Browsing by Subject "education"

This thesis answers to a question “Why adolescent girls drop out of school in Northern Uganda?” In Uganda, approximately 70% of the children drop out of public school before 7th grade, the final year of primary school. In northern Uganda, girls drop out of school in more significant numbers than boys, and it happens around the age when girls reach puberty. Northern Uganda is also a particular location because it is recovering from long conflict, affecting strongly the whole population living in the area. The thesis is based on two-month ethnographic fieldwork in northern Uganda during the spring of 2015. To answer the main research question this study seeks to analyse it through taking a look how the school, the community and the girls themselves experience and talk about dropping out, education and growing up in the current post-conflict state of the social life. The thesis argues that the dropout rate is linked to the adolescence as life-stage of becoming an adult that is making the girls to make decisions about the future. The analysis is done through three different perspectives – the educational, societal and personal narratives of the youth. The first perspective is the education and schooling in northern Uganda. It explores the concept of ’educated person’ by Levinson and Holland through sexual education and gender in education. The study shows that Ugandan public primary and secondary education is deriving its ideas and understanding of educated person from the national curriculum, which often conflict with the local concepts of the educated person in the Acholi community, influencing the blamed and real reasons for dropping out. The second perspective looks into the community and the societal pressures the girls are facing when growing up. It will describe family, kinship, marriage and gender in post-conflict context and show how in these areas of life, the past conflict, “loss of culture”, generational conflicts and subsequent disobedience are presented as reasons behind the challenges to stay in school. The third perspective tells the stories of the girls met and talked to during the ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Uganda. It answers the question “What is happening in the life of a girl when she drops out of school?”. It is argued that the girls take actions of a gendered agency to further their lives and become adults. Thus, dropping out of school cannot just be explained as a simple event just suddenly happening without their own will. It will further answer the question “What makes some girls stay in school?” to show how those girls still in school manage the crosscurrents of growing up in Acholiland. The thesis argues that the girls in northern Uganda are active appropriators and social agents who through their own actions contest, struggle and penetrate the structures in their society while also at the same time reproduce them. In Northern Uganda, both the community and the state together with different international agencies will have plans and expectations for the girls’ future. The study shows how the girls navigate the school, community and peer expectations and sociocultural and economic structures to stay or finally drop out of school. These structures are state organised and aid-infused formal schooling and society in amidst of post-conflict recovery which creates a framework where the girls are acting. The school presents the modern and globally orientated educated person, and in contrast to it, the community is looking for to restore ‘traditional’ way of life. It is argued that these two sides are often in conflict and in the middle of this conflict the girls act and solve their way out of it, looking for adulthood and gaining respectable status in the society. The schools, the community and even sometimes the development actors see the girls as passively following the things they will encounter. The thesis will show that they are not. The girls either stay in school or drop out of it, but more often as a consequence of their own decisions and actions than passively because the school or the community could not support them. It is demonstrated that dropping out of school looks more of line a tactic for the future as a respectable grown-up than mere problem to be solved.

The focus of this thesis is on the education of indigenous peoples, especially on how education can facilitate territorial self-determination and political emancipation for them. Indigenous movements world-wide and in Ecuador have focused on creating education respectful of and relevant to indigenous cultural background and knowledge. This thesis explores further the interconnectedness of education and indigenous territorial politics, as they have been together in the forefront of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, and they link the epistemological struggle of recognising Indigenous knowledges to environmental issues prevalent in the country dependent on extractivism. As indigenous peoples often inhabit environmentally vulnerable regions, this thesis examines how for the indigenous groups of Ecuadorian Amazon the relationship between education and territory can aim to be mutually beneficial, encouraging both preservation of the diverse cultures and environment in the biocultural landscapes. The research was conducted as an ethnographical case study on the province of Pastaza, situated in the Ecuadorian Amazon with a special focus on the indigenous group known as Sapara, who are the smallest of 14 indigenous nationalities recognised under the plurinational state of Ecuador. The data of the study consisted of 27 semi-structured interviews and participant observation recorded in the field diary, accompanied by historical analysis of intercultural bilingual education in Ecuador. This thesis illustrates the place-making practices and histories of indigenous peoples, acknowledged under the term Indigenous knowledge, as they form a foundation for territorial politics. Possibility for epistemological diversity in the education system is understood through principle of interculturality, as articulated by the indigenous movement itself as a radical project of recognising lived heritage of cultural and historical differences in dialogue between various segments of society. The topic is examined through the concept of territory, which emphasises a question of governance in plurinational Ecuador, where indigenous nationalities struggle to exercise control over their respective territories. Territory is formed of competing political projects that aim to define and redefine its meaning, which also opens up a definition of territory to scrutinise what type of power actually operates in these political projects and rejects assumptions of simple top-down governance as the only possible territorial form. This theoretical framework facilitates the analysis of education as a part of territorial strategies. The main argument of this thesis is that education constructs a significant part of reinforcing political emancipation and territorial self-determination of indigenous peoples. Based on historical and ethnographical analysis, the thesis illustrates how education functions as a privileged arena of cultural struggle to achieve epistemological diversity that includes Indigenous knowledges alongside with Western science. Simultaneously, education, which is perceived pivotal for living well, acts as a societal force that can transform material foundations of life, since indigenous peoples modify their residential patterns in order to access education. As indigenous territories remain only partly autonomous, since the nation-state retains control over subsoil resources, land continues to be an arena of competing political interests. This accentuates the importance of planning education practices to facilitate living inside the whole territory, since inhabiting space asserts the claims of indigenous groups effectively, allowing them to practice a strategy of dispersal.

