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.

Women and their Agency in the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Tämä pro gradu-työ käsittelee naisten toimijuutta uusassyrialaisessa imperiumissa. Toisin sanoen työssä tutkitaan naisten vaikutusmahdollisuuksia assyrialaisessa, patriarkaalisessa yhteiskunnassa – aihe, johon ei aiemmin ole juurikaan kiinnitetty huomiota. Täydennän työssä assyriologista näkökantaa kulttuuritieteiden ja antropologian käsitteistöllä ja teorioilla. Työn teoreettinen viitekehys liittyy yksilön, yhteiskunnan ja vallan välisiin suhteisiin, jotka kohtaavat toimijuuden käsitteessä. Vaikka työssä esittelen toimijuuden käsitettä laajemminkin, päädyin aineiston asettamien rajoitusten takia määrittelemään toimijuuden seuraavasti: toimijoita ovat ne naiset, jotka toimivat aktiivisina subjekteina yhteiskunnassa. Näin määritellyt toimijat jaoin vielä kahteen ryhmään, eksplisiittisiin (explicit agents) ja implisiittisiin (implicit agents) toimijoihin. Ensimmäisen ryhmän jäsenet selkeästi toimivat teksteissä jollain tavalla, jälkimmäisen ryhmän jäsenten toimijuus on pääteltävä asiayhteydestä. Pro graduni perustuu laajan tekstiaineiston analyysiin. Jaan imperiumin toimijanaiset kolmeen laajaan ryhmään: palatsissa, temppelissä ja niiden ulkopuolella toimineisiin naisiin. Jokaisen näistä kolmesta ryhmästä jaan vielä useisiin alaryhmiin, useimmiten ammattinimikkeen tai arvonimen mukaan. Suurimmaksi ryhmäksi osoittautuivat palatsissa toimineet naiset. Heistä erityisen aktiivisia olivat šakintut, jotka hoitivat vastuullisia hallinnollisia tehtäviä palatseissa. Myös kuningatarten ja muiden kuninkaallisten naisten rooli toimijoina oli uusassyrialaisella kaudella merkittävä. Temppeleissä toimineista naisista merkittävin ryhmä toimijuuden kannalta olivat naispuoliset profeetat, jotka toimivat aktiivisissa rooleissa ainakin toimittaessaan jumalallisia sanomia. Palatsien ja temppelien ulkopuolelle jäi vain vähän naistoimijoita: omaksi selkeäksi ryhmäkseen erottuivat ainoastaan harimtut, prostituoidut. Lopuksi pohdin jokaisen ryhmän toimijuutta ensin taulukkomuodossa (taulukot 9, 10 ja 11) sitten lyhyessä analyysikappaleessa.

Virtual versus classroom language teaching : A comparative study of the learning outcomes and student responses between two English reading comprehension groups

A 26-hour English reading comprehension course was taught to two groups of second year Finnish Pharmacy students: a virtual group (33 students) and a teacher-taught group (25 students). The aims of the teaching experiment were to find out: 1.What has to be taken into account when teaching English reading comprehension to students of pharmacy via the Internet and using TopClass? 2. How will the learning outcomes of the virtual group and the control group differ? 3. How will the students and the Department of Pharmacy respond to the different and new method, i.e. the virtual teaching method? 4. Will it be possible to test English reading comprehension learning material using the groupware tool TopClass? The virtual exercises were written within the Internet authoring environment, TopClass. The virtual group was given the reading material and grammar booklet on paper, but they did the reading comprehension tasks (written by the teacher), autonomously via the Internet. The control group was taught by the same teacher in 12 2-hour sessions, while the virtual group could work independently within the given six weeks. Both groups studied the same material: ten pharmaceutical articles with reading comprehension tasks as well as grammar and vocabulary exercises. Both groups took the same final test. Students in both groups were asked to evaluate the course using a 1 to 5 rating scale and they were also asked to assess their respective courses verbally. A detailed analysis of the different aspects of the student evaluation is given. Conclusions: 1.The virtual students learned pharmaceutical English relatively well but not significantly better than the classroom students 2. The overall student satisfaction in the virtual pharmacy English reading comprehension group was found to be higher than that in the teacher-taught control group. 3. Virtual learning is easier for linguistically more able students; less able students need more time with the teacher. 4. The sample in this study is rather small, but it is a pioneering study. 5. The Department of Pharmacy in the University of Helsinki wishes to incorporate virtual English reading comprehension teaching in its curriculum. 6. The sophisticated and versatile TopClass system is relatively easy for a traditional teacher and quite easy for the students to learn. It can be used e.g. for automatic checking of routine answers and document transfer, which both lighten the workloads of both parties. It is especially convenient for teaching reading comprehension. Key words: English reading comprehension, teacher-taught class, virtual class, attitudes of students, learning outcomes

