‘Everything is different here …’: mobilizing capabilities through inclusive education practices and relationships

There is some ambiguity and contention surrounding the role and potential of education and training measures beyond formal schooling. While labour market integration is generally the assumption underlining such projects and programmes, there is clearly another significant side to those measures that target educationally excluded youth; namely, its broader social inclusion dimension. An important aspect to this dimension is the consideration as to how social inclusion is articulated at a policy intervention level. This paper argues the importance of individual relationships, meaningful interactions and ‘everyday allegiances’ for authentic educational inclusion. Such social practices operate in ways to support the capabilities and personal resources required to compensate for the psychically and biographically damaging effects experienced through the institution of schooling. This paper details the contours of inclusive social practices and relationships surrounding a ‘second chance’ education and training intervention in Ireland known as Youthreach, which, it can be argued, bears some resemblances to what might be categorized as ‘positive welfare’.     

Craft Education in Finland: Definitions,Rationales and the Future

The status, content, and social factors influencing craft education in Finland, a standard subject in comprehensive schools, were examined during interviews with craft teachers, craft teacher preparers, and educational administrators. In this paper, the following areas are examined: How are crafts defined? What rationales and cultural and social factors keep craft education robust and what factors threaten it? What is perceived as the future of craft education? The status, content, and social factors influencing craft education in Finland, a standard subject in comprehensive schools, were examined during interviews with craft teachers, craft teacher preparers, and educational administrators. In this paper, the following areas are examined: How are crafts defined? What rationales and cultural and social factors keep craft education robust and what factors threaten it? What is perceived as the future of craft education? interviewees for teaching craft in schools fell into five categories: craft provides 1) cognitive development in several dimensions, 2) learning about living in the world, 3) Finnish traditions and culture, 4) social and individual growth, and 5) a break from the demands of academic subjects. All interviewees seemed to agree that teaching crafts in Finland is changing in terms of how teachers are prepared, who writes curriculum, the content of the curriculum, and the configuration of craft in the comprehensive school curriculum. Some interviewees portended a decline in craft education in public schooling, while others embraced change as part of nation building.     

Decomposing inequalities in performance scores: the role of student background, peer effects and school characteristics

This paper analyses the mechanisms of stratification and inequalities in educational achievements. The main objective is to determine how stratification leads to unequal educational outcomes and how inequalities are channelled through student characteristics, school characteristics and peer effects. This analysis is undertaken in five countries differentiated by their schooling systems. The countries are Japan, Finland, Germany, Italy and the UK, and the dataset used is PISA 2003. The analysis consists of a multilevel econometric model used to explain variations in performance scores. The explanatory variables are student, school and peer characteristics. The institutional context of each education system is used to interpret the results and to describe how inequalities arise. In the last section, policy implications, based on the regression results, are derived.     

State formation and the rise of elementary education at the periphery of Europe: the cases of Finland and Turkey 1860–1930

This article addresses the role of the state and state formation in the establishment of national education during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Through a comparative case analysis of two countries at the European periphery (Finland and Turkey), this article shows how national educational systems, in both instances, were driven by periods of intense state building. In the nineteenth century, military defeats sparked educational reforms, and in the early nineteenth century school laws were enacted due to the establishment of the republics of Finland and Turkey. Nevertheless, these examples also show the limits of a state formation perspective. Despite changes in educational policy, neither state reached high enrolment levels in the nineteenth century, and only in Finland schooling for all was realised in the 1930s. Thus, this work encourages further comparative analyses of the social, economic and political circumstances in which these states acted.     

Welfare regimes and educational inequality: a cross‐national exploration

Research on welfare state regimes and research on educational policy share a common concern for the reduction of social inequality. On one hand, welfare state research is typically designed within a comparative approach where scholars investigate similarities and differences in social institutions across selected countries. On the other hand, the basic model of educational policy research is usually country specific and seldom identifies why and how we are to understand cross‐national differences pertaining to social inequality. The goal of the research is to bridge these two areas by testing socio‐economic gradients and educational outcomes among 15 industrialised countries (using 2003 PISA data) from a welfare state perspective. Results support Esping‐Andersen's ‘three worlds’ typology in that the level of between‐school educational inequality is the highest in conservative welfare states and is the lowest in social‐democratic countries.     

