Session Information
19 SES 09, Network 19 Session 9
Paper Session
Time:
2008-09-12
10:30-12:00
Room:
A1 316
Chair:
Sofia Marques da Silva
Contribution
After comprehensive school, young people’s educational routes get divided into general (academically oriented) and vocational secondary education. Finnish educational policies address choices as if they were two equal options that are open for each student. This rhetoric hides several taken-for-granted structural and cultural barriers that guide young people to gendered and classed routes.
My aim in this paper is to analyse young people’s reflections about their educational choices at different ages. I try to find consistencies and breaks in their plans and actual choices. I also reflect their choices in relation to the economic, social, cultural and emotional resources that they have. Especially, I will explore taken-for-granted metaphors and dichotomies that seem to open up certain educational routes and close others. Such metaphors are, for example, head, hand and heart, for routes to academic, technical and care educations. I also reflect young people’s thoughts with educational documents and interviews of their secondary school teachers.
The paper draws from an ethnographically grounded, longitudinal and life historical study on young people’s paths to adulthood. These young women and men were met in an ethnographic research in two schools in Helsinki, when they were aged 12-13, starting secondary school. One of the schools we followed was more middle class, whilst the other was more working class. In both schools the majority of students were white and Finnish. The project was cross-cultural and comparative; similar study was conducted in London (e.g. Gordon, Holland & Lahelma 2000). Follow-up studies that I conducted with Tuula Gordon in Helsinki, took place when these young people were around 18, around 20 and around 24 years old. In the interviews with young people we have explored their educational paths and other transitions, as well as their experiences, and the meanings they attach to these processes (e.g. Gordon & al. 2005), and their school memories (e.g. Lahelma 2002).
This paper is connected to a new research project ‘Citizenship, Agency and Difference in Vocational Secondary Education’, with focus on transitions into and practices and processes within vocational education from the actors’ perspectives, as well as on educational politics and policies.
References
Gordon, Tuula & Holland, Janet & Lahelma, Elina & Thomson, Rachel (2005) Imagining gendered adulthood: Anxiety, ambivalence, avoidance and anticipation, European Journal of Womens’ Studies 12(1), 83-103.
Gordon, Tuula, Holland, Janet & Lahelma, Elina (2000) Making Spaces: Citizenship and Difference in Schools, London: Macmillan & New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Lahelma, Elina (2002) School is for meeting friends: secondary school as lived and remembered, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 23, No 3, 367-381
Method
Ethnographically grounded longitudinal life history research, in this paper drawn from young peoples' interviews at the ages of 13, 18, 20 and 24
Expected Outcomes
Young people's routes after comprehensive school divide into gendered and classed paths. I try to find the cultural expectations that are imbedded in taken-for-granted metaphors and dicotomies.
References
References Gordon, Tuula & Holland, Janet & Lahelma, Elina & Thomson, Rachel (2005) Imagining gendered adulthood: Anxiety, ambivalence, avoidance and anticipation, European Journal of Womens’ Studies 12(1), 83-103. Gordon, Tuula, Holland, Janet & Lahelma, Elina (2000) Making Spaces: Citizenship and Difference in Schools, London: Macmillan & New York: St. Martin’s Press. Lahelma, Elina (2002) School is for meeting friends: secondary school as lived and remembered, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 23, No 3, 367-381
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