Browsing by Subject "uusliberalismi"

The purpose of this thesis is to desribe what potrays to be a ’’problem’’ in the political documents of European union which regulate the lifelong learning. The study also focused on the matter how the lifelong learning is used as a technology of government and produces idea of ”normal” through political discourses. What kind of ideal or normality it constructs and how the lifelong learning subjectifies the individual? In the end of the thesis the presumptions and silences which has been left unproblematized or unquestioned in the political documents of the lifelong learning are raised. The research material was collected from EUR-lex, the official database of the juridical documents of European Union. The material consists of six notable documents related to lifelong learning of European Union from the years of 2005-2020. The material was analyzed using Carol Bacchi’s method “What’s problem represented to be (WPR)?”. The concepts of Foucault’s governmentality and discourse theoretical ideas based on post-structuralism has been utilized in this research in the context of lifelong learning. The results of this research showed that the starting point of lifelong learning is based on the discourses of economy, competitiveness and growth. Lifelong learning was seen foremost as the solution to the competitiveness and growth as well as to the constant change of the society and to the questions of social involvement. Ideal lifelong learner was constructed to be more entrepreneurial using competence talk. In addition, the lifelong learning was portrayed to be the responsibility and obligation of the individual more than before.

The Big Wheel education reform, downsizing and restructuring processes has left the university of Helsinki in a confused state. The goal of this study was to better understand the reasons and justification of the Big Wheel and to examine the process as part of a neoliberal university scene. In this context, neoliberal university is seen as an institution driven by global economic and market forces. Neoliberal universities emphasize on global markets, individual freedom of selection, degrees based on expectations set by working life and resource-efficient practices. In this study I will examine the discourses and speech of the reasons and justification of the Big Wheel. My research tasks are 1) What are the reasons and justifications for the Big Wheel education reform? and 2) What discourses are produced in the speech on reasons and justifications. I collected the data on Flamma, which is the intranet of University of Helsinki. My data consisted of all the bulletins and materials that dealt with the Big Wheel reform (N=32). As my research approach, I chose discourse analysis that I utilised in constructing the discourses. By discourses, I mean different manners of speaking, that are used in construing a social reality. I analysed the data and construed three hegemonic discourses. The dimensions of the discourse of internationality are recruiting best students, renewing marketing, profiling (University of) Helsinki and attractive education programs. The discourse of effectiveness composes of resource-wise planning, perfusion of students and freedom of choice. The discourse of employability is about the employability of degrees, know-how based degrees and taking into consideration the changing working-life. The fourth discourse, the discourse of knowledge as an instrumental value, summarized the first three and was seen throughout the data. According to this study one can conclude that the Big Wheel education reform produces and reproduces neoliberal university policies.

In this thesis, I look at the subjectification of students of higher education in writings about students' mental health and wellbeing. My research is situated in feminist poststructuralist studies and aims to shift the focus of the discussion on students' mental health from the individual towards a more societal perspective. Informed by post-methodological theories of inquiry, my approach to both data and writing can be characterised as drifting. The data of the research consists of the "Stories" section of the website of Nyyti ry, a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting student mental health and wellbeing. The section contains stories that students have written of their everyday life. This data is enhanced by autoethnographic elements since also I am a university student to whom matters of mental health and wellbeing come close to home. Neoliberal higher education and the psy-complex serve as the context of my research. Together, they shape the circumstances and provide the discourses that students draw from in order to grasp the possibilities and limits of their lives. I ask how the ideal student subject is constituted in the stories, how the psy-discourse functions together with neoliberalism, and how the students make use of the psy-discourse. I have read the data discursively with the concepts of power and subject, inspired by a Foucauldian power analytical approach and studies on governmentality. In the research, I have used the concepts of subjectification and subjectivity to inquire upon how the students make sense of the problems and solutions related to studying and how they make themselves comprehensible within and with the help of the psy-discourse. I looked at self-help as a form of neoliberal and psychological governance that guides subjects to work on themselves. In the stories of the students, I read the (re)production and questioning of the active and entrepreneurial employee citizen. The students did not accept the neoliberal ideal as a given. Some recognised the role of the society as the producer of these pressures and questioned performance-centric ideals. The ideal subject was challenged with tools provided by the psy-discourse and in this way the discourse was made to serve the needs and ends of the students themselves. However, the solutions mostly remained on an individual level. I conclude my thesis by asking how we could (re)build the study environment into one that would provide means for people with varying dis/abilities and needs to get by and even flourish. I suggest that this requires the critical questioning of our ideals as well as a reorganisation of societal and institutional circumstances.

