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Assurance of citizens’ social rights and minimization of social differences have been central tenets that have framed the educational policy of Finland and the other Nordic welfare states. Equality has been on the official agenda in educational politics and policies since the comprehensive school reforms of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the conceptualization of equality has fluctuated, reflecting the political climate in which the policy statements have been created. In this article, we analyse Finnish curricular documents concerning upper secondary education from the 1970s to the 2010s in order to find out how the aims of educational equality are presented. Drawing on different conceptualizations of equality and social justice, as well as feminist theorizations of intersectionality, we scrutinize how gendered, classed and ethnised patterns are emphasized, challenged or muted in documents. Through the longitudinal data of this study it is possible to analyse the growing impact of this neo-liberal educatio...

In this article, we discuss teachers' reflections on the relation between teaching and care in the two most gender-segregated sectors of vocational upper secondary education in Finland, namely Health and Social services and Transport and Technology. We first discuss the concepts around education, teaching, taking care for and caring about students, using theoretisations of care and feminist pedagogies. Using teacher interviews and field notes, we then analyse teachers' ambivalence about care work in the context of teaching, placing special emphasis on care as a gendered task, and then discuss the ‘moral panic’ or ‘worry speech’ about young people in vocational education from the perspective of caring about. The findings are reflected through earlier studies in lower secondary schools. We argue that even if teachers in vocational education, especially male teachers, tend to feel awkward about caring work, they cannot avoid it, and they do care about their students and regard care as a general responsibility.

Background: In educational policies, two discourses on gender have existed since the 1980s. I call them the ‘gender equality discourse’ and the ‘boy discourse’. The gender equality discourse in education is based on international and national declarations and plans, and is focused predominantly on the position of girls and women. The boy discourse, which has gained popularity through the media, draws on the gender gap in school achievement, attainment and behaviour.Purpose: The purpose of the article is to describe and analyse the history of these discourses in Finland since the 1970s, with contextualisations to the international and European equality politics.Sources of evidence: The analysis is based on international and Finnish policy documents, earlier ethnographic research and the author’s own experiences as an activist in the field of research, administration and teaching in gender and education. Methodologically, the article uses the ideas of multi-sited ethnography and auto-ethnography.Main argume...

In this article, we discuss the usefulness of collaborative, multi-sited and cross-cultural ethnography. Giving three examples from our work, we suggest that it is possible to find new kinds of interpretations by joint reflections that draw from several studies with their own research questions. The cases presented discuss teachers' embodiment and sexualisation, construction of normality in educational settings and gendered patterns in post-compulsory educational routes. We suggest that the reflections on issues that ‘tickle our brains’ have methodological value when formulating research questions, as well as in analysis and interpretation. They might set an ethnographic gaze in new directions thereby revealing cultural patterns. Combining data-sets generated in different decades also provide possibilities to spread the time span of the analysis. Finally, we also discuss some of the problems and challenges in the methodological perspectives that we have adopted.

In this article our focus is on the persistent gendered divisions in educational routes of young people who choose a vocational path after compulsory education in Finland. We analyse how gendered subjectivities are constructed within the practices of educational and vocational guidance and within student cultures in the comprehensive school, as well as the way in which young people process understandings of themselves and their expectations during and after vocational education. In addition, we explore young people's ways to negotiate with disciplinary practices of the educational system. The paper draws on three ethnographic studies, and on feminist post-structural and materialist theories, intertwined with contextualised ethnographic perspectives. Our analysis reveals some patterns that might work as obstacles in the process towards reducing gender segregation in education and the labour market. We suggest that whilst gendered choices are sometimes taken for granted, gender dichotomy is often emphasised...

In this article, we are interested in how employment – or employability – is connected to citizenship, and how the ideal subjectivity of worker-citizens is discursively constructed in curriculum texts. The ‘worker-citizen’ is a social construction that connects closely the notion of worker and the notion of citizen. Our analysis is based on Finnish national curricula for upper secondary vocational education. We consider upper secondary vocational education as a field in which individuals learn the new orders of the labour market. Curriculum texts define desirable goals and ideals for what future citizens and future employees should be like. As a result, we argue that flexibility characterises the ideal subjectivity that is discursively attributed to worker-citizens in accordance with neo-liberal reasoning: they have internalised the ethos of entrepreneurship and lifelong learning, and are capable of accepting changes and crossing national borders in order to follow the needs of the labour market. Worker-c...

