cultures on an equal footing with majority languages.

Lately the discussion of fast fashion’s impacts on the climate and environment has got more coverage on the Finnish media. Media usually emphasize the responsibilities of the consumer: what can the individual do to make better choices? The purpose of this study was to research the discourses of sustainable fashion consumption in Finnish blog texts that concentrate on sustainable fashion. The study was built on the theorical aspects of the sustainability in consumer culture, such as sustainable development and the phenomena around it such as sustainable consumption and fashion. The aim was to contribute to the discussion of the construction of sustainable consumption in media texts, especially from the viewpoint of sustainable fashion consumption in the blog texts. The inductive qualitative study was carried out by applying the methods of discourse analysis. The data consisted of eleven blog texts that deal with sustainable fashion. The blog texts were collected from the internet sites of the three Finnish blogs. The data was analysed by searching expressions that could embody sustainability or sustainable fashion consumption. These expressions were then categorized as possible discourses of sustainable fashion consumption. Four discourses of sustainable fashion consumption were found. The discourse of consumer ideal was constructed on the ideas of responsibility, reasonability and well-thought decisions. Green consumerism was especially a part of careful clothing maintenance. The discourse of unaware consumer constructed the consumer who is unconscious of the sustainability knowledge and doesn’t know how to act right, and the information the texts offer, are solution to that gap. The discourse of passive consumption was constructed on the emotional and informational manipulation and domination of the marketing, businesses and advertising over the consumers. The bad quality of the clothes was seen particularly to be the fault of clothing companies. The discourse of alternative consumption constructed on the thoughts of circular economy activities such as product-service systems, active change agents, system change and reduction of consumption. The blog texts construct a multidimensional phenomenon of the sustainable fashion consumption. The discourses are in part conflicted, emphasizing the tensions that have been present in earlier consumer studies, such as passive/active and individual/mass. Special to this data was the tension between the facts and “not-knowing” of the consumer.

As a result of the change in work, management and supervisory practices are also being modified. As the free working methods and mobile work grow more, the importance of interaction increases in supervisory work. The purpose of this master's thesis was to explore how to build interaction between supervisor and employee. In addition, the purpose was to find out how this interaction makes the employee's work more pleasant. The interaction between supervisor and employee has been much discussed from a supervisor's point of view. This thesis focuses on a broader view and takes employee's perceptions into consideration. From the theories of wellbeing at work I use positive aspect and look at how wellbeing at work can be improved instead of examining threats. My thesis is based on the material from theme interviews. I interviewed five employees from the same company, each of whom worked in different positions. My research is a qualitative research. I started to interpret the material with discursive aspect and tried to find discursive variations in my material. This study showed that functional interaction between the supervisor and the employee contained certain features, such as transparency and equality. Functional interaction between supervisor and employee builds trust, and interaction was always shaped in a unique relationship. Corporate practices and instructions also affect the interaction between supervisor and employee. Based on my research, the functional interaction between the supervisor and the employee made the employee's work more pleasant. It made the environment more comfortable and made it easier to work. Functional interaction emphasized the meaningfulness of work and created opportunities for employees to influence. The meaningfulness of work and the possibilities to influence are seen more important in working life today, as well as functional interaction and work community skills.