Inclusion and deaf education: the perceptions and experiences of young deaf people in Northern Ireland and Sweden

The purpose of the present study is to examine what the concept of inclusion means and how it relates to children who are deaf. The paper begins with a background to deaf education, followed by specific reference to how inclusion is perceived in Northern Ireland and in Sweden. It investigates the experiences and opinions of deaf pupils in Schools for the deaf in both countries where different educational philosophies and forms of instruction prevail. A qualitative approach was adopted in which interviews were conducted with deaf pupils who were in their last school year, had left school recently or were in post-compulsory education. The results indicated that Swedish respondents described their experiences markedly more positively than those in Northern Ireland. The main reason for this was the encouragement of a deaf cultural environment where sign language was used by teachers and pupils for instruction and social interaction throughout the school. Although such a culture was not in evidence in Northern Ireland, positive experiences reported by respondents were associated with sign language and a deaf classroom assistant to facilitate comprehension between teachers and pupils. Implications are drawn for effective, inclusive practice in educational settings of deaf children.     

成人教育“北欧模式”述介及其对我国的启示

“北欧模式”又称“斯堪的纳维亚模式”,是北欧瑞典、芬兰、丹麦、挪威、冰岛五个国家针对于社会保障所采取的“高福利、高消费、高税收”的社会保障模式。这种模式在近些年来不断地促进北欧五国经济的持续增长,使其成为世界上贫富差距最小的地区。当然作为社会保障的一个重要的组成部分,成人教育在北欧也施行得相当的成功,其特点和经验也值得我国借鉴。     

Music Education at Hospital Schools in Spain and Sweden: Paths Between Governing and Knowledge

This paper focuses on some debates regarding music education within hospital schooling, an educational track that has developed in the course of the 20th century within Western education systems. Analysis and proposals are made with respect to the music education curriculum content in primary education, within hospital education tracks, in Spain and Sweden. In order to critically approach the changing definition of what is considered significant knowledge, we discuss how music education curriculum content is included in hospital schools located in the capitals Madrid and Stockholm.     

The coherence of vocational education and training in Norway and Spain: national traditions and the reshaping of VET governance in hybrid VET systems

Coherence of national education and training systems is increasingly tabled in European policy debates. Leaning on literature about the emergence and consolidation of national education systems, this article explores the rationale for VET reforms in Norway and Spain by scrutinising attempts to strengthen the coherence of their VET systems. Coherence has been sought through the unification of different strands of vocational education; initial, continuing and active labour market policies (what we call ‘horizontal coherence’) and the mainstreaming of VET curricular elements; plus the systematisation of VET practices across educational levels (‘vertical coherence’). While both countries looked for coherence, their motivations, how they operationalised the term and the emphasis of their actions differed substantially. Spain has experienced a move from the three largely unrelated strands into a more unified system; Norway from a fragile VET system to the availability of more VET courses and apprenticeship arrangements at all educational levels.     

Inclusion in PK‐12: an international perspective

With an aim to investigate inclusion across borders, quantitative and qualitative data were examined that came from 18 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Finland, France, Iceland, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. Four themes emerged in this study: (1) concerns with student outcomes in inclusive settings; (2) teachers’ beliefs and the ways they relate to their practices; (3) inclusive schools philosophies and practices; and (4) the intersection of inclusion and exclusion. Although international policies, knowledge, and understanding about inclusion and inclusive practices continue to advance throughout the world, there are manifestations of provincialism and discrimination predominantly marked by ethnicity, socio‐economic status, and ability. While a reality for some students, inclusion remains an aspiration for too many.     

Subtle discourses on equality in the Finnish curricula of upper secondary education: reflections of the imagined society

Assurance of citizens’ social rights and minimization of social differences have been central tenets that have framed the educational policy of Finland and the other Nordic welfare states. Equality has been on the official agenda in educational politics and policies since the comprehensive school reforms of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the conceptualization of equality has fluctuated, reflecting the political climate in which the policy statements have been created. In this article, we analyse Finnish curricular documents concerning upper secondary education from the 1970s to the 2010s in order to find out how the aims of educational equality are presented. Drawing on different conceptualizations of equality and social justice, as well as feminist theorizations of intersectionality, we scrutinize how gendered, classed and ethnised patterns are emphasized, challenged or muted in documents. Through the longitudinal data of this study it is possible to analyse the growing impact of this neo-liberal educational restructuring into Finland, which has a reputation for equal education and excellent records in the Programme for International Student Assessment tests. Hence, we ask how the Finnish society as an imagined community is reflected in the documents of different decades.     

Disturbed by ‘the stranger’: state crafting remade through educational interventions and moralisations

This article addresses two questions. First, how does a state, in casu the Danish welfare state, based on universalism and social rights as regards its citizens, deal with immigrants and their descendants through education? Second, how does such a state manage to make its differential treatment of human beings work legitimately, that is, what arguments, what interventions and moralisations, are used through the workings of school education? The article carries out an analysis of policies since the 1980s and depicts the construction of ‘the stranger’ parallel to an analysis of the state crafting processes that go on in terms of professional educational interventions in Højmarken School, a school placed in an urban poor area.     