The purpose of this study is to describe the discussion, which took place in Helsingin Sanomat between 2000 and 2005, regarding the rationale for publishing basic education reviews. Firstly, the idea is to clarify, what type of views were presented, and what were the supporting arguments used. Secondly, the focus is on the professions of those involved in the dialogue, and the institutions they represented. The conflicting decisions of justice departments on the matter gave the inspiration for this study. The theoretical starting point for this study is Foucalt's views with regards to the blending of power and discourse, as well as the build up of social construction, in the context of life's continuous power struggle that is influenced by discourse. Media as a whole is a significant contributing factor to social construction. Helsingin Sanomat, being the most read Finnish daily publication, is one of the most important contributors amongst media. The material used in the study are the Helsingin Sanomat articles on the publicity of basic education evaluation between 2000 and 2005, during which period the two above mentioned legal entities made their decisions. This study can be defined as a qualitative analysis supplemented by certain quantitative factors. The calculations and creation of spreadsheets do not amount to quantitative analysis. This is simply a practical approach to present the material that forms the basis for this study. Discourse analysis was also applied in the study to gain a better overview of the material used. Two discourses were introduced as a framework to interpret the articles – welfare state discourse and neoliberal market discourse. The results show that those against publishing have technical arguments, and also rely on welfare state discourse. In their opinion, the comparability of education reviews is always questionable. Their approach to the matter reflects tones of the welfare state discourse, and their concerns included increased competition between schools, and the end of basic education offering equal opportunities. Those in favor of publishing highlighted information transparency, and the parent's need for review data when selecting schools. The law was also said to require publishing the data. Furthermore, the schools were considered to be accountable to the taxpayers. The ideology reflected in their argumentation was clearly the neoliberal market discourse. The negative aspects of publishing the reviews were contributed mainly by researchers, teachers, and school administrators. At the same time, the positive aspects of publishing were presented by the newspaper's own staff, a few politicians, and the man of the street. The active majority in the discussion were those against publishing.

The purpose of this study was to examine teachers' perceptions about their work in the context of integration training for adult immigrants. In Finland integration training is frequently put out to tender and immigrants' employment is emphasized in the goals of integration training, which reflect neoliberal politics. The theoretical framework of this study was based on theories about neoliberal governance, and my aim was to study teachers' narratives and show how neoliberal governance affects both students studying in integration training and teachers working there. The Finnish National Board of Education published a new framework for integration training in the spring of 2016, after I had already started this research process, and those frameworks became and an essential part in producing data and analysing it. My study was a qualitative research. I conducted six interviews with teachers who work in integration training for adult immigrants. I analysed the data with narrative methods. My main interest was in small stories the teachers told about their daily work, encounters with other people and future. Since integration training is going through extensive changes that affect teachers' work, I focused more on the future than on the past in teachers' stories. In the teachers' stories, neoliberal governance seemed to cause weakening of collectivity in integration training. Because of the new framework published for integration training, the learning environment is about to change and students will be learning more on the Internet, in work places and vocational institutes. The teachers were concerned about what kind of an impact more individualised study paths would have on language teaching and career counselling. For teachers, changing work environment, increasing vocational contents in curriculum and tendering indicated that they have to keep on educating themselves and be prepared to move from one teaching environment to another in the future. For immigrants, vocational education was one of the main factors that defined their worker citizenship, since in the new framework for integration training, vocational education is considered as the main asset in promoting labour market integration. However, in the teachers' stories, the most important factor that defined immigrants' worker citizenship was Finnish language skills, but teachers wanted to emphasize that immigrants should not be seen only as a workforce but individuals who have diverse and personal needs.

