"Four Ways of Writing the City" : St. Petersburg-Leningrad as a Metaphor in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky

The present study discusses the theme of St. Petersburg-Leningrad in Joseph Brodsky's verse works. The chosen approach to the evolving im-age of the city in Brodsky's poetry is through four metaphors: St. Petersburg as "the common place" of the Petersburg Text, St. Petersburg as "Paradise and/or Hell", St. Petersburg as "a Utopian City" and St. Petersburg as "a Void". This examination of the city-image focusses on the aspects of space and time as basic categories underlying the poet's poetic world view. The method used is close reading, with an emphasis on semantical interpretation. The material consists of eighteen poems dating from 1958 to 1994. Apart from investigating the spatio-temporal features, the study focusses on exposing and analysing the allusions in the scrutinised works to other texts from Russian and Western belles lettres. Terminology (introduced by Bakhtin and Yury Lotman, among others) concerning the poetics of space in literature is employed in the present study. Conceptions originating from the paradigm of possible worlds are also used in elucidating the position of fictional and actual chronotopes and heroes in Brodsky's poetry. Brodsky's image of his native city is imbued with intertextual linkings. Through reminiscences of the "Divine Comedy" and Russian modernists, the city is paralleled with Dante's "lost and accursed" Florence, as well as with the lost St. Petersburg of Mandel'shtam and Akhmatova. His city-image is related to the Petersburg myth in Russian literature through their common themes of death and separation as well as through the merging of actual realia with the fictional worlds of the Petersburg Text. In his later poems, when his view of the city is that of an exiled poet, the city begins to lose its actual world referents, turning into a mental realm which is no longer connected to any particular geographical location or historical time. It is placed outside time. The native city as the homeland in its entirety is replaced by another existence created in language.

Effects of living crown reduction on needle element status of Scots pine

A wide range of biotic and abiotic factors, operating over different time perspectives and intensities, cause defoliation and a rapid decrease in the crown size of trees. Scleroderris canker disease [Gremmeniella abietina (Lagerb.) Morelet] has caused widespread crown reduction and tree mortality in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L) in forests in Scandinavia during the last three decades. In the 1980's, attempts were made to show, on the basis of the higher foliar N and S concentrations of affected pines in the diseased area, that sulphur and nitrogen deposition predispose trees to G. abietina. Unfortunately, in many studies on defoliated trees, exceptionally high or low needle mineral nutrient concentrations are still often interpreted as one of the causes of tree injury and not, conversely, as the result. In this thesis, three different field experiments, with foliar analysis as the main study method, were conducted in order to asses the possible long-term effects of living crown reduction on the needle nutrient concentrations of Scots pine trees in southern Finland. The crown ratio and length of the living crown were used to estimate the amount of defoliation in the reduced canopies. The material for the partial studies was collected and a total of 968 foliar samples were analysed individually (15-17 elements/sample) on a total of 488 sample trees (140 diseased, 116 pruned and 232 control trees) during the years 1987-1996 in 13 Scots pine stands. All the three experiments of this thesis provided significant evidence that severe, disease-induced defoliation or artificial pruning of the living branches can induce long-lasting nutritional changes in the foliage of the recovering trees under the typical growing conditions for Scots pine. The foliar concentrations of all the 17 mineral nutrients/elements analysed were affected, to a varying degree, by artificial pruning during the following three years. Although Scots pine, as an evergreen conifer, is considered to have low induced chemical responses to defoliation, this study proved experimentally under natural forest conditions that severe artificial pruning or disease-induced defoliation of Scots pine trees may induce biologically significant changes in the concentrations of most of the important macro- and micronutrients, as well as of carbon, in refoliated needles. Concerning the studies in this thesis, I find the results significant in providing new information about the long-term effects of rapid living crown reduction on the foliar nutrient and element status of Scots pine trees. Key words: Foliar analysis, defoliation, needle loss, pruning, nutrients, Pinus sylvestris, Gremmeniella abietina

Ways of Explaining Workplace Bullying: A Review of Enabling, Motivating, and Precipitating Structures and Processes in the Work Environment

This paper summarizes literature explaining workplace bullying and focuses on organisational antecedents of bullying. In order to better understand the logic behind bullying, a model discussing different types of explanations is put forward. Thus, explanations for and factors associated with bullying are classified into three groups, i.e. enabling structures or necessary antecedents (e.g. perceived power imbalances, low perceived costs, and dissatisfaction and frustration), motivating structures or incentives (e.g. internal competition, reward systems, and expected benefits), and precipitating processes or triggering circumstances (e.g. downsizing and restructuring, organisational changes, changes in the composition of the workgroup). The paper concludes that bullying is often an interaction between structures and processes from all three groupings.

