In this article, we studied how well teacher education in Finland is able to answer the changing needs of the contemporary world. More precisely, we focussed on the question of how well an alternative teacher education model guides teacher students’ agency towards a transformational view of the teaching profession, making it possible for schools to enable social change. This question was studied in the framework of critical social pedagogy. The data for this article was collected ethnographically by observing meetings in the Critical Integrative Teacher Education (CITE) programme at the University of Jyväskylä in 2015–2017. The analysis is based on a theoretical background in which we outline two different discourses on the concept of teachers’ agency. The first promotes schools’ role in conservation; teachers are expected to educate obedient and uncritical citizens to maintain steady economic growth. The second discourse is defined as critical and emancipatory, where the education pursues transformation in students’ underlying attitudes and a deeper understanding of education and society. The results showed that the CITE model fosters teacher students’ critical self-reflection and understanding of group phenomena considering education. The students’ ability to understand schools in a social context also develops. However, CITE seems to struggle in transforming the students’ thinking and understanding into actions. According to the data, feelings of inability, cynicism and a lacklustre ability to understand concretely how teachers can have an impact on society through their profession prevent a more complete transformation in the students’ everyday modes of action. A stronger community perspective, collaboration with institutions outside teacher education, the enabling of group-oriented action and the provision of real-life experiences regarding the transformation could better help to develop future teachers’ agency towards transformational views.
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 Hannah Arendt’s ([1958] 2013) 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.
Suomalainen koulutusjärjestelmä perustuu opettajien vahvaan osaamiseen ja autonomiaan, jonka opettajat omaksuvat opettajankoulutuksen aikana. Kuitenkin useat tutkimukset ja selvitykset ovat osoittaneet, että vaikka demokratia arvolähtökohtana tunnistetaan kaikissa suomalaisissa opettajankoulutusta antavissa yksiköissä, antaa koulutus vain vähän valmiuksia toteuttaa demokratiakasvatusta. Artikkelissa analysoimme opetuskokonaisuutta, jonka tavoitteena on ollut tarjota luokanopettajaopiskelijoille vahvat tiedot ja taidot toteuttaa demokratia- ja yhteiskuntakasvatusta suuntaamalla koulutuksen tavoitteita kohti demokratiaa elämäntapana. Kuvaamme ja analysoimme ryhmän arkea ja toimintaa, jonka avulla tavoitteeseen on pyritty, minkä jälkeen tarkastelemme opiskelijoiden ajattelussa tapahtuneita muutoksia analysoimalla opiskelijoiden opintojen aikana tekemiä kirjoitelmia kaksivaiheisen sisällönanalyysin avulla ja peilaamalla niitä Euroopan neuvoston muotoilemiin demokratiakompetensseihin. Analyysin perusteella esitämme, että demokraattisen elämäntavan luominen kouluihin ja laajemmin kasvatuksen piiriin on jatkuvaa dialogista ja vuorovaikutteista kulttuurin rakentamista, mitä kehystävät eri lähtökohdista tulevien ihmisten käsitykset yhtäältä omasta itsestään sekä yhteisöjen toiminnasta sekä toisaalta aiemmin omaksutut käsitykset koulusta ja kasvatuksesta.
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