From a "Student" to a Lifelong "Consumer" : Constructions of Educability in Adult Students' Narrative Life Histories

The focus of this study was to examine the constructions of the educable subject of the lifelong learning (LLL) narrative in the narrative life histories of adult students at general upper secondary school for adults (GUSSA). In this study lifelong learning has been defined as a cultural narrative on education, “a system of political thinking” that is not internally consistent, but has contradictory themes embedded within it (Billig et al., 1988). As earlier research has shown and this study also confirms, the LLL narrative creates differences between those who are included and those who fall behind and are excluded from the learning society ideal. Educability expresses socially constructed interpretations on who benefit from education and who should be educated and how. The presupposition in this study has been that contradictions between the LLL narrative and the so-called traditional constructions of educability are likely to be constructed as the former relies on the all-inclusive interpretation of educability and the latter on the meritocratic model of educating individuals based on their innate abilities. The school system continues to uphold the institutionalized ethos of educability that ranks students into the categories “bright”, “mediocre”, and “poor” (Räty & Snellman, 1998) on the basis of their abilities, including gender-related differences as well as differences based on social class. Traditional age-related norms also persist, for example general upper secondary education is normatively completed in youth and not in adulthood, and the formal learning context continues to outweigh both non-formal and informal learning. Moreover, in this study the construction of social differences in relation to educability and, thereafter unequal access to education has been examined in relation to age, social class, and gender. The biographical work of the research participants forms a peephole that permits the examination of the dilemmatic nature of the constructions of educability in this study. Formal general upper secondary education in adulthood is situated on the border between the traditional and the LLL narratives on educability: participation in GUSSA inevitably means that one’s ability and competence as a student and learner becomes reassessed through the assessment criteria maintained by schools, whereas according to the principles of LLL everyone is educable; everyone is encouraged to learn throughout their lives regardless of age, social class, or gender. This study is situated in the field of adult education, sociology of education, and social psychological research on educability, having also been informed by feminist studies. Moreover, this study contributes to narrative life history research combining the structural analysis of narratives (Labov & Waletzky, 1997), i.e. mini-stories within life history, with the analysis of the life histories as structural and thematic wholes and the creation of coherence in them; thus, permitting both micro and macro analyses. On accounting for the discontinuity created by participation in general upper secondary school study in adulthood and not normatively in youth, the GUSSA students construct coherence in relation to their ability and competence as students and learners. The seven case studies illuminate the social differences constructed in relation to educability, i.e. social class, gender, age, and the “new category of student and learner”. In the data of this study, i.e. 20 general upper secondary school adult graduates’ narrative life histories primarily generated through interviews, two main coherence patterns of the adult educable subject emerge. The first performance-oriented pattern displays qualities that are closely related to the principles of LLL. Contrary to the principles of lifewide learning, however, the documentation of one’s competence through formal qualifications outweighs non-formal and informal learning in preparation for future change and the competition for further education, professional careers, and higher social positions. The second flexible learning pattern calls into question the status of formal, especially theoretical and academically oriented education; inner development is seen as more important than such external signs of development — grades and certificates. Studying and learning is constructed as a hobby and as a means to a more satisfactory life as opposed to a socially and culturally valued serious occupation leading to further education and career development. Consequently, as a curious, active, and independent learner, this educable but not readily employable subject is pushed into the periphery of lifelong learning. These two coherence patterns of the adult educable subject illuminate who is to be educated and how. The educable and readily employable LLL subject is to participate in formal education in order to achieve qualifications for working life, whereas the educable but not employable subject may utilize lifewide learning for her/his own pleasure. Key words: adult education, general upper secondary school for adults, educability, lifelong learning, narrative life history