Kestävä kehitys globaalin ajan hyvinvointiyhteiskunnan haasteena

The objective of the dissertation was to determine the concept of sustainable development according to current understanding and to analyze the structuration of sustainable daily life and how it varies between different groups. The present dissertation is both a literature-based theoretical study and data-based empirical research. The theoretical framework of the study was a greated model of the Structuration of Sustainability in Everyday Life. The model is based on a synthesis of Giddens Theory of Structuration (1984), Spaargaren JA van Vliet's Theory of Consumption as Social Practices (2000) and principles of sustainable development. According to the model created, sustainable everyday life is generated in a context of internal and external factors compromising the interests of ecosystems, society and business. The literature used in the thesis included international and national statements on sustainable development and research into sustainability and the transition to sustainable societies. The data were collected at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. The discretionary sample consisted of students of social services (n = 210) and were collected using the semantic differential technique. The data were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. The results showed that the value placed on ecological, economic and social sustainability increased with age. Activity in non governmental organizations was associated with the acceptance of sustainable development as a whole and especially with global responsibility. Women's everyday life promoted sustainability more than men´s. People living in Helsinki had more sustainable ways of living than those living in the surrounding municipalities because of greater recycling and the low importance given to ownership. Prefering vegetarian food turned out to be a real opportunity for a more sustainable way of living because there were few barriers identified. Contradictory human behavior occurred when advanced sustainable consumer were ready to risk their health. The importance of communality was high and it was considered an aspect of health. The most significant obstacles to sustainable development in daily life were high costs, lack of knowledge and busyness. Similar attitudes towards sustainable development translate into different people´s behavior, which indicates complexities of the behaviour change in the context of sustainable development. The role of non governmental organizations is significant in increasing global responsibility. Education presents an opportunity to increase sustainability, but there are challenges to face from system thinking and in understanding entities in a state of transition towards sustainable everyday life. The responsibility of policy makers is paramount because high costs create a barrier to a sustainable way of living. The implementation of the concept of sustainable development should be focused on the planetary ethics which cover humans, animals, plants and ecosystems. Keywords: Sustainable development, sustainable thinking, behaviour change  

Living Poetically in the Modern Age : The Situational Aspects of Kierkegaard's Thought

How did Søren Kierkegaard (1813 1855) situate the human subject into historical and social actuality? How did he take into consideration his own situatedness? As key for understanding these questions the research takes the ideal of living poetically that Kierkegaard outlined in his dissertation. In The Concept of Irony (1841) Kierkegaard took up this ideal of the Romantic ironists and made it into an ethical-religious ideal. For him the ideal of living poetically came to mean 1) becoming brought up by God, while 2) assuming ethical-religiously one s role and place in the historical actuality. Through an exegesis of Kierkegaard s texts from 1843 to 1851 it is shown how this ideal governed Kierkegaard s thought and action throughout his work. The analysis of Kierkegaard s ideal of living poetically not only a) shows how the Kierkegaardian subject is situated in its historical context. It also b) sheds light on Kierkegaard s social and political thought, c) helps to understand Kierkegaard s character as a religious thinker, and d) pits his ethical-religious orientation in life against its scientific and commonsense alternatives. The research evaluates the rationality of the way of life championed by Kierkegaard by comparing it with ways of life dominated by reflection and reasoning. It uses Kierkegaard s ideal of living poetically in trying to understand the tensions between religious and unreligious ways of life.