This master’s thesis explores what kind of ideals guide music education in Finland in our time. The substantial societal changes of the past few decades have inevitably had an influence on music education. The main goal of the thesis is to define these changes and make visible the patterns of thought behind them. The data for this thesis consists of two documents that create guidelines for music education. These documents are Strategy for Cultural Policy 2025 by the Ministry of Education and Culture, and Vision 2030 for Finnish Music Education, which has been created by professionals in the field of music education. Rhetoric discourse analysis is used to discover how these documents express the neoliberal rationality that dominates thinking and decision-making in the present day, as well as how this rationality affects the goals set for music education. The analysis also examines whether these documents include goals with a different basis. Moreover, the analysis identifies tensions formed in the documents due to inner contradictions or the realities of current society. The results of the analysis show that neoliberal rationality forms three discourses: benefit, market correspondence and cost effectiveness, and individualisation. The new public management also creates responsibility relocation discourse in which nobody is assigned responsible for the changes that have to be made. The desired goals for music education are creating benefits for other areas of life, cost effectiveness, individuality, accessibility, better digitalisation readiness, increasing co-operation and wider knowledge of culture. Tensions are caused by diverging interests, the methods for developing the field and the actualisation of accessibility. In the future, it would be pertinent to find out more about the guiding effects of financial decisions in the music education field as well as how these kinds of guiding documents influence the work of teachers in everyday education.

Young people's democratic participation has sparked extensive discussions both globally and nationally in the recent years. Previous research suggests that in the strategies of global actors such as the EU and OECD regarding urban and youth policies, young people's democratic par-ticipation is strongly linked to the premises of the labor market and active citizenship. The the-sis politicizes institution-driven practices of engaging youth and provides tools for those work-ing with youth participation issues to question public administration's hidden normative goals and practices. In my master's thesis, I examined the globally advocated notion of youth participation as orient-ed towards labor and business, viewing it as a neoliberal governance endeavor. From this per-spective, I investigated the form that this notion, promoted by global actors, takes in youth par-ticipation systems at the municipal level in Finland. The research data was derived from the ac-tion plan of the Ruuti participation system aimed at young people in Helsinki, which I critically analyzed using a perspective influenced by Michel Foucault's thinking on governance analytics. Guided by the theoretical framework of the action plan, I analyzed discourses to understand the types of governance they enable and the subjectivities and practices they produce about young people. Based on the analysis, the Ruuti action plan generated a new form of governance thinking and a subjectivity derived from neoliberal governance, namely that of an active consultant-learner who is flexible and adept at functioning in networks as an active citizen. For this subjectivity, self-assessment of one's actions, drafting action plans, evaluating their implementation, and continuous skills development are inherent parts of participation and influence. As a further re-search suggestion, I propose examining the discourses and subjectivity extracted from the Ruuti action plan at the level of practical activities through ethnographic research. Additionally, addi-tional data could be generated to understand the rationales of various stakeholders regarding youth participation.

In this study, I approach happiness as a discursive practice and foucault’dian governance instead of empirical and objective phenomena. The basic assumption is that current western understanding of happiness is based on positive psychology that equates happiness as mental state. In this discourse, happy mind becomes the symbol of a good person and being happy a moral demand for self. In this happiness imperative, one must constantly labor on their personality, thoughts and feelings in the name of better self and life. The context of the study is postfeminist self-help-culture, which is understood as neoliberal and gendered governance. Thus, the demand of happiness is directed especially to young women. Besides the construct of happiness, the interest of the study also is the ideal happy subject which is constructed in the hegemonic happiness discourse. Thus the study explores how happiness, good life and ideal happy figure are constructed in the postfeminist self-help-culture. The data consist of seven wellness blogs. These are analyzed using discourse analytical method and feminist media study readings. Discourse is understood as a regime of knowledge and practice which orders human’s thoughts and actions in the world. Hereby the blogs are not understood as personal writings by the blogger but wider material performatives of the postfeminist self-help-culture. In the study results happiness showed as taken for granted goal of the life, but happiness imperative could also be read as cruel optimism when one becomes exhausted continuously working on themselves. Anyhow, the self-governance was justified by the promise of happiness. According to self-help ethos, positive thinking, cultivating one’s authenticity and continuous work on the self showed to be fundamental objects of happiness. The ideal happy subject also followed this individualistic logic. It showed to be a postfeminist figure, which have a masculine mind but feminine body. Although the hegemonic discourse of happiness claims to be based on the rhetoric of freedom and equality, I propose that its ideal subject follows gendered and heteronormative ideals. Hence many subjects and different ways to be and live are classified as unhappy and abnormal.

