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Finland is famous for high scores in PISA league tables as well as for high scores in gender equality indexes. Sometimes these two championships seem to be competing. Since the first PISA tests, an old concern for boys’ underachievement has received new emphasis and the gender gap in results has detracted from national pride in the excellent overall results, as well as hiding a growing social and ethnic gap. In the 1980s concern about underachieving boys in Finland was matched by efforts towards gender equality in education following global declarations and resolutions of gender equality after the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1979. Supported by the first equality projects, gender research in Finnish education took the first steps in the late 1980s. Since that time, gender researchers in education have collaborated in carrying out gender equality administration and projects. A constant task has been to challenge the simple juxtaposition of girls and boys that is sometimes evident in the concerns about boys’ achievements. In this chapter, I describe and analyse the interlinked histories of gender equality work, feminist studies in education, and the boy discourse, with reflections on changes and sustainability in Finnish education policies. The bodies of data include documents associated with gender equality projects, national PISA reports, reviews of research articles and PhD studies that draw on feminist research in education. I also use my own experience as an actor in the field since the early 1980s.

The focus of this article is on the history and current trends of feminist ethnography in Finland. It highlights the impact of feminist ethnography in Finnish educational research and illustrates how feminist ethnography has succeeded in asking novel questions and developing methodologies by drawing on multiple feminist theories. The article is based on a review of studies, selected to represent the multiplicity of themes, theoretical approaches and methodological epiphanies, as well as earlier analyses and memories of researchers who launched feminist educational ethnography in Finland. Drawing predominantly from the British feminist educational ethnography, in Finland feminist ethnography in education took its first steps in the 1990s and achieved a stable position in the early 2000s. Feminist ethnography has contributed to a debate on social justice by highlighting the hidden modes of discrimination and exclusion in educational institutions, thus ‘troubling’ the national self-image as a forerunner of equality and social justice.

The focus of this paper is to examine how immigrants become constituted as ideal care workers in educational settings. By analysing the everyday practices in two educational contexts in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland, the authors explore how these practices that are influenced by the national and transnational immigration and integration policy, regardless of their well-meant actions, can gender and racialise students with immigrant status.

Public debates in Finland on the unwillingness of boys to learning literacy have called for masculine role models to promote reading. This article analyses a privately funded project where two adult males lead a series of gangsta rap workshops during the Finnish language and communication lessons. The workshops were aimed at students in male-dominated fields in vocational education and training (VET). From a methodological perspective, this study contributes to the field of feminist ethnography, and the article draws from sociolinguistic research on swearing. The analysis demonstrates how the workshop leaders profile the students as ‘laddish’, which justifies the leaders’ swearing and thus creates an affiliation to working-class, anti-school masculinities. The article concludes by reformulating the concept of antipedagogy that intersects the ‘failing boys’ discourse with neoliberal mentalities of education. This involves a necessity for leaders to please by performing ‘laddism’ and drawing distinctions within the educational context.

Gender equality has since the 1970s been an aim in international educational politics and policies. Also Finland has evidenced a history of hundreds of projects and reports that have repeated the same aims, ideas and practical innovations for promoting equality, many of them with teacher education as one of the foci. However, the actual pace of change has been very slow. In this paper we focus in the impact of a national project on gender awareness in teacher education (2008-2011). We analyze changes in cultures and curricula in relation to gender awareness in teacher education. The data includes documents of the project, curricula of teacher education, answers of the former activists of the project and interviews with teachers in one teacher education unit. We also use auto-ethnographic methodology. We suggest that conceptual problems in issues around gender and involvement in personal lives makes addressing gender difficult in teacher education. We also suggest that the mission of gender awareness is difficult, but not a mission impossible.