Changing Lived Worlds of Contemporary Amazonian Native Young People : Manchineri Youths in the Reserve and the City, Brazil-Acre

This thesis discusses the contemporary construction of the lived worlds of indigenous Amazonian youths. Today’s native peoples are considerably affected by the processes of globalization and urbanization, which have led to new ways of relating to their cultural traditions. This work presents a case study of Manchineri youngsters aged between 14 and 24 years old living in Acre state in Brazilian Amazonia. The Arawak-speaking Manchineri number some 1,000 people; their legally demarcated reserve is situated next to the River Yaco. The research is based on ethnographic material collected in the Mamoadate reserve and in the state capital, Rio Branco. By comparing the youth in different physical and social environments (the reserve and the city), my attempt has been to search for the most typical elements maintained, altered and created in the current lived worlds of Manchineri youths. Fieldwork methods included interviews, participant observation, photographs, video recordings, and drawings. The material was analyzed within the multidisciplinary framework of the social and cultural construction of knowledge. The study applies the concepts of social field, symbolic capital, and habitus as they have been used by Pierre Bourdieu; perspective as developed recently in Amazonian ethnology; the sacred as a cultural category as understood in the study of religion; and individual and person as concepts central to anthropology and sociology. Additionally, the study can be contextualized within youth studies, Latin American studies, and urban studies. The results of the study show that the everyday lives of young Amazonian native people are formed by a complex mixture of ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’, fragmentation, and transitions between different conceptual frameworks. Part II discusses the ethnographic material in depth and shows that indigenous adolescents act from a variety of social perspectives: the native youth’s own ethnic group, divided into sub-groups, especially into urban residents and those living in the reserve; ancestors, super-human agents and spirits; other indigenous groups and non-natives. Consequently, besides the traditional initiation ritual, we find various contemporary rites of passage to adulthood: state-education, learning traditional practices, shamanism, matrimony, and transitions between the reserve and urban areas. According to these results, new social roles, political organization, responsibilities, and in general the desire to be respected, require both ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ abilities. In Part III, the study shows that the current power relations constituted by new social contacts, ethnic recognition, and cooperation with different institutions have resulted in the formation of new social fields: youth cultures, the ethnic group, shamanic practices, the ethnopolitical movement, and indigenous students. The capacity of young Amazonian Indians to act in contemporary social fields produces them as full persons. The study also argues that the elements of the lived worlds can be divided into these social fields. When focusing on these fields, it became evident that these comprise the strategies adopted by young Indians to break through social and cultural barriers.

Phylogeny of a taxonomically difficult group and evolution of host location mechanism

The parasitic wasps are one of the largest insect groups and their life histories are remarkably variable. Common to all parasitic wasps is that they kill their hosts, which are usually beetles, butterflies and sometimes spiders. Hosts are often at a larval or pupal stage and live in concealed conditions, such as in plant tissue. Parasitic wasps have two main ways of finding their host. 1) They can detect chemical compounds emitted by damaged plant material or released by larvae living in plant tissue, and 2) detect the larvae by sound vibrations. Even though pupae are immobile and silent, and therefore do not cause vibration, parasitoids have, however, adapted to find passive developmental stages by producing vibration themselves by knocking the substrate with their antennae, and then detecting the echoes with their legs. This echolocation allows a parasitoid to locate its potential hosts that are deeply buried in wood. This study focuses on the relationships of the subfamily Cryptinae (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) and related taxa, and the evolution of host location mechanism. There are no earlier studies of the phylogeny of the Cryptinae, and the position of related taxa are unclear. According to the earlier classification, which is entirely intuitional, the Cryptinae is divided into three tribes: Cryptini, Hemigasterini and Phygadeuontini. Further, these tribes are subdiveded into numerous subtribes. This work, based on molecular characters, shows that the cryptine tribes Cryptini, Phygadeuon¬tini and Hemigasterini come out largely as monophyletic groups, thus agreeing with the earlier classification. The earlier subtribal classification had no support. In addition, it is shown that modified antennal structures are associated with host usage of wood-boring coleopteran hosts. The cryptines have a clear modification series on their antennal tips from a simply tip to a hammer-like structure. The species with strongly modified antennae belong mostly to the tribe Cryptini and they utilise wood-boring beetles as hosts. Also, field observations on insect behaviour support this result.