The conversation on the exhaustion and stress of higher education students is a common discussion. There is more emphasis on the individual's own responsibility, the pace of studying has become faster, and it is harder to use a degree to stand out in the job market. In this thesis, I examine the views University students have on their studies, and the wider social conditions these views indicate. The current ethos in our society highlights the responsibility of an individual. In this thesis, I describe this using a framework of neoliberalism and the Ethos of Vulnerability. The Ethos of Vulnerability considers possible structural problems to be caused by individuals' deficiencies. According to previous studies, the impact of the ethos has now reached the field of education. For this thesis, I have interviewed Finnish University students who are studying towards Bachelor's or Master's degrees in Educational Sciences. The interviews were conducted as two group interviews with 2 to 3 participants each. To analyse the empirical material and the impact of the ethos, I have applied discursive and discursive-deconstructive approaches. Based on my analysis, a degree did not guarantee a career or standing out from the crowd. Instead, students' additional actions and other factors were found to be more meaningful. It was highlighted that a degree prepares students for employability. Among students, it was rare to have holidays, and students felt that they were required to be constantly doing something. The responsibility for managing in and being enough for the job market fell on students' own shoulders. If students wanted to proceed in their studies to meet the desired goals, the quality of learning suffered. Most studies were performance-oriented, and health was considered secondary. Working alongside studying was hard timewise, but mandatory for some. Students needed to be proactive to progress in their studies. If the progress was not as desired, it was considered to be a fault in the individual's personal features. The Ethos of Vulnerability was visible in the data, but its effect on students' agency was not simple or straightforward. The students were also aware of the conditions that they were in, and some showed resistance, demanding structural change.

The meaning of this study is to find out how the pursuit of efficiency and education at univer-sities is viewed university students. According to the Finnish university act, the purpose of universities is to cultivate education and give the highest form of research-based education. The neoliberal educational policy has driven universities to an ever-increasing pursuit for effi-ciency, and the university has changed significantly during the 2000s, especially after the university act of 2010. The current state of university has been criticized a lot and the staff of universities have voiced a concern regarding the direction of the future of the university. This study examines how students experience the present university’s goals regarding efficiency and education. Nine students from the Faculty of Educational Sciences of the University of Helsinki partici-pated in this study. They have also acted as student activists which means that they have been in a student organization or have acted as a student representative in a body of the uni-versity. The data was collected by interviewing the student activists. The base of the inter-view was a background information form which asked students about their views of university studies. The data was analysed with theory-based content analysis. The results show that the pursuit of efficiency, education and their interweave occurred at university studies. The studies were considered easy, the university staff focused on their re-search rather than teaching and there was a strong encouragement to graduate in target time. These are examples of how the pursuit of efficiency rises up in studies. The values of educa-tion were shown in studies in the studies being in a good level of difficulty, the university staff putting effort into teaching and a trust in extensive possibilities of studying. The interweave of efficiency and education appeared for example through students aiming for a degree and ed-ucation at the same time in university studies. The university studies appear to have gotten new conditions that concentrate on performance-oriented studies. On the other hand, the studies seem to have signs of education and the students of educational sciences consider them to be important. Efficiency and education exist at the studies at the same time.