Vuodesta 2000 lähtien kolmen vuoden välein toteutetun OECD:n eli Taloudellisen yhteistyön ja kehityksen järjestön koordinoiman kansainvälisen oppilasarvioinnin (Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA) tulokset ovat nostaneet suomalaisen koulutusjärjestelmän ylpeyden aiheeksi. Kansalliseen ylpeyteen on kietoutunut huoli siitä, että sukupuoliero tyttöjen eduksi on Suomessa ollut erityisen suuri. Artikkelissa tarkastelemme PISA-tulosten ensiraportteja eri vuosilta. Kysymme, millaisia tilastoja ja tulkintoja sukupuolesta suhteessa maahanmuuttaja- ja sosioekonomiseen taustaan esitetään ja miten tasa-arvo rakentuu raportoinnissa. Analyysissa nojaudumme tutkimusperinteeseen, jossa numerot, tilastot ja mittaaminen ajatellaan hallintana. Analyysimme osoittaa, että vaikka PISA-tuloksissa suurimmat erot ovat sosioekonomisten ryhmien sekä maahanmuuttajataustaisten ja kantaväestön oppilaiden välillä, raportoinnin painopiste on oppilasarviointien alusta asti kohdistunut sukupuolieroon. Väitämme, että tämä ylläpitää poikiin kohdistuvaa huolidiskurssia suunnaten näin yhteiskunnallista keskustelua pois moniperusteisesta, esimerkiksi taloudellisesta ja rodullistamalla tuotetusta eriarvoisuudesta.

Background Health inequalities across countries and populations are well established, but little is known about their long-term trends and even less about factors shaping the trends. We examined the magnitude of absolute and relative educational inequalities in self-rated health over 36 years among adult Finns, considering individual covariates and macro-economic fluctuations. Methods Data were derived from representative annual surveys in 1979-2014 among men and women and covered ages 25-64. Nine periods were used (n = 8870-14235). Our health outcome was less-than-good self-rated health and our socioeconomic indicator was completed years of education as a continuous variable. Nine time-variant sociodemographic and health-related covariates were included. Educational inequalities in self-rated health were examined by relative index of inequality (RII) and slope index of inequality (SII). Results Linear trends suggested stable overall development in both relative and absolute health equalities during 36 years. Period specific analyses showed that among men relative and absolute inequalities narrowed immediately after economic recession in Finland in 1993-94, and among women, inequalities narrowed during global financial crisis in 2008-09. Adjusting for covariates reduced the magnitude of inequalities throughout the nine periods, but affected little the period specific patterning of health inequalities. Conclusions Educational inequalities in self-rated health persisted during 36 years in Finland. While among men and women health inequalities narrowed during and after recessions, they widened soon back to the pre-recession level. The perseverance calls for powerful measures to tackle health inequalities, such as preventing unhealthy behaviours, obesity and unemployment in particular among the lower educated. Key messages Health inequalities have persisted in Finland over 36 years, with unhealthy behaviors and unemployment affecting their magnitude. Health inequalities narrowed during economic recessions, but widened soon back to pre-recession level.

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...

This article analyses how Finnish vocational teachers make sense of the meanings of gender in their work. The context of the study consists of the two most gender segregated environments of vocational education: the female-dominated Sector of Health and Social Services and the male-dominated Sector of Technology and Transport. Our analysis draws on 23 teacher interviews conducted in two vocational institutions, offering vocational upper secondary education and training to both young and adult students. The data is analysed from post structural and material feminist theoretical positions, using various conceptualizations of gender. Our findings suggest that both male and female teachers have adopted the idea of gender neutrality, whilst they simultaneously provide dichotomical and hierarchical perceptions of men and women as vocational teachers. Consequences of minority position in the staff room are different for females and males. In the field of technology and transport, women in the minority, on the other hand, need to struggle continuously with masculine vocational hierarchies to gain professional respect.

