Search results

Finnish schools are often pictured as models for open-ended, child-oriented and dialogic education. In this research article, I approached these phenomena by analysing the organization of a public space in one Finnish school. I used phenomenological concepts – action and labour – to analyse what kind of consequences the organization of the public space of one Finnish school and the activities promoted within it has on the actions and thinking of the students. Did the studied school promote students active participation in the society or did it rather prepare the labour force for the society to keep functioning as it is? In phenomenology, the goal is to study the lived experience of the informants – in this case, of the people acting in the public space of a school. I collected the ethnographic data that was used in the article by doing observations and interviews in one Finnish school in two separate classrooms in the autumn of 2015. My findings elucidate that not everyone was treated equally within the public space of the school. More so, students did not have real opportunities to act freely, i.e. politically and collectively in the school because power was in the hands of the teachers. The students were mostly taught to labour individually, internalize proper behaviour and were recognized through their labour represented by school tasks. Furthermore, most of the classes were packed full, which meant that constant hurry was the pace for life in the school during most of the days. This again made the realization of activities, which would represent action, nigh impossible in the first place.

Finland is considered to be among the most democratic countries in the world according to various international surveys. However, the level of student participation in Finnish schools is below average compared to other European Union countries even though national curricula for comprehensive education have been emphasising values of democracy since the1970s. In this chapter, we analyse how Finnish teacher education contributes to the development of education for democracy. We do this by analysing how education for democracy has been developed in teacher education in Finland, and what kind of ideals form the foundation for education for democracy in Finnish teacher education. The findings are analysed in relation to the Competences for Democratic Culture produced by the Council of Europe. ; peerReviewed