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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.

Gender equality is a global aim that has been presented in numerous documents. However, teacher education programs in many countries still lack sustainable strategies for working towards gender equality in education. Working successfully in this area may promote more sustainable practices in schools to reach gender-fair societies. The Nordic countries are known for pro-active gender policies and they provide interesting cases for investigating achievements and struggles in the field. The purpose of this article is, from an international comparative perspective, to explore the rationales and practices when working with issues of gender equality in Finnish and Swedish teacher education and to reflect on related concepts. We describe, analyse and compare local practices, theoretical frameworks and challenges by revisiting gender and teacher education research and equality projects from the 1980s up to today. The comparative methodology chosen facilitates understanding examples from two neighbouring countries, illustrating different ways to develop policies and strategies. Local actors not only follow global claims to work with gender and equality in teacher education but also play an active role and contribute to these discourses. Our study suggests that gender equality cannot be achieved overnight; appropriate strategies need to be negotiated constantly in specific national and institutional contexts at universities and teacher education institutions.

Feminist ethnography in education has in so-called Western countries developed in the late 1900s into a research approach with its own identifiable characteristics. Starting points are in feminist theorizations that draw from perspectives of different marginal groups, raised in the context of cultural radicalization of the 1960s and 1970s. In Finland, feminist ethnography took the first steps in the 1990s and achieved a stable position in educational research in the early 2000s. This emerging research has provided possibilities for subtle analysis in educational institutions on gendered, spatial and embodied practices, which have impact on intersectional inequalities. A theoretical and methodological invention developed by the first Finnish feminist ethnographers in the 1990s is differentiation between the official, informal, and physical layers of the school. Teaching and learning, the curriculum, pedagogy, and formal hierarchies belong to the official layer. Interaction among teachers and students, including informal hierarchies and youth cultures, takes place in the informal layer. The physical school refers to temporality, spatiality, and embodiment. These layers are intertwined in the everyday life of the school; the distinctions between them are analytical. This differentiation is one illustration of nuanced ways to conduct analysis of gendered, classed, and racialized processes and practices in schools. This analytical tool was elaborated in the large ethnographic project, Citizenship, Difference and Marginality in Schools—With Special Reference to Gender (1993–1998). The project was conducted in schools in Finland, collaborating with a similar project in the United Kingdom. The collective project was conceptualized in comparative reflections on contemporary educational politics and policies in both countries and included cross-cultural ethnographic analysis. The layers were used as tools in constructing the theoretical-methodological layout of the project and in focusing the ethnographic gaze in the field, as well as in analysis, interpretation, and writing. Using the layers of the school as an analytic tool passed on to later studies and have further been developed in novel ways, demonstrating the usefulness of collaborative feminist work in national and international networks.

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.

The authors describe in this paper how gender studies in the Nordic context grew into a strong and respected field of educational research, from its first steps in late 1970s until 2019. They identify trends that have persisted over decades and others that have emerged more recently. The authors draw primarily from various documents about Nordic collaboration, Nordic articles in the Gender and Education Journal and review studies. They also include their personal experiences as active researchers since the 1980s. They suggest that in the Nordic countries, gender studies in education were initiated by sociologists rather than feminist teachers (as in the UK) building on a relatively strong alliance between mainstream feminism, state feminist equality officers and feminist research. Gradually ethnography emerged as the main methodological perspective. After 2010 theoretical and methodological choices and themes widened such that the earlier focus on girls and gender relations shifted more to boys and gender diversity. Intersectionality was more emphasised, with post-structuralism having a considerable impact on the Nordic gender and education field.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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 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...

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.

In this methodological article we discuss ways in which researchers observe girls and boys in the classroom. The article is based on a comparative cross-cultural, collective ethnographic study, ‘Citizenship, Difference and Marginality in Schools: With Special Reference to Gender’, which was conducted in secondary schools in Helsinki and London. When we analysed our own actions, we realized that educational researchers – like teachers – tend to concentrate on events taking place in the classroom, particularly visible and audible action. They are less likely to direct their gaze on stillness and silence. In most of the classes that we followed, boys used more voice, time, space and movement than girls, although there were also differences among girls and among boys. In the early stages of our study, noisy and physically active boys drew our attention. But in our practice as the research continued, and in this article, we turn our gaze onto non-events, and ask reflexive researchers to problematize their categories of active and passive. Drawing from our own observations, we discuss how activity, passivity and agency are conceptualized and gendered in educational research.

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.

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 ...

This chapter demonstrates collaborative and cross-cultural analysis combining ethnographic studies conducted in multiple educational settings. The authors give two examples of their work, illustrating how the interpretations are jointly built. In the first example, the analysis is focused on the construction of a ‘special student’ in a lower secondary school in post-communist Estonia. Interpretations, based mainly on data produced in Estonia, were generated with reflections drawn on data produced in Finnish lower secondary schools. In the second case, the analysis concentrates on representations of ‘normal’ childhood and youth in research reports and policy texts on education, and on the impact of these representations on the evaluation of normality made by educational professionals. Interpretations were based on two ethnographic data sets, one generated in the pre-primary education and the other in the lower secondary school. The main conclusions of the paper discuss the usefulness, as well as prerequisites, of the joint analysis. Contrasting and reflecting data from various fields helps to reveal the limitations of straight-forward analysis that would be expected to provide concrete answers to research questions that were defined beforehand. The authors suggest the importance of liberating themselves not only from the bounded site, but also from the idea that the ethnographer’s field could ever be coterminous with or the same thing as a geographically bounded location.