'Somalia lives with me' : Homeland and Religion in the Lives of Finnish Somalis

The purpose of this thesis is to examine Somalis who live in Finland through their memories. These memories are interpreted as subjective experiences emphasizing the significance of the past and religion in these memories. On the other hand, these memories are understood as a part of collective social memory of Somalis. This study also constructs a comparative perspective for practising Islam in Somalia and Finland. The methodological framework is based on theories of social memory, oral history and narrative analysis. The empirical data is collected by interviewing Somalis living in Finland. The interviews were conducted by using the method of half-structured thematic interview. The data consists of seven interviews. The interviewees are in the focus of this study since their experiences are considered as the main sources of information for this study. The empirical data of the study reveals that Somalis have maintained strong relations to Somalia. The relationship to Somalia is mainly constructed on positive memories. Memories from Somalia have acquired a significant role in the lives of the interviewees. Those memories will define their relation to both past and the present. In the context of religious memories, Islam is described as a way of living which provides advice and defines the terms of everyday life. As a part of those religious memories, the transmitting of Islamic and Somali values plays a significant role in the lives of Somalis in Finland. In such transmitting process of the values, the social religious memory has acquired a significant role. In the context of Islam in Finland, the religious education of children is mentioned as one of the most important features of the Islamic faith by the interviewees. In general, the practice of Islam does not create any major problems for the interviewees in Finland. The interviewees describe their practice of Islam quite similar when compared to their religious life in Somalia. The empirical data also points out the fact that the meaning of Islam has not changed after moving to Finland. Keywords: Somalis, Somalia, Islam, oral history, narrative research

Lost in translation? : Translating allusions in two of Reginald Hill's Dalziel & Pascoe novels

This study examines strategies used to translate various thematic and character delineating allusions in two of Reginald Hill's detective novels, The Wood Beyond and On Beulah Height and their Swedish translations Det mörka arvet and Dalen som dränktes. In this study, thematic allusions and allusions used in character delineation are regarded as intertextual networks. Intertextual networks comprise all the texts that are in one way or another embedded into a text, all the texts referred to in it and even the texts somehow rejected from a text's own canon. Studying allusions as intertextual networks makes it warranted to pay minute attention to even the smallest of details. Seen together, these little details form extensive networks of meaning that readers use to interpret the text. Allusion can be defined as a reference, often covert or indirect, to another text in a way that brings into the text some of the associations of that other text. A text is here understood broadly, hence sources of allusions include all cultural texts from literature and history to cinema and televisions serials. Allusions are culture bound and each culture tends to allude to its own cultural products. The set of transcultural allusions is therefore fairly small. Translation strategies are translatorial ways of solving translation problems. Being culture-bound, allusions are potential translation problems. In order to transmit the thoughts evoked by the allusions in source text readers to the target text readers translators may add guidance to the translated text. Often guidance is not added, which may result in changes in handling of themes or character delineation, clear in the source text but confusing or incomprehensible in the target text. However, norms in target culture may not always allow the translators the possibility to make the text comprehensible. My analyses of translation strategies show that in the two translated novels studied minimum change is a very frequently used strategy. This results in themes and character delineation losing some of the effect they have in the source texts. Perhaps surprisingly, the result is very much the same even where it is possible to discern that the two translators have had differing translation principles. Keywords: allusions, intertextuality, literary translation, translation strategies, norms, crime fiction, Hill, Reginald

Counter-figures : An Essay on Antimetaphoric Resistance: Paul Celan's Poetry and Poetics at the Limits of Figurality