The celebration of individual agency, which is closely connected to the promotion of the knowledge economy, competition and performance, is obvious in contemporary European education and youth policy, at national and supranational levels. Schools and teachers are thus expected to be crucial agents in fostering the development of flexible, responsible, self-governing and entrepreneurial citizens by adopting personalised pedagogies and continuous and close evaluation (Hartley, 2009). For example, the project Education Governance, Social Integration and Exclusion in Europe (EGSIE), which included studies from several European countries, revealed considerable consensus among teachers, principals and decision-makers on what constitutes a good student, a good teacher or a good head teacher, clearly reflecting such ideas about agency (Lindblad et al, 2002; Lindblad & Popkewitz, 2004). Consequently, structural and institutional power relations (Arnesen & Lundahl, forthcoming 2010) are downplayed and expressions of individual agency in terms of collective action and resistance are rendered more or less invisible. Furthermore, the emphasis on learning combined with high achievement and control may lead to more children and young people being marginalised and left with less room for agency, resulting in teachers’ attempts to promote socio-emotional development and fostering democratic citizenship being toned down. Such findings, however, make it no less essential to map and analyse new forms of influence and action, new freedoms and controls, individual as well as collective, resulting from or being in conflict with emerging power configurations This special issue highlights the subject of agency in Nordic educational institutions during the early 2000s, with respect to acting on, negotiating, opposing, transgressing and resisting, as well as examining the options for participation by various actors. It is suggested that altered relationships and increased tensions between individual ‘freedom’ (cf. Rose, 1999) and institutional control, as well as conflicting policies and values, bring about particular power dynamics, through which different actors within institutions may gain more or less influence. We also inquire into disruptions or actions that go against the grain. Whilst studies focusing on resistance often regard teachers and students as conflicting groups (see McFadden, 1995), our aim is also to search for alliances that might involve various constellations of students, teachers, and other actors. We look for contradictions in critical manifestations, since the position of being critical and in opposition is more open for some actors, e.g. middle-class boys and male teachers with permanent posts, than

Drawing from an ethnographically grounded longitudinal study on educational transitions, the aim of this article is to analyse young people's reflections about their educational choices at different ages. Consistencies and breaks in their plans and actual choices are explored and reflected in relation to the economic, social, cultural and emotional resources they possess. In particular, the author explores taken-for-granted dichotomous metaphors that seem to open up certain educational routes and close others, such as ‘the head’ and ‘the hand’ for routes to academic and vocational education. In the first section of the article, the author demonstrates how metaphors appear in ethnographic accounts of lower secondary schools. The author then suggests how they are activated when young people reflect on their post-compulsory choices. Finally, the author presents the educational routes of two young people, drawing from their hopes, dreams and actual choices, as they relate them in interviews when they were 13, 18, 20 and 24 years old.

In this article, the authors draw on two qualitative, longitudinal studies of young people’s transitions to adulthood and how they construct these transitions over time in social, cultural and material terms. The authors focus on the hopes, anxieties and imagined futures of young women. They discuss the individualization thesis, and the contradiction for female individualization between expectations of equality and the reality of inequality between the genders. The debate is moved beyond ‘pitiful girls’ and ‘can-do girls’ by exploring how young women in the UK and Finland anticipate and try to avoid being locked into the lives of adult women.

The focus of this article is on how Finnish young women construct their transitions to adulthood and how they imagine their futures as women. Tensions in this process are analysed: many young women want to accelerate their shifts towards independent adult status. At the same time, some of them attempt to postpone the point of being locked into the lives of adult women. They look forward to acquiring the legal status of an adult citizen and to moving to homes of their own. But they want to stay young, which means time for relationships, studying, work and travel, and definitely not children at an early age. Being an adult woman does not seem to be a very tempting position for some young women; being a girl is considered by them to open more possibilities. Those young women who are keener to embrace female adulthood are also discussed, focusing on ways in which they envisage their futures, and what contradictions they experience. These tensions are explored drawing from the research project ‘Tracing Transitions — Follow-Up Study of Post-16 Students’. In the study, 40 young women and 23 young men aged around 18 years were interviewed individually, in paris or in groups of three. The project is grounded on ethnographic research in which the same young people were followed when they started secondary school at the age of 13 years.

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.

Opiskelemassa tavallaan : vanhat naiset ikaihmisten yliopistossa / Hanna Ojala. Vaitoskirja. Tampere : Tampere University Press, 2010. 406 s. ISBN 978-951-44-8298-4 (PDF), ISBN 978-951-44-8279-3 (nid.)

