School in place – School stories as a meeting place of cultural borderlines and conflicts

Author(s):

Eeva Kaisa HyryLeena Syrjälä

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

14 SES 07, Dimensions of Place-Conscious Education

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-29

15:30-17:00

Room:

JUR, HS 10

Chair:

Rune Kvalsund

Contribution

This paper is a part of the research project called "Life in Place. A narrative inquiry into the significance of growing up and living in a small northern village (2008–2011)" that is funded by the Academy of Finland. The aim of this LiP-project is to gain understanding of the relationships between places and people and moreover of the significance of such relationships to education, identity formation and the formation of local knowledge. For two years we have travelled regularly to two small villages in Lapland and asked people to tell about their lives. One of our researchers has lived four months in the village with her family collecting ethnographic data there. In this paper we will consider school in place through narratives of children, teachers and parents. The concept of place is understood here as a concrete and experienced environment intertwining to our identity (Relph 1996). A school is not just a building, a mere physical space, but intertwined with our experiences of growing.

Method

We argue that narratives are crucial in studying places and people’s relationship with them. Narratives are needed for the representation of such complex phenomena. By telling we make sense of our experiences and in our stories we look at our past life through the present and the future (e.g Riessman 2008). The material we have collected during school visits and joint gatherings, ”village evenings” and by interviewing teachers, students and villagers is multi-voiced and reveals the diversity of experiences and events that help us to understand the background and variety of this phenomena. Such material helps us to see also the conflicts in stories.

Expected Outcomes

The village school, according to our first readings of the material, appears as internally conflicting, yet safe and familiar environment of education. In these stories there are themes of letting go and leaving as the village school is constantly under a threat of being closed down. Conflicts are brought in by differences in educational views of school as institution and teachers as its representatives, and parents as locals, who have cultural, place-bound and personal views on educating their children. We approach these conflicts from the point of view of place-based education (see e.g. Gruenewald 2003) and the concept of resistance (see e.g. Corbett 2007).

References

Corbett, M. 2007. Learning to Leave: The Irony of Schooling in a Coastal Community. Halifax: Fernwood Publ. Gruenewald, D. 2003. Foundations of Place: A Multidisciplinary Framework for Place-conscious Education. American Educational Research Journal 40(3), 610–654. Relph, E. 1996. Place. In: I. Douglas, R. Hugget and M. Robinson (eds.) Companion Encyclopedia of Geography. The Environment and Humankind. London and New York: Routledge, 906–922. Riessman, C. 2008. Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Estola, E. Erkkilä, R. & Syrjälä, L. 2003. A moral voice of vocation in teachers` narratives. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 9, 3, 239-256 Hyry, E. K. 2007. Matti Raekallio soitonopetuksensa kertojana ja tulkitsijana [Matti Raekallio as a Narrator and Interpreter of His Music Teaching]. Acta Universitatis Ouluensis E 95. Oulu: Oulun yliopisto. Hyry E.K. 2008. Soitonopettajan praktinen tieto [The Practical Knowledge of a Music Teacher]. Musiikkikasvatus. The Finnish Journal of Music Education 11(1–2), 51–61. Syrjälä, L., Estola, E., Uitto, M. & Kaunisto, S.-L. 2006. Kertomuksen tutkijan eettisiä haasteita [The ethical challenges of a narrative researcher]. In Hallamaa, J., Launis, V., Lötjönen, S. & Sorvali, I. (eds.) Etiikkaa Ihmistieteille [Ethics for social sciences]. Helsinki: SKS.

Author Information

Eeva Kaisa Hyry

University of Oulu

Educational Sciences and Teacher Education

University of Oulu

Leena Syrjälä

University of Oulu

Educational sciences and teacher education

University of Oulu

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