Titled "An Essay on Antimetaphoric Resistance", the dissertation investigates what is here being called "Counter-figures": a term which has in this context a certain variety of applications. Any other-than-image or other-than-figure, anything that cannot be exhausted by figuration (and that is, more or less, anything at all, except perhaps the reproducible images and figures themselves) can be considered "counter-figurative" with regard to the formation of images and figures, ideas and schemas, "any graven image, or any likeness of any thing". Singularity and radical alterity, as well as temporality and its peculiar mode of uniqueness are key issues here, and an ethical dimension is implied by, or intertwined with, the aesthetic. In terms borrowed from Paul Celan's "Meridian" speech, poetry may "allow the most idiosyncratic quality of the Other, its time, to participate in the dialogue". This connection between singularity, alterity and temporality is one of the reasons why Celan so strongly objects to the application of the traditional concept of metaphor to poetry. As Celan says, "carrying over [übertragen]" by metaphor may imply an unwillingness to "bear with [mittragen]" and to "endure [ertragen]" the poem. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first consists of five distinct prolegomena which all address the mentioned variety of applications of the term "counter-figures", and especially the rejection or critique of either metaphor (by Aristotle, for instance) or the concept of metaphor (defined by Aristotle, and sometimes deemed "anti-poetic" by both theorists and poets). Even if we restrict ourselves to the traditional rhetorico-poetical terms, we may see how, for instance, metonymy can be a counter-figure for metaphor, allegory for symbol, and irony for any single trope or for any piece of discourse at all. The limits of figurality may indeed be located at these points of intersection between different types of tropes or figures, and even between figures or tropes and the "non-figurative trope" or "pseudo-figure" called catachresis. The second part, following on from the open-ended prolegomena, concentrates on Paul Celan's poetry and poetics. According to Celan, true poetry is "essentially anti-metaphoric". I argue that inasmuch as we are willing to pay attention to the "will" of the poetic images themselves (the tropes and metaphors in a poem) to be "carried ad absurdum", as Celan invites us to do, we may find alternative ways of reading poetry and approaching its "secret of the encounter", precisely when the traditional rhetorical instruments, and especially the notion of metaphor, become inapplicable or suspicious — and even where they still seem to impose themselves.

Conducting Gestures : Institutional and Educational Construction of Conductorship in Finland, 1973-1993

Anu Konttinen: Conducting Gestures Institutional and Educational Construction of Conductorship in Finland, 1973-1993. This doctoral thesis concentrates on those Finnish conductors who have participated in Professor Jorma Panula s conducting class at the Sibelius Academy during the years 1973 1993. The starting point was conducting as a myth, and the goal has been to find its practical opposite the practical core of the profession. What has been studied is whether one can theorise and analyse this core, and how. The theoretical goal has been to find out what kind of social construction conductorship is as a historical, sociological and practical phenomenon. In practical terms, this means taking the historical and social concept of a great conductor apart to look for the practical core gestural communication. The most important theoretical tool is the concept of gesture. The idea has been to sketch a theoretical model based on gestural communication between a conductor and an orchestra, and to give one example of the many possible ways of studying the gestures of a conductor.

A Literary Turn : Rethinking the Roles of Generalization and Theory in Anglo-American Moral Philosophy

This work investigates the role of narrative literature in late-20th century and contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy. It aims to show the trend of reading narrative literature for purposes of moral philosophy from the 1970 s and early 80 s to the present day as a part of a larger movement in Anglo-American moral philosophy, and to present a view of its significance for moral philosophy overall. Chapter 1 provides some preliminaries concerning the view of narrative literature which my discussion builds on. In chapter 2 I give an outline of how narrative literature is considered in contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy, and connect this use to the broad trend of neo-Aristotelian ethics in this context. In chapter 3 I connect the use of literature to the idea of the non-generalizability of moral perception and judgment, which is central to the neo-Aristotelian trend, as well as to a range of moral particularisms and anti-theoretical positions of late 20th century and contemporary ethics. The joint task of chapters 2 and 3 is to situate the trend of reading narrative literature for the purposes of moral philosophy in the present context of moral philosophy. In the following two chapters, 4 and 5, I move on from the particularizing power of narrative literature, which is emphasized by neo-Aristotelians and particularists alike, to a broader under-standing of the intellectual potential of narrative literature. In chapter 4 I argue that narrative literature has its own forms of generalization which are enriching for our understanding of the workings of ethical generalizations in philosophy. In chapter 5 I discuss Iris Murdoch s and Martha Nussbaum s respective ways of combining ethical generality and particularity in a philosophical framework where both systematic moral theory and narrative literature are taken seriously. In chapter 6 I analyse the controversy between contemporary anti-theoretical conceptions of ethics and Nussbaum s refutation of these. I present my suggestion for how the significance of the ethics/literature discussion for moral philosophy can be understood if one wants to overcome the limitations of both Nussbaum s theory-centred, equilibrium-seeking perspective, and the anti-theorists repudiation of theory. I call my position the inclusive approach .

