Educational Accounts of Finnish Health Professionals – Considering Antiacademic Discourse

Author(s):

Tarita RuoholinnaAnne Laiho

Conference:

ECER 2010

Network:

2. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

02 SES 05 A, Professionals - Education and Workplace Discourse

Paper Session

Time:

2010-08-26

08:30-10:00

Room:

P722, Porthania

Chair:

Christof Nägele

Contribution

The managerial doctrines of governance and management familiar in the business and applied also to the health-care sector have had a big influence on work of female-dominant health professionals. Education is usually conceived as an important element answering to the changes of the operational environment as well as socializing to the culture of the profession. Education is usually seen as a source and provider of individual and social good.

From the beginning of the 20th century the education of health professionals has diverged from some occupations to various occupations. Health professionals´education is placed on different levels of the Finnish education system: institutions of upper secondary education, polytechnics and universities. The public discussion around health-care sector has been worried about how to get “good and proper”young people to enter the professions. Health-care work is not seen very attractive today because of the problems of the sector.

The aim of our research is to contribute understanding of the meaning of education in the changing operational environment by studying educational accounts of health professionals. The research questions of the study are how health professionals talk about their education and what discourses are used.

Method

A discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking, in which conceptions and suppositions are crystallised. At the same time discourses construct targets of talking, listeners and speakers. In this sense the way people talk has consequences. In an abstract sense discourse is always a category that designates the common semiotic elements of social life. The data of our research are drawn from two trade magazines, Sairaanhoitaja and Tehy (64 articles published in public opinion columns in 2000–2005), and an internet platform for health professionals (http://hoitajat.net/; 186 conversation chains in 2002–2006). In addition one part of our data is composed of thematic interviews (collected 2001) with respondents aged 45 and over working in the sectors of public health care (N=51). The focus of our discourse analysis is on cultural and social viewpoint.

Expected Outcomes

We distinguished two main discourses and named them as the essence discourse and the boundary discourse. By essence discourse health professionals expose different perspectives to the essence and the nature of their occupation or other occupations in the field. In addition defining the essence of occupations discourses crystallizes what is “proper education” and “good pedagogical practice”. Boundary discourse constructs differences, hierarchies and status positions between occupational groups and within a single occupational group. Within these discourses we recognised different parallel and rival ways of talking. In this paper we’ll concentrate on antiacademic way of talking, which is a part of both the essence discourse and the boundary discourse and creates one of the strongest tensions in the educational accounts. The antiacademic discourse emphasized that nursing is first of all practical work. Nursing science was seen as an ideology and a “humbug science”. Furthermore, it was identified as an agent of managerialism. The antiacademic way of talking may also be seen as a counter-discourse in which professionals resisted overemphasis of formal education. This discourse was also a reaction to changes in the functional environment which were experienced as negative and to the conflict between their own professional identity and professional ethics.

References

Foucault, M. 2005. Tiedon arkeologia. Tampere: Vastapaino. Grindle, N. & Dallat, J. 2000. Nurse Education: from casualty to scapegoat? Teaching in Higher education 5 (2), 205-218. Heikkinen, A. 2001. The Making of the Masters and Mistress of the Nation? Teoksessa P. Gonon, K. Haefli, A.Heikkinen ja I. Ludwig (ed.) Gender Perspectives on Vocational Education. Historical, Cultural and Policy Aspects. Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am main, New York, Oxford, Wied: Peter Lang, 279–303. Laiho, A. & Ruoholinna, T. 2008. Terveysalan ammattilaisten koulutuspuhe: erontekoja, nostalgiaa sekä koulutuksen ja työn epäsuhtaa.Yhteiskuntapolitiikka 73 (1), 36– 51. Mackay, L. 1990. Nursing: Just Another Job? In P. Abbot & C: Wallace (eds.) The sociology of the caring professions. London: The Falner Press, London, 29–39. Miers, M. 2002. Nurse education in higher education: understanding cultural barries to progress. Nurse Education Today 22 (3), 212–219. Nieminen, P. 2008. Caught in the science trap? A case study of the relationship between nurses and "their" science. In J. Välimaa & O.-H. Ylijoki (eds.) Cultural perspectives on higher education. New York: Springer, 127–141. Ruoholinna, T. 2009. Ikääntyvät työelämässä. Päihittääkö nuoruus ja koulutus aikuisuuden ja kokemuksen? Turku: Turun yliopisto. Silvennoinen, H. 2002. Koulutus marginalisaation hallintana. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. Wrede, S., Henriksson, L., Høst, H., Johansson, S. & Dybbroe, B. 2008. Carework in crisis. Reclaiming the Nordic Ethos of Care. Malmö: Studentlitteratur.

Author Information

Tarita Ruoholinna

University of Turku

Department of Education

University of Turku

Anne Laiho

University of Turku

Department of Education

Piispanristi

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