Matkalla suomalaiseksi ja hoiva-alan ammattilaiseksi? : Venäläis- ja virolaistaustaisten naisten ja suomalaisuuden kohtaamiset kuulumista rakentamassa

The research examines the process by which a sense of belonging to Finnish society is constructed among women of Russian and Estonian background who are multiply marginalised in Finnish society. It does so by analysing the encounters between their nationality and 'being Finnis'. Attention is focused on the question of what kind of "journey" they take after moving to Finland, how a sense of belonging is constructed especially along the paths followed in education and at work, and what kind of agency is available to them. The thesis is connected with post-colonial research and also draws from studies on citizenship and nationality as well as the social structures of interaction, when analysing careers. As the educational system forms the most central context of the research, the work is also focused on educational sociology. The research methodology includes life history and a narrative approach. The raw data is from thematic interviews concerning the life experiences of women of immigrant backgrounds. They were studying in Finland to be practical nurses or to complete Bachelor of Social Service degree. According to the study, the women had been encountered as alien, strange, and carrying a shade of "otherness". The experience of inclusion in Finnish communities and society turned out to be conditional, an inclusion based on the notion of a citizen worker, which is defined by national needs. The person from abroad is placed in the position of someone who fills gaps in the services of the welfare state. The choice of education in the care sector and the overall necessity of obtaining Finnish education turned out to be socially directed. Gendered structures of education and working life were found to act as a frame in which the decisions of the immigrant women were made. Although national education policy emphasis as an orientation to global labour markets, the immigrant student is placed above all in the position of an object to be made suitable for the Finnish labour market. Citizenship, a goal of education, requires consent to being "socialised" into Finnish society as well as learning to be Finnish. One s only option to negotiate appearing suitable as a member is to construct oneself into someone who adopts Finnish and Western cultural values, values which favour individuality. However, Finnish education is a resource to Finnishness. Finnish education enables a sense of being Finnish, and empowers the job applicant for example, and in addition to providing cultural, human and social capital strengthen inclusion as well. The study confirms the view that the encounter of an immigrant is still characterised by its colonial nature. It shows that encounters with Finns and Finnish society place the person of immigrant background, even one receiving a Finnish education, in the position of "the other". The journey as an immigrant continues. The immigrant has access only to certain predefined subject positions, which limits agency. When categorised as an immigrant, one becomes a per-son who is different and "other", while the sense of belonging as a member of Finnish society without conditions appears to be somewhat unreachable. Yet, new arrivals are capable of acting change. An immigrant woman can challenge the positions offered to her and present herself as strong. Her life story has often included struggle, and she has the fortitude strength to change her circumstances. Key words: life story, post-colonial encounter, nationality, citizenship, the career of immi-grant, position, agency