Sairaanhoitajaksi kasvattaminen : Sairaanhoitajakoulutus ja siinä käytetyt oppikirjat Suomessa vuoteen 1967 asti

The historical development of Finnish nursing textbooks from the late 1880s to 1967: the training of nurses in the Foucauldian perspective. This study aims, first, to analyse the historical development of Finnish nursing textbooks in the training of nurses and in nursing education: what Foucauldian power processes operate in the writing and publishing processes? What picture of nursing did early nursing books portray and who were the decision makers? Second, this study also aims to analyse the processes of power in nurse training processes. The time frame extends from the early stages of nurse training in the late 1880s to 1967. This present study is a part of textbook research and of the history of professional education in Finland. This study seeks to explain how, who or what contributed the power processes involved in the writing of nursing textbooks and through textbooks. Did someone use these books as a tool to influence nursing education? The third aim of this study is to define and analyse the purpose of nurse training. Michel Foucault´s concept of power served as an explanatory framework for this study. A very central part of power is the assembling of data, the supplying of information and messages, and the creation of discourses. When applied to the training of nurses, power dictates what information is taught in the training and contained in the books. Thus, the textbook holds an influential position as a power user in these processes. Other processes in which such power is exercised include school discipline and all other normalizing processes. One of most powerful ways of adapting is the hall of residence, where nursing pupils were required to live. Trained nurses desired to separate themselves from their untrained predecessors and from those with less training by wearing different uniforms and living in separate housing units. The state supported the registration of trained nurses by legislation. With this decision the state made it illegal to work as a nurse without an authorised education, and use these regulations to limit and confirm the professional knowledge and power of nurses. Nurses, physicians and government authorities used textbooks in nursing education as tools to achieve their own purposes and principles. With these books all three groups attempted to confirm their own professional power and knowledge while at the same time limit the power and expertise of others. Public authorities sought to unify the training of nurses and the basis of knowledge in all nursing schools in Finland with similar and obligatory textbooks. This standardisation started 20 years before the government unified nursing training in 1930. The textbooks also served as data assemblers in unifying nursing practices in Finnish hospitals, because the Medical Board required all training hospitals to attach the textbooks to units with nursing pupils. For the nurses, and especially for the associations of Finnish nurses, making and publishing their own textbooks for the training of nurses was a part of their professional projects. With these textbooks, the nursing elite and the teachers tended to prepare nursing pupils’ identities for nursing’s very special mission. From the 1960s, nursing was no longer understood as a mission, but as a normal vocation. Nurses and doctors disputed this view throughout the period studied, which was the optimal relationship between theory and practice in nursing textbooks and in nurse education. The discussion of medical knowledge in nursing textbooks took place in the 1930s and 1940s. Nurses were very confused about their own professional knowledge and expertise, which explains why they could not create a new nursing textbook despite the urgency. A brand new nursing textbook was published in 1967, about 30 years after the predecessor. Keyword: nurse, nurse training, nursing education, power, textbook, Michel Foucault

Nuorisokodista maailmalle : Kokemuksia nuorisokodissa elämisestä ja aikuisiässä selviytymisestä

This thesis studies the experiences of women who have lived in a youth home as girls. There are two main themes: 1) experiences of living in a youth home, and 2) experiences of coping as an adult. Data on the first theme is purely subjective; it derives from personal, recalled experiences. Data on the second theme is partly based on experiences and partly on facts about the current life situation of the research participants. A third theme of the thesis is concerned with the question of how the research participants’ placement in a youth home influenced their later life. The thesis contributes valuable knowledge concerning the experiences of young people who have been raised in substitute care, a topic that is rare in the literature. The empirical data of the study consists of responses to an initial inquiry and subsequent interviews. The inquiry was sent to 116 former inhabitants of a youth home. 62 altogether returned the inquiry, and 34 participated in the interview. The purpose of the inquiry was to produce an overview of the life situations of the research participants and to invite them to participate in the interview. In addition, the inquiry sought to produce an overview of how the participants enjoyed living in a youth home and how they saw its significance in terms of their later lives. The interviews concentrated on the research participants’ experiences concerning the processes of getting into a youth home, living there, and coping independently in life afterwards. The most central result relating to the first main theme was that the experiences were both shared and non-shared. Living in a youth home was characterized by six general sentiments: “wonderful, real home”, “new world!”, “safe haven”, “place to live”, “penal institution”, and “nightmare”. These sentiments seemed to be related first and foremost to whether one’s own, individual needs and expectations had been met in the youth home. The strongest and most common needs, as experienced, were the needs for safety, belongingness and respect. On the basis of the experiences, meeting these needs can be considered as the most important task of a youth home. The results relating to the second main theme of the study were examined in two different ways. Comparisons with the general female population (education, situation in working life and financial circumstances) showed that research participants had coped less well. Differences were also found to exist in family structures: nuclear families and single mother families were more unusual among research participants, and stepfamilies more common, than in the general population. More of the participants’ children than of the general population’s lived with somebody other than their parent. However, the experience of coping well was common among research participants, although the beginning of independent living had been generally experienced as difficult: feelings of loneliness, insecurity and restlessness were dominant. Later, a sense of life control developed and strengthened through joining with others (family, work, friends), through accepting one’s own life history and through creating one’s own model of living. As the most significant explanation of their coping, the research participants identified their own (innate) strength and will to cope. The majority of the research participants felt that the youth home had a positive influence on their later lives. Positive influences can be grouped in three “levels”: I) getting out of the home, II) having good experiences and learning useful things, and III) the essential effect on one’s own way of thinking and living. The second level’s influence includes strengthened self-esteem, increased social understanding and new knowledge and skills. Some research participants did not think the youth home had any significance in terms of their later lives, and some thought it had negative significance.

