Browsing by Subject "ethnographical research"

This is a case study, which has been done by ethnographical research. The subject of this research was the fourth class in one comprehensive school in the area of the capital in Finland. The fieldwork was done in the spring term in 1998. There were 24 pupils in the research class and two of them were muslimgirls from Somalia. The methods were participating observation, interviews, discussions and essays, which were written by the pupils. The purpose was to describe and understand the affectness of muslimgirls to the everyday life of this class. I wanted to find out how the teacher and other pupils felt about muslimgirls and what were the experiences of the muslimgirls about their school life and how their religion affected to their schoolday. The main results: Islam affected to the muslimgirls’ clothing and eating. They had islam lessons, they practised about fast and they were allowed to be away from school when they had religious holidays. The other pupils knew that the muslimgirls had the other religion than they had, but they didn’t think that it would affect to muslimgirls’ schoolday. Muslimgirls had Finnish girlfriends in their class and they had a good time together. Earlier the pupils bothered muslimgirls, but not so much anymore. Some boys in the class looked down on muslimgirls or they were hostile towards them. Muslimgirls had some problems at school. They had difficulties with some subjects and they had problems to adapt some habits of the school. The teacher thought that the co-operation with the parents of the muslimgirls was difficult. Despite of these problems the muslimgirls had a positive attitude towards school. In this case the muslimgirls had reached the period of integration according the acculturation theory of Berry. They had adapted well to the class because of their teacher. They also spoke Finnish very well and they had lived in Finland many years, which also helped their adaptation.