This study investigates the relationship between policy and practice of access to education within the architectures of humanitarian action. The importance of education as a human right has been internationally widely acknowledged, and more recently it has gained more foothold in discussions about humanitarian action practices. The thesis deploys a research approach that is based on discourse analysis. To analyse policy, internationally and universally recognized and applicable key documents dealing with access to education have been selected for further inspection. Practice is approached through semi-structured interviews with practitioners in the field of humanitarian action and education, and through a case study of Za’atari refugee camp in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Theoretically this thesis is inspired by poststructuralist development theory (PSDT) and its hyponym discursive institutionalism (DI). Based on these influences, I treat education as an institution that is subject to interventions by different actors and phenomena. The findings of this thesis demonstrate, on one hand, that education has become a more central aspect of policy regarding humanitarian action. On the other hand, the results sheer light on various challenges that actors on the practical side face while intending to implement and follow through on policies and principles of the before mentioned documents in the field. Actors that operate in the field are especially facing challenges with unstable financial resources and shortcomings in bringing policy closer to the needs of the field. The findings of this study also suggest that the importance of education as a central element of humanitarian action in crisis and conflict situations need to be realized further. This applies to both policy and practice, for education is now realized as a mean of protection rather than additional good or service.

Abstract Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences Degree programme: Master’s Programme in Contemporary Societies Study track: Sociology Author: Ona Needelman Title: “So it is… I don’t think that was racism either, but it was just a kind of ignorance.” – Providers’ perceptions on race, racism and addressing racism through School-based mental health support Level: Master’s Degree Month and year: December, 2021 Number of pages: 76 Keywords: Racism, white supremacy, mental health, education, critical race theory, anti-racism, critical discourse analysis Supervisor or supervisors: Elina Paju Where deposited: University of Helsinki Additional information: Abstract: This study explores how mental health providers at schools recognize, conceptualize and address racism and its impact on persons of colour (POC) students’ mental health. The aim was to produce knowledge on what kinds of challenges “white” structures of school-based mental health present for practicing and understanding anti-racism. The main research questions were: 1) How do mental health professionals in schools view the influence racism has on mental health and well-being of POC pupils? 2) How do school mental health professionals make sense of, and deal with, issues of racism faced by POC students and which challenges do they face in doing so? 3) How do school mental health professionals conceptualize anti-racism as part of their professional roles? The main goal for this thesis was to draw attention to and heighten awareness around the new ways in which both organizations and employees must develop and approach anti-racist student welfare services in schools. Knowledge on racism and mental health from Finland produced by POC writers and activists was utilized, as academic research of this topic in Finland is limited. Academic research on racism in Finnish society and schools, and on racism’s impacts on mental health from other countries are introduced in the literature review. The main theory used throughout the research process was critical race theory (CRT), including critical whiteness studies. Eight voluntary in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted, with five school psychologists and four social workers all working in basic education in the metropolitan area. Three main discourses emerged from conducting critical discourse analysis, which I labelled as follows: Equality and tolerance, personal awareness and belonging. Key findings were that colorblind ideology perpetuates white supremacy, anti-racism mainly relies on individuals’ awareness of racism, and reactive strategies surpassed proactive anti-racist practices Based on the findings, colorblind ideology and reliance on individual awakenings make anti-racism targeting both prejudice and structural racism vulnerable. Recognizing racism challenges all adults with power in schools. Anti-racism will require more activism and collective action within organizations to commit professionals practicing in the field to address racism through their work.