Depression in / by / for women : agency, feminism and self-help in groups

Depression in / by / for Women: Agency, Feminism and Self-Help in Groups on ensimmäinen väitöstasoinen tutkimus feministisestä terapiasta Suomessa sijoittuen psykologian, sosiaalitieteellisen mielenterveystutkimuksen sekä feministisen tutkimuksen alueille. Perinteisen näkemyksen mukaan feministisen tutkimuksen tulee olla ”naisista, naisten tekemää ja naisille kohdistettua”. Naiset ja masennus -projektitutkimus keskittyy naisten kokemaan masennukseen sisältäen mahdollisen miesten sekä patriarkaalisen hyvinvointivaltion osuuden masennukseen. Masennusta kokevat naiset ovat tutkimuksessa sekä tutkimuksen kohteena että aktiivisia osanottajia, mikä tuo heidän äänensä kuuluville. Tutkimus perustuu vuosien 1994-2000 välisenä aikana kerättyyn 11 ryhmän osallistujia koskevaan kvalitatiivisiin ja kvantitatiivisiin aineistoon. Irmeli Laitinen on ollut suunnittelemassa, keräämässä ja analysoimassa sitä yhdessä projektin muiden jäsenten kanssa. Tutkimuksessa mitattiin kuinka ryhmiin osallistuvien seka masennuksen tunteet että toiminnat muuttuivat yhden vuoden aikana. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli sekä masennuksesta kärsivien naisten osallistuminen feministiseen toimintatutkimukseen että ammatillisesti ohjatun oma-apuryhmämenetelmän kehittäminen suomalaiseen mielenterveyspalveluun. Projektin tutkimustulosten mukaan siihen osallistuneet naiset voimaantuivat ymmärtämään itseään sekä saivat luottamusta sosiaaliisiin taitoihinsa. Pidemmällä aikavälillä naisten tunteet muuttuivat myönteisiksi, heidän suhteensa itseensä positiivisemmaksi ja he aktivoituivat fyysisesti. Lisäksi tutkimustulokset viittaavat siihen, että masennus voi johtua näkymättömästä, sukupuolisesti virittyneestä jännitteestä naisystävällisessä hyvinvointivaltiossa paljastaen ”hyvinvointimasennusoireilun”. Suomalaisen sosiologi Erik Allardtin hyvinvointitypologian - having, loving, being – mukaisesti nämä ryhmään osallistuvat naiset eivät koe puutteita niinkään materiaalisessa hyvinvoinnissa (having) vaan pikeminkin suhteiden, sosiaalisen ja emotionaalisen hyvinvoinnin ulottuvuuksilla (loving ja being). Se, että masentuneet naiset pystyvät tuomaan esille pitkään vaiennettuja kokemuksiaan, voi merkitä paljon heidän paranemisessaan ja voimaantumisessaan. Ammatillisesti ohjatut oma-apuryhmät ja naisystävälliset hoitokäytännöt mahdollistivat tämänkaltaisen paranemisprosessin alkamisen tutkimukseen osallistuneissa ryhmissä.

Working with Identities Promoting Student Teachers Professional Development

The starting point of the study was that good teaching requires a teacher to be aware of the sources of his or her pedagogical decisions; that is, personal values, beliefs and understandings. From this perspective, a teacher s professional development refers to a process of extending one s self-knowledge. The aim of this study was to promote student teachers' professional development with the help of identity work. Identity work refers to reflecting on both personal and professional experiences. Identity work consists of student teachers self-reflection on their life experiences (self-identity) and video diary-based reflection on their classroom practice (professional identity). The research questions of the study were 1) how is identity work manifested by the participants? and 2) what is the potential of identity work in promoting student teachers professional development? The research data was collected from four student teachers in the academic year 2007-2008; the research group had 24 meetings during the research process. Student teachers take part in a multimode teacher education programme, where students work as ordinary teachers in schools during their university studies. The data collection was conducted by using two methods: participants narratives based on autobiographical writings and video diaries based on participants lessons. Narrative research data was analysed by employing qualitative methods and strategies as they were needed in the research. The research results revealed four different ways of working with identities, each of them revealing different aspects of and approaches to identity work. The results also showed that identity work has the potential to promote professional development. As the research progressed, there were visible changes in the participants reflection. However, despite encouraging results, some issues should be critically questioned. Although reflection sounds attractive and fruitful as a tool for promoting professional development, there are also difficulties and obstacles. On the basis of the results, a proposal for promoting student teachers professional development is offered. Keywords: Teacher identity, identity work, reflection, teacher professional development

Captured by conventions : On objectivity and factuality in international news agency discourse

