The objective of this presentation is to explore how knowledges were constructed as more or less legitimate or valuable, in a Finnish adult basic education (ABE) context. I report on data from a 5-year ethnographic study in rural community college that offered adult basic education (ABE) to students with interrupted educational trajectories. More specifically, I offer examples related to one of my focal students, Hanadi (a pseudonym), a women who relocated to Finland from Afghanistan via Iran. I discuss how some of the knowledges she enacted at school (e.g. art-making) were marked as more or less legitimate, both within specific interactions, and over time. 

To do this, I draw on decolonial scholarship in the area of epistemic justice that understands knowledges as geopolitically and sociopolitically shaped. As a theoretical starting point, I understand current knowledge landscapes in schools as shaped by epistemic oppression (Mitova, 2020), which has historical roots in colonialism. Colonial attempts to erase Indigenous/subaltern knowledges and replaced them with so-called “western” created the illusion of an epistemic “zero point” (Castro-Gomez, 2007), from which the universality of Eurocentric knowledges is promoted (Posholi, 2020). This effort continues today, albeit maybe more subtly, through the normalization of epistemic structures in modern nations states, or what Quijano (2007) has referred to as coloniality of knowledge. For the Finnish context, colonial complicity (Vuorela et al., 2009) can also be a helpful concept to understand the participation of white-perceived or traditionally victim-positioned (e.g. Finland as victim of Russian occupation) societies in a colonial world order. As Finland is, like many other European countries, reckoning with its role as a colonial power, I use international and emerging Finnish decolonial theory to shed light on the ways in which colonial practices and logics permeate the Finnish society and educational system, including in its relationship with migrant communities. The maintenance of colonial logics is particularly evident in the education of forced migrants from the Global South, or, as in this study, students from so-called SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) contexts. Against this backdrop, I tell parts of Hanadi’s story at Asema School (a pseudonym), in respond to my overarching question:

How is epistemic il/legitimacy of knowledges constructed in one Finnish ABE context? 

Answering this question by focusing on Hanadi and her knowledges of art-making, pain sharing, and home-claiming not only illustrates how epistemic value can be claimed, withheld, and change over time, it also directly speaks to the Eurocentric nature of educational practices and policies, and inspires question about the possibilities for decolonial pedagogies. 

In Finland, Adult basic education (ABE) is organized by schools, municipalities, or third sector operators and financed by the Ministry of Education and Culture. ABE teachers serve one of the most heterogeneous groups of students in Finland, particularly in terms of their linguistic, racial/ethnic, and educational backgrounds. Data for this study was collected at a school I call “Asema” in small-town Finland, which, at the time of data collection, served almost exclusively students with forced migration background and interrupted formal education. I began the process of informed consent shortly after I first entered the field. Information to the participants was provided in simple Finnish and English, both orally and in writing, and supported with illustrations. 12 teachers (of Math, Literacy, Finnish, Culture Courses, History, Science, and Biology) and 55 students volunteered to participate in the study. The overarching study examined the discursive construction of epistemic il/legitimacy and was funded by the Finnish Research Council (2020-2025). Data for this paper was collected through a critical ethnographic approach between 2020 and 2024. Together with my research team, [researcher 1] and [researcher 2], I collected 35 open-ended semi-structured and 10 unstructured interviews with students and teachers, 88 hours of audio recordings from classrooms and school-based events, 12 hours of audio recordings from workshops with teachers, and fieldnotes documenting about 120 hours of participant observation. Following the organization, transcription, and anonymization of the data, we conducted a qualitative analysis using a coding scheme informed by the study’s theoretical framework (deductive coding). At the same time, we developed additional codes grounded in patterns and phenomena emerging from the data itself (inductive coding). An iterative movement between these approaches (abductive coding), combined with regular analytic meetings, supported the refinement of our analytical framework. During this process, we also identified focal excerpts for in-depth analysis, specifically discourse and moment analysis (Li Wei, 2011). Across all transcripts and fieldnotes, we then consolidated our codes into broader themes that aligned with the study’s overarching research question about the construction of epistemic legitimacy and illegitimacy. For the purposes of this presentation, I focus on data related to Hanadi, which allows for an illustration of how epistemic discourses are both locally constructed in interaction and developed over time.

I present my findings through four examples that illustrate different aspects of epistemic negotiation at Asema. Hanadi’s house: Knowing and belonging In her first year at Asema, Hanadi shared images of a house she had constructed from cardboard, fabric, paper, and plastic. The artwork was modeled after Finnish houses and served as the set for a stop-motion film she hoped to produce. I analyze this house as a claim to belonging and as a product of transknowledging (Heugh, 2021) and offer a theorization of Hanadi’s artistic knowledges as demonstrating the entanglement of knowing and belonging. I ask what pedagogies might look like if belonging was a starting point rather than a precondition for legitimate knowing. Becoming a daycare teacher: Epistemic reorienting Although Hanadi initially articulated a strong artistic and designer identity, drawing on familial knowledges, these discourses shifted over time. Following interactions with educational advisers and migration authorities, her epistemic identity was reoriented toward becoming a daycare teacher, a high-need profession in Finland. I read this shift through the lens of epistemic lines (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018) that are continually drawn and redrawn and apply Kubota and Motha’s (2024) concept of raciolinguistic essentialism to show how racioepistemic essentialism manifests. Knowledges of pain After the Taliban, who had killed Hanadi’s mother and destroyed her home, regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, Hanadi shared stories about her family members still living in Kabul. Framed as enacted knowledges of pain (KoP, Author, 2024), I reflect on KoP as legitimate epistemic resources that are not instrumentalized or extracted. I further argue that their primary function in the classroom was to create moments of horizontal solidarity among the students. I conclude by discussing implications of my work for researchers, teachers, teacher educators, and policymakers, and by considering what epistemically just education entails in the Finnish and broader European context.

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