A Narrative Case Study of Pupils' and Teachers' Safety and Well-being Experiences

Author(s):

Eija Syrjäläinen(presenting / submitting)Pirjo Jukarainen(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

05. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

05 SES 07, Urban Children and Youth at Risk & Urban Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-11

17:15-18:45

Room:

D-313

Chair:

Ruth Leitch

Contribution

General description on research questions, objectives and theoretical framework:

The aims of the research are following:

I To have deeper understanding of pupils’ and teachers’ safety and well-being experiences in everyday school life

II To create new kind of education, curriculum thinking, pedagogy and school practices in order to strengthen pupils’ and teachers’ feelings of safety and well-being

III To give teacher education (in service and pre service) more power and knowledge to meet the challenges of more and more violence school life

Finland has been considered as an outstanding and most exemplary school paradise on earth. International PISA – results have been fabulous, but why do our pupils and teachers feel so bad at schools? Considering current global and national dangers such as the two school shootings in Finland (Jokela 2007 and Kauhajoki 2008), it is crucial to gain better understanding about the safety and well-being of pupils’ and teachers’ everyday school life. The shooting situations have contributed to increasing discussion about the communal life and mental state of Finnish young people and the possible polarization in both welfare and life styles of young people. Mainstream understanding of safety and security has been emphasizing stricter control, more effective surveillance and corrective measures. At schools the concept of security has been linked to fire safety, rescue readiness, prevention of vandalism, bullying and physical violence. These are of course important matters to take into consideration when we talk about school safety. But our research approaches security more from human centric and holistic perspective. Based on our research results we would like to promote such school curriculum thinking, pedagogies and school practices which aim at positive and ethical pupils’ identity development. Pupils should be able to find their own talents and strengths. In school everyday life we should strengthen pupils’ feelings of hope and prospects of personal future. Teachers should also feel safe and more well-being is needed in order to give teachers more strength in their every day school work.

The research questions are: (1) How do pupils and teachers experience school safety and well-being? (2) Why do pupils and teachers experience feelings of insecurity in everyday school life? (3) How could pupils’ feelings and experiences of school safety and well-being be strengthened? (4) How should teacher education answer questions about school safety?

Method

The research methodology is narrative (Bruner 1987, Clough 2002, Hatch & Wisniewski 1995, Bruner 1986, Polkinghorne 1995, Lieblich et all 1998). According to narrative research methodology the attention is in narratives as information mediators. Polkinghorne (1995) divides narrative approach into two categories: narrative analysis and analysis of narratives. The narrative analysis promotes new narratives based on data. When analyzing narratives a researcher categories narratives into different categories. Lieblich et all (1989) divide narrative analysis into holistic and categorical. In holistic a narrative is analyzed as a whole, in categorical narratives are divided into parts. The themes belonging in some specific category are concentrated. Our research approach is narrative analysis and it is categorical. The research school is a comprehensive school (classes from 1 to 9th grade, 630 pupils) in the city of Tampere in Finland. The data contains 280 narratives written by the pupils from 1 to 9th grade. To this research we took only pupils’ narratives from grades 6th to 9the. But of course the whole data gave us more understanding and better tools to analyze and interpret. The second research data consists of 75 high school pupils narratives ( 34 boys and 41 girls) and 8 teacher interviews from two high schools in Tampere area in Finland.

Expected Outcomes

Results So far we have only results from our data based on comprehensive school (pupils’ narratives). Based on our analysis we got the following categories: Physical security (fire safety, danger situations, violence, mischief, thefts, school building, school environment and surroundings), psychical security (identity), social security (school vexing, discrimination and equality, school behaving, mentoring) and pedagogical security (teachers and personnel, rules and punishments, teaching). The high school data will be analyzed as following: Physical security environment for pupils and teachers, security as relations between humans at school, the every day practices which increase security and well-being at school. These are the main categories which include more subcategories. The empirical results will increase the human understanding of pupils’ and teachers’ inner feelings of security and welfare in everyday school life. The results will help school actors to develop new theoretical and practical ideas for developing formal education. The results can also be used for developing teacher education and in service training. Results will give new directions to curriculum thinking.

References

Bruner, J. 1986. Actual minds, possible words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. 1987. Life as narrative. Social Research 54 (1). Clough, P. 2002. Narratives and fictions in educational research. Buckingham: Open University Press. Hatch, J. & Wisniewski R. (Eds.) 1995. Life history and narrative. London: Falmer. Lieblich,A., Tuval-Mashiach,R & Zilber,T. 1998. Narrative Research Reading, Analysis and Interpretation. London: Sage. Polkinghorne, D. 1995. “Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis”. In J.A.Hatch & R. Wisniewski (Eds.) Life history and narrative. London: Falmer 6-8. Purjo, T. 2011. Väkivaltaisesta nuoruudesta vastuulliseen ihmisyyteen. (From a Violent Youth to responsible Humanity). Akateeminen väitöskirja. Doctoral Thesis. Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis 1014. Http://acta.uta.fi Rosenblatt, P. 2002. Interviewing at the border of fact and fiction. In J. Holstein & J. Gubrium (Eds.) Handbook of Interview Research. London: Sage.

Author Information

Eija Syrjäläinen (presenting / submitting)

University of Tampere

School of Education

Luopioinen

Pirjo Jukarainen (presenting)

University of Tampere, Finland

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