The thesis explores the discourse of two global news agencies, the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, which together with the French AFP are generally regarded as the world s leading news distributors. A glance at the guidelines given by AP and Reuters to their journalists shows that these two news agencies make a lot of effort to strive for objectivity the well-known journalistic ideal, which, however, is an almost indefinable concept. In journalism textbooks definitions of objectivity often contain various components: detachment, nonpartisanship, facticity, balance, etc. AP and Reuters, too, in their guidelines, present several other ideals besides objectivity , viz., reliability, accuracy, balance, freedom from bias, precise sourcing, reporting the truth, and so on. Other central concepts connected to objectivity are neutrality and impartiality. However, objectivity is, undoubtedly, the term that is most often mentioned when the ethics of journalism is discussed, acting as a kind of umbrella term for several related journalistic ideals. It can even encompass the other concept that is relevant for this study, that of factuality. These two intertwined concepts are extremely complex; paradoxically, it is easier to show evidence of the lack of objectivity or factuality than of their existence. I argue that when journalists conform to the deep-rooted conventions of objective news reporting, facts may be blurred, and the language becomes vague and ambiguous. As global distributors of news, AP and Reuters have had an influential role in creating and reinforcing conventions of (at least English-language) news writing. These conventions can be seen to work at various levels of news reporting: the ideological (e.g., defining what is regarded as newsworthy, or who is responsible), structural (e.g., the well-known inverted pyramid model), and stylistic (e.g., presupposing that in hard news reports, the journalist s voice should be backgrounded). On the basis of my case studies, I have found four central conventions to be worthy of closer examination: the conventional structure of news reports, the importance of newsworthiness, the tactics of impersonalisation which tends to blur news actors responsibility, and the routines of presenting emotions. My linguistic analyses draw mainly on M.A.K. Halliday s Systemic Functional Grammar, on notions of transitivity, ergativity, nominalisation and grammatical metaphor. The Appraisal framework, too, has provided useful tools for my analyses. The thesis includes six case studies dealing with the following topics: metaphors in political reporting, terrorism discourse, terrorism fears, emotions more generally, unnamed sources as rhetorical constructs, and responsibility in the convention of attribution.

Angel Investing in Finland: An Analysis Based on Agency Theory and the Incomplete Contracting Theory

Wealthy individuals - business angels who invest a share of their net worth in entrepreneurial ventures - form an essential part of an informal venture capital market that can secure funding for entrepreneurial ventures. In Finland, business angels represent an untapped pool of capital that can contribute to fostering entrepreneurial development. In addition, business angels can bridge knowledge gaps in new business ventures by means of making their human capital available. This study has two objectives. The first is to gain an understanding of the characteristics and investment behaviour of Finnish business angels. The strongest focus here is on the due diligence procedures and their involvement post investment. The second objective is to assess whether agency theory and the incomplete contacting theory are useful theoretical lenses in the arena of business angels. To achieve the second objective, this study investigates i) how risk is mitigated in the investment process, ii) how uncertainty influences the comprehensiveness of due diligence as well as iii) how control is allocated post investment. Research hypotheses are derived from assumptions underlying agency theory and the incomplete contacting theory. The data for this study comprise interviews with 53 business angels. In terms of sample size this is the largest on Finnish business angels. The research hypotheses in this study are tested using regression analysis. This study suggests that the Finnish informal venture capital market appears to be comprised of a limited number of business angels whose style of investing much resembles their formal counterparts’. Much focus is placed on managing risks prior to making the investment by strong selectiveness and by a relatively comprehensive due diligence. The involvement is rarely on a day-to-day basis and many business angels seem to see board membership as a more suitable alternative than involvement in the operations of an entrepreneurial venture. The uncertainty involved does not seem to drive an increase in due diligence. On the contrary, it would appear that due diligence is more rigorous in safer later stage investments and when the business angels have considerable previous experience as investors. Finnish business angels’ involvement post investment is best explained by their degree of ownership in the entrepreneurial venture. It seems that when investors feel they are sufficiently rewarded, in terms of an adequate equity stake, they are willing to involve themselves actively in their investments. The lack of support for a relationship between increased uncertainty and the comprehensiveness of due diligence may partly be explained by an increasing trend towards portfolio diversification. This is triggered by a taxation system that favours investments through investment companies rather than direct investments. Many business angels appear to have substituted a specialization strategy that builds on reducing uncertainty for a diversification strategy that builds on reducing firm specific (idiosyncratic) risk by holding shares in ventures whose returns are not expected to exhibit a strong positive correlation.

The Politics and Policies of Reproductive Agency

This study examines the politics and policies of reproductive agency through a redescription of three Finnish policy documents dealing with the declining birth rate: the Government report on the future 'Finland for people of all ages' (2004), Business and Policy Forum EVA report 'Condemned to Diminish?' (Tuomitut vähenemään?) (2003), and the Family Federation's 'Population Policy Program' (2004). The redescription is done with the help of the notion of reproductive agency, which draws on Drucilla Cornell's concepts of the imaginary domain and