The returns to human capital has been in the core of research in labor economics. Education and particularly years of schooling as a measurement of human capital has gained established status among researchers. Cognitive skills as a measurement of human capital is a rather rare variable in research. The absence of relevant, valid and comparable data concerning skills and cognitive proficiency has reduced the amount of research concerning the relationship between earnings and cognitive proficiency. Thanks to the OECD, a new survey of adults’ skills, PIAAC, is publicly available and includes data on surveyed individuals’ cognitive skills, education and earnings among other things in more than 40 countries representing the whole population of the countries. This enables extensive analysis on the relationship between earnings and cognitive skills. In this thesis the relationship between cognitive skills and earnings inequality is analyzed using a decomposition method on the dataset of PIAAC. The implementation of this thesis is sort of a replication of a study by Blau and Kahn (2005). The core of their study was to investigate if cognitive skills explain the higher wage inequality in the US compared to other countries. This thesis studies the relationship between earnings and skills inequality and analyzes if cognitive skills explain higher wage inequality in the UK compared to other countries. Due to country specific restrictions in the earning variables, some of the countries could not be included into my sample, for instance the US is missing. The UK is thus set as the base country in the country-specific comparisons of differences in wage inequality. The model used for these comparisons is a full distributional accounting method, also known as a decomposition method, which was originally created by Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1993). The advantage of the decomposition method is that it enables the differences in wage inequality to be decomposed into different components at any desired point of the wage distribution. Under examination in this thesis are the 90-10, 90-50 and 50-10 wage gaps across countries by gender. The final sample comprises 21 countries and includes part- and full-time workers aged 16 to 65. The main question in this thesis is partly to replicate the study of Blau and Kahn (2005) and to see if the results on returns to skills and the decomposition model are similar to the results of Blau and Kahn (2005). Based on the results, some of the findings are surprisingly close to the findings of Blau and Kahn and some of the results quite different. The regression results prove a remarkable heterogeneity in estimated returns to skills and estimated returns to education across countries. A one standard deviation increase in numeracy test scores is associated with approximately a 4.8 to 15.3 percent wage rise for men across countries when education is controlled in the regression, while the corresponding associated return for women is approximately a 4.9 to 13.8 percent wage rise across countries. The estimated return to skills for men is surprisingly close to results of Blau and Kahn (2005), as they found the corresponding associated wage rise to vary from 5.3 to 15.9 percent, using a different dataset, IALS, which is a previous version of PIAAC. Estimated returns to education are remarkably high compared to estimated returns to numeracy test scores. Across countries, a one standard deviation increase in years of schooling is associated approximately with a 8.7 to 25.0 percent increase in wages for men, while for women the associated returns are between an 11.7 and 34.7 percent increase in wages. The corresponding findings of Blau and Kahn (2005) are a 4.8 to 16.8 percent wage rise for men and a 6.8 to 26.6 percent wage rise for women. Opposite to the results found in this thesis, Blau and Kahn found almost similar associated returns on wages for both education and IALS test scores, however this was only for men. For women, they found that the difference between the returns to education and returns to IALS test scores is notable. Based on the results in this thesis, there is a striking difference between the returns to education and the returns to skills, for both women and men. There is also a notable difference between women and men in returns to education. Education plays a more important role in explaining wages compared to cognitive skills, and women have even higher returns to education than men have. Based on the results of the decomposition model, in most occasions the unobservable characteristics and prices i.e. the residual inequality, explains most of the higher wage inequality between the UK and the other countries (or the lower inequality between the UK and the other country). This finding is partly in line with the findings of Blau and Kahn (2005), as they concluded that along with prices of characteristics i.e. returns to skills and education, the residual inequality weighs more in explaining the higher wage inequality in the US compared to other countries. Opposite to the findings of Blau and Kahn (2005), my results point out that the differences in observed prices of characteristics i.e. returns to observed skills and education does not play that big of a role in explaining the differences in wage inequality between the UK and other countries. Instead of prices, the second largest factor explaining wage inequality is the observed characteristics. Based on the decomposition results, distribution of skills does matter more than the prices of skills. Obviously Blau and Kahn (2005) did not have the same collection of countries in their dataset and the US was their base country, not the UK, hence the comparison must be done with caution. Nevertheless, based on the decomposition results in this thesis, the distribution of skills and residual inequality matters more than the prices of skills and education in explaining the higher inequality in the UK (or the lower inequality of the UK in some cases), though residual inequality plays the most important role in explaining the differences in wage inequality.

This study attempts to discover the best predictors of mathematics and language learning outcomes across Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania by analysing World Bank SDI data and using machine learning methods for variable selection purposes. Firstly, I use the SDI data to show the current fragilities in the quality of education service delivery, while also highlighting deficiencies in student learning outcomes. Then, I use CV Lasso, Adaptive Lasso, and Elastic Net regularisation methods to help discover the best predictors of learning outcomes. While the results from the regularisation methods show that private schools, teacher subject knowledge, and teacher pedagogical skills are good predictors of learning outcomes in a sample combining observations from Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania, the results fail to infer causality by not distinguishing if unobservable factors are driving the results. To quantify the relationship of key predictors, and for statistical significance testing purposes, I then conduct subsequent OLS analysis. Despite not expecting the true partial derivative effects to be identical to the OLS coefficients presented in this study, this study highlights deficiencies in education service delivery and applies methods which help select key predictors of learning outcomes across the sampled schools in the SDI data.