In this article the life history of a young Finnish woman, Salla, is explored along with reflections of her best friend and other peers. The analysis is conducted from the perspective of Finland as a country of ‘genderless gender’, where mute or hidden gendering and sexualisation converge with the gender-neutral rhetoric about the individual self. Structural and individual understandings of ambivalence are used to analyse Salla's tensions when she tries to realise her own expectations and those of the Finnish context. Ambivalence appears in relation to education, in relation to heterosexual partnerships, career and family as well as in relation to Finland as a country of genderless gender with a myth of gender equality. The article draws from an ethnographically grounded longitudinal life historical study on young people's paths to adulthood.

Students in Finland are obliged to apply for upper secondary education during their 9th year. The main divisions occur between general (academically oriented) and vocational upper secondary education, and within vocational education between female and male dominated sectors. In this article we discuss the tension between these options and explore young people's hopes, choices, and transitions. These are related to expectations imbedded in policies and practices. We present a contextualized and cross-cultural analysis in which interviews and ethnographic data from different settings are used. We suggest that there is a taken-for-granted backdrop to students' choices that includes norms and expectations concerning social class, gender, sexuality, and/or ethnicity. We suggest, moreover, that the analysis of educational choices ought to be situated within the larger context of the marketization of the politics of education.

In Finnish secondary schools, girls and boys are taught physical education (PE) in separate groups. A male teacher normally teaches the boys and a female teacher teaches the girls. Focusing on PE teachers’ comments in two different ethnographic studies of seventh graders (13–14‐year‐olds), we examine the processes that reproduce or challenge the gender system and the possibilities of agency in the context of PE. Our findings suggest that the bodies of male students are regarded as strong and are, therefore, appreciated by both female and male teachers. Moreover, male teachers’ competence in PE is evaluated higher than that of the female teachers. None of the teachers questioned the male teachers’ ability to teach girls, however, heteronormativity arose as an issue. There were more doubts over female teachers’ competence to teach boys.

In this article we are concerned with how young women’s subjectivities are constructed within relations of power, particularly in the context of schooling and the transition to adulthood. We focus on the possibilities and limitations for agency to be exercised by women in the education system and more generally, the resources that they can draw on, and how citizenship is implicated in this process. The process is fraught with emotion, the desire for educational achievement and for agency, ambivalence about appropriate femininity, contradictions in the route from dependence to independence. We draw on empirical research comparing young women’s experiences in Finland and the UK, placing those experiences in the broader social, cultural and political context.

In this paper, we draw on a cross-cultural ethnographic study conducted in two secondary schools in Helsinki (Finland), and two in London (UK). In our analysis of everyday life in schools, space is not merely a backdrop to activities that take place, it also shapes processes and activities, and spatial relations are simultaneously temporal. Here, we follow teachers’ daily time-space paths in schools, from corridors to staff rooms to classrooms and breaks. We explore how spatial arrangements limit and control teachers’ movement and their use of time-space, examining how their bodies and emotions are implicated in this process. Whilst interested in the ebb and flow of power in the school in relation to student/teacher interactions, we wanted to move beyond a dichotomous conceptualisation of authority and resistance and the top down hierarchy of the official school, therefore, as well as processes of differentiation, those of connection and negotiation were also of interest.

The terrain of inclusion studies in discussed in this paper from the perspective of policy discourses and teachers’ constructions on student diversity. We start by discussing the concept of inclusion from normative and analystic perspectives. We then look at the kinds of discourses that can be found in the Finnish and Norwegian curricula, as well as teachers’ interviews when they talk about their students. On this basis we analyse how the patterns of diversity and inclusion are conceived and constructed; the phenomenon of ‘diversity’, as it is formulated in policy documents and as it is expressed in categories with which teachers operate and act upon in school; and, ‘diversity’ in the context of inclusive practices. We draw from ethnographic studies in Finnish and Norwegian schools; both from mainstream and from special classes.

Worry about the poor school achievement of boys is one of the current travelling discourses that is repeated in one country after another. One of the assumptions that is taken for granted is that school achievement, as it is displayed in school grades, has dramatic effects on young people's paths to further education, the labour market or society at large. It has also been taken for granted that these effects are the same for young men and for young women. I challenge this assumption drawing on the educational paths of a several young people living in Helsinki, following them from the age of 13 to 20–24. I discuss how they themselves construct their lives within the positions that are available, how they interpret their achievements and failures, and what resources they use. I suggest that some resources are gendered. I argue that for young men in the current Finnish educational and political context, school grades are not as important as for young women. This paper draws from an ethnographically grounded...

