Browsing by Subject "huolenpidon piiri"

The promotion of care and compassion has been regarded as primary goals of education in order to achieve a more sustainable world. For this reason, compassion—inseparably related to both moral and values—should be studied in the context of practical education. The aim of this thesis is to analyze compassion as an empirically observable phenomenon that manifests as emancipatory action targeted against violence and oppression. The data, consisting of video re-cording of a nature school field trip among 10-11 year olds, is approached in the theoretical frameworks of sustainability- and environmental education as well as that of compassion re-search. By theoretically conceptualizing acts of emancipatory compassion, the focus of this study is on the analysis of moral construction. The hypothesis is that these acts are embodied in order to negotiate and criticize the institutional limits of compassion and the emerging circle of concern. As a conclusion, the meaning of compassion is discussed in the context of educating for holistic sustainability. The theoretical conceptualization of emancipatory compassion is based on both empirical observations and theoretical studies concerning compassion, constructional violence, and emancipatory action. Qualitative methodology in the general framework of social constructionism and approaches of grounded theory are utilized in order to analyze the video-ethnographic data using methods of critical discourse analysis and interaction analysis. In the data, there were several occurrences of acts of emancipatory compassion. The phenomenon manifested as exceeding the limitations between human and non-human life, and served to construct the institutional circle of concern in relation to other forms of life. Acts of emancipatory compassion were also used to express several factors relating to the construction of morality; some of these interpreted as acts of oppression in themselves. In relation to normative attempts to define the meaning of both violence and oppression, the teachers embodied moral authority over the students. It is concluded that education promoting holistic sustainability should acknowledge the essential meaning of compassion in the context of education in order to allow the questioning of established moral norms, encourage negotiating the limits of the circle of concern, and to recognize implicit manifestations of violence and oppression. It is also stated, that by identifying the inherently violent nature of the human condition, it is possible to overcome the boundaries constructed by perceiving particular agents as either violent or non-violent—inhibiting inclusive promotion of compassion towards subjects interpreted as being in the wrong.