Lionhearts of the Playworld : An ethnographic case study of the development of agency in play pedagogy

This is an ethnographic case study of the creation and emergence of a playworld – a pedagogical approach aimed at promoting children’s development and learning in early education settings through the use of play and drama. The data was collected in a Finnish experimental mixed-age elementary school classroom in the school year 2003-2004. In the playworld students and teachers explore different social and cultural phenomena through taking on the roles of characters from a story or a piece of literature and acting inside the frames of an improvised plot. The thesis takes under scrutiny the notion of agency in education. It produces theoretically grounded empirical knowledge of the ways in which children struggle to become recognized and agentive actors in early education settings and how their agency develops in their interaction with adults. The study builds on the activity theoretical and sociocultural tradition and develops a methodological framework called video-based narrative interaction analysis for studying student agency as developing over time but manifesting through the situational material and discursive local interactions. The research questions are: 1. What are the children’s ways of enacting their agency in the playworld? 2. How do the children’s agentive actions change and develop over the spring? 3. What are the potentials and challenges of the playworld for promoting student agency? 4. How do the teachers and the children deal with the contradiction between control and agency in the playworld? The study consists of a summary part and four empirical articles which each have a particular viewpoint. Articles I and II deal with individual students’ paths to agency. In Article I the focus is on the role of resistance and questioning in enabling important spaces for agency. Article II takes a critical gender perspective and analyzes how two girls struggled towards recognition in the playworld. It also illuminates the role of imagination in developing a sense of agency. Article III examines how the open-ended and improvisational nature of the playworld interaction provided experiences and a sense of ‘shared agency’ for the students and teachers in the class. Article IV turns the focus on the teachers and analyzes how their role actions in the playworld helped the children to enact agency. It also discusses the challenges that the teachers faced in this work and asks what makes the playworld activity sustainable in the class. The summary part provides a critical literature review on the concept of agency and argues that the inherently contradictory nature of the phenomenon of agency has not been sufficiently theorized. The summary part also locates the playworld intervention in a historical frame by discussing the changing conceptions of adulthood and childhood in the West. By focusing on the changing role of play and art in both adults’ and children’s contemporary lives, the thesis opens up an important but often neglected perspective on the problem of promoting student agency in education. The results illustrate how engaging in a collectively imagined and dramatized pretend play space together with the children enabled the teachers to momentarily put aside their “knower” positions in the classroom. The fictive roles and the narrative plot helped them to create a necessary incompleteness and open-endedness in the activity that stimulated the children’s initiatives. This meant that the children too could momentarily step out of their traditional classroom positions as pupils and initiate action to further the collective play. Engaging in this kind of unconventional activity and taking up and enacting agency was, however, very challenging for the participating children and teachers. It often contradicted the need to sustain control and order in the classroom. The study concludes that play- and drama-based pedagogies offer a unique but undeveloped potential for developing educational spaces that help teachers and children deal with the often contradictory requirements of schooling.