In Finland more than 80% of the male population participates in military service. Going to the army is an important step in the transition to male adulthood and a period for further education. This paper explores reflections on the army of 20‐year‐old men, some of whom have it already behind them and some others with their military service forthcoming. The focus is on exploring the kinds of masculinities that are constructed when talking about experiences or expectations. The paper suggests that, when talking about the army, male bonds are established which unite men from different cultural, educational and social backgrounds, as well as different generations. This communality is discussed in relation to differences. I concentrate on the making of differences due to the formal hierarchies within the army, between men and the women who participate in military service and between Finns and immigrants in the army. The final discussion is on attitude, endurance and the construction of ‘proper’ masculinity. Th...

Home is a space that consists of physical places, social practices and mental meanings. All these aspects are evoked when young people plan or dream about moving away from their parental home. Young women and men have manifold hopes concerning finding space, peace, agency and independence that moving to a place of your own seems to promise. There are a range of fears and uncertainties in their thoughts about this transition as well. Starting work, getting into further education and establishing partnership have an impact on young people's dreams as well as on their practical possibilities of establishing their own household. Material, cultural and social resources at young people's disposal are embedded in their dreams and plans. They vary according to their social background and gender. In this paper we discuss reflections of young women and men on moving away from the parental home. We first met these young people when they were 13 years old, in an ethnographic study in secondary schools. This paper, th...

In this paper we explore the implications of conducting a longitudinal transitions study based on ethnographic research in secondary schools. The main issue we address is how the ethnographic starting point materialized into a longitudinal exploration of young people's transitions to adulthood. We discuss the process of the research and how the ethnographic study contextualizes the life history research, focusing on 'remembering' and 'imagining'. In our conclusions we address representations, in particular ethics and politics of writing. The article draws from a project Tracing Transitions--Follow-up Study of Post-16 Students in which we trace young people's transitions into further and higher education and the labour market.

This article discusses relationships and conflicts between girls and boys during the secondary school years, trying to reflect on the fine line between playing which is 'just fun' and behaviour that is experienced as harassing. The method used is to examine the parallel patterns of different kinds of data: classroom observations in secondary schools, ethnographic interviews of students at the age of 13-14, and school memories of the same young people at the age of 17-19. These varied data reveal diverse interpretations to gendered interactions. The article suggests that sex-based harassment acts as a form of social control that constitutes a way of maintaining and policing gender boundaries and hierarchies. 'Whole school policy' is needed to counteract it. The article draws from an ethnographic research study in two secondary schools and its follow-up, conducted together with Tuula Gordon.

The present article discusses young people's manifold and ambivalent feelings towards school as an institution, and towards their own school in particular. The questions are explored using different kinds of data: associations and metaphors that students provided on 'school', their reflections on an ideal school and their own school, as well as memories of secondary school a few years later. It draws on an ethnographic research in secondary schools and on a longitudinal life-history study in which the transitions of the same young people to post-16 education are traced. The empirical conclusions concerning students' perceptions on school are presented with four interlikned themes: students' lack of autonomy, the importance of informal relations, the importance of space and time in school, and the complexities of gender patterns. The article also raises a methodological question on nostalgia in memories - especially in ethnographers' memories.

Estonia is a post-communist Baltic state in which neoliberal market ideologies and still prevailing socialist norms exist side by side in educational policies and practices. It is no longer self-evident what is ‘normal’ and what is ‘problematic’. Special education class for students regarded as having problems is a new innovation in Estonia. The paper analyses the history and current changes and discusses how a ‘problem child’ is constructed in Estonian teachers' perceptions and in the pedagogical methods used with these children. The paper draws on teachers' writings and on an ethnographic study in a special education class. Some comparisons with Finnish educational policies and ethnographic research on secondary schools are made. The findings suggests that in Estonia, a ‘problem child’ is a student who does not conform to the norms of the school, and in focus is behaviour that disturbs the teacher: problems in relation to schools' regulations of time, voice, embodiment and equipment, lack of engagement ...

The first school day of four groups of school students starting secondary school is described and analyzed. The article is based on ethnographic research conducted in two secondary schools in Finland by a group of six researchers. Initial encounters between students and the school and its teachers are discussed. The focus is on how the construction, negotiation and learning of the ‘profession’ of being a pupil in a secondary school begins. ∗We express our gratitude to the teachers in City Park and in Green Park who gave us the unique possibility to follow the first encounters of new students.