This article explores young people's perspectives on males and females as teachers, contrasting these with teachers' perceptions. It builds on 90 interviews of school students aged 13-14 and 60 follow-up interviews 4 years later. The first interviews were conducted in ethnographic context in two secondary schools in the mid-1990s in Helsinki, Finland. Whilst lack of male teachers is a recurrent theme in educational discussion, widely agreed among teachers, gender did not appear to be relevant when young persons talked about teachers. They appreciate teachers, irrespective of gender, who can teach and are friendly and relaxed, but who nevertheless keep order and make sure that students work. Male teachers who teach popular, non-academic subjects were often favoured by boys, but so were female teachers of academic subjects and increasingly as time went on. The interviews suggest that students do not need male teachers to act as ‘male models’. They also suggest that male teachers should be sensitive...

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Matalapalkkaisen ja naisvaltaisen yksityisen palvelusektorin luottamusmiehet kohtaavat tehtävässään haasteita niin luottamussuhteiden rakentumisessa kuin henkisessä jaksamisessakin. Paikallisen sopimisen lisääminen edellyttäisi luottamusmiesten toimintamahdollisuuksien, resurssien ja aseman uudelleenarvioimista sekä luottamusmiestoiminnan kokonaisvaltaista kehittämistä. Luottamusmiesten osaamistason kasvattamisella, toimintaedellytysten parantamisella ja ammattiliitolta saadulla tuella kohennetaan heidän asemaansa työpaikoilla, ja sitä kautta edistetään myös paikallisen sopimisen toteutumista.

Tutkimme artikkelissamme, miten tietäminen muotoutuu kasvatusinstituutioissa tehtävässä etnografisessa kenttätyössä. Esitämme, että sanat, kieli ja kielenkäyttö ohjaavat olennaisesti sitä, millaiseksi tieto muotoutuu. Käsittelemme kieltä tutkijan ja tutkimukseen osallistuvien välisenä kohtaamisen välineenä, osallistujien kuulemista ja heidän äänensä välittämistä eteenpäin. Analysoimme, miten ruumiillinen havainto muuttuu kenttämuistiinpanojen kirjoitukseksi ja miten kirjoitus sekä sisältää tutkijan kokemaa että eroaa siitä. Näkökulmamme on metodologinen ja erityisesti feministiseen etnografiaan tarkentuva. Analysoimme, miten havainnot ja puhe muuttuvat kirjoitukseksi. Kasvatuksen instituutioiden etnografinen tutkimus valottaa feministisessä keskustelussa keskeisiä kysymyksiä tutkijan ja tutkimukseen osallistuvien välisistä valtasuhteista sekä tutkijan kokemuksen vaikutuksesta tutkimuksessa syntyvään tietoon. Feministiselle tutkimukselle ominaisesti kuljetamme kysymystä eettisyydestä tarkastelumme läpi. In this methodological article we examine how knowledge is shaped in the ethnographical fieldwork that is being conducted in educational institutions. We are especially interested in how language and writing are engaged in the production of knowledge. We analyse the encounters between the researcher and her field, and see these as emerging in the processes of listening and observing. Hence, we explore how observations and speech turn into writing. Writing also mediates knowledge of the field, but not all of the observations and remarks of the ethnographer captured in the writing. Ethnographical research in the field of education, with the participants being young people and children, deciphers the questions concerning the power-relations between the researcher and the participants and their positionings in relation to each other, both being central issues in feminist methodology. Following the tradition of feminist research, we also concentrate on ethical issues throughout the article.

This article illustrates the becoming of one conference paper. The thought of Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) on rhizomes enables us to think of a paper, an article, of thinking and writing as always becoming, in the middle, in between, as an assemblage and a multiplicity. This article (undone) consists of three texts, the first being the paper read at the 7th International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), the second, the paper written before traveling to the conference, and the last, a text written after the conference. The texts show a work in the making (Lather, 2007), while revealing some (n-1, writing on multiple dimensions, though never on all) lines of reading, thinking, and writing. Also the author’s nomadic, questioning, and hesitant mode of proceeding with her research, coming to (not-)knowing, is exemplified and performed. Simultaneously, this writing also deconstructs (and goes beyond) certain traditional scholarly reading, citing, writing, and arguing practices.