Erasmus student mobility flows

This article identifies student mobility flows using Erasmus data from 2007–2008 to 2013–2014. We used the software programmes “R” for statistical analysis and “Pajek” for analysis of networks. Findings provide an overview of student mobility from three perspectives. We find the most balanced relative outbound and inbound mobility in Spain, Switzerland, Austria and Poland. Moreover, Spain and Italy exchange the most students between each other. Overall, the core centres for student mobility are Spain, France, Germany and Italy. Smaller countries, such as Luxemburg, Malta and Liechtenstein, have large numbers of mobile students considering the size of the country's student population. The network analysis revealed three groups of countries: (1) good receivers and senders (Spain, Italy, and Germany), (2) good receivers only (Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Portugal) and (3) good senders only (Belgium and the Czech Republic).     

浅析信息时代大学生媒介素养教育

信息化是现代社会的发展趋势,传媒的社会覆盖面越来越大,对大众的影响也越来越大,对大学生更是形成了一定的冲击。目前,澳大利亚、加拿大、英国、法国、德国、挪威、芬兰、瑞典等国,已将媒介素养教育列入全国范围或国内部分地区中、小学的正规教育内容。提高大学生的媒介素养对大学生的学习、生活、参与国家和社会事务等具有十分重要的意义。     

Authors' addresses

Education in Finland is facing new challenges in the form of two related trends: ‘therapisation’ and ‘projectisation’. The concept of therapisation describes the ways in which ideas, discourses and practices from counselling, therapy, psychiatry, educational and clinical psychology become internalised and normalised in education. Projectisation represents a disciplinary and productive form of power related to project-based activities that have permeated education in Finland. The alliance between projectisation and therapisation specifies the parameters of what can be said and done in project-based education. This article analyses the shift in Finnish education towards individually targeted, project-based and therapeutic activities, such as those for mental health and emotional well-being, as well as activities for emotional and psychological support and raising self-esteem. These short-term educational activities targeting youth at risk of social exclusion represent a form of regulative and productive power that intertwines with young adults’ education, guidance and rehabilitation. The article is informed by a Foucauldian discourse-analytic methodology and on an empirical study. Through analysis of interviews and ethnographic research with young people and project workers involved in education, guidance and rehabilitation activities, I draw critical attention to the alliance between therapisation and projectisation in education and some of its educational and social implications.     

Does School Admission by Zoning Affect Educational Inequality? A Study of Family Background Effect in Estonia,Finland, and Sweden

We indicate the size of family background effects in Sweden, Finland, and Estonia – countries that differ in both the rhetoric and extensiveness of the system-level school choice policies. Family background effect is defined as the dependence of student achievement on family background characteristics, such as parental education, income, and social status. The number of books at home is used as a proxy when operationalising family background, and its effect is measured as a percentage of individual-level PISA scores. Fixed-effect regression results reveal that family background remains a powerful determinant in the educational results of 15-year-old students in all three cases, being largest in Sweden. Furthermore, we show how the family background effect is moderated by school-level choice policy, that is, how students and schools are matched. The analysis reveals that zoning policies have statistically significant negative effects on the impact of the family background effect, independent of country-level policies.     

Frühpädagogische Ausbildungskonzepte in drei nordischen Ländern

In Germany, policy drives in recent years to implement first-time offcial early childhood curricula, coupled with new legislation guaranteeing entitlement by 2013 to a place in early childhood provision not only for three to six year olds but also for one and two year olds, are challenging the traditional parameters of professional work in early childhood services. Despite a flurry of initiatives by individual higher education institutions to introduce new forms of professional education/training for key workers, the required and desired professional profile is far from being clear. As one possibility of moving the discussion forward, this paper looks at current study routes and professional profiles of the core practitioners in early childhood centres in Denmark, Finland and Sweden. In each of these three Nordic countries the higher education study route leads to a bachelor degree. However. the professional profiles in each country differ considerably, ranging from a social pedagogy professional working outside the education system (Denmark), to an early childhood professional working both within a social welfare and education framework (Finland), or an early childhood and primary school professional operating within the education system (Sweden). Debating these varying profiles could be one way of clarifying both policy goals and the content of new higher education level initiatives in Germany.     

瑞典教育改革中的教育公平发展政策

为提高教育效能,福利国家20世纪90年代以来纷纷改革教育。作为高福利国家的瑞典,针对教育发展中出现的诸多问题进行了自由化改革;与此同时,瑞典政府从公平机会、公平对待、公平结果三个方面促进教育公平,采取多种措施评估与监测教育公平程度。政策演进中出现的问题,预示着瑞典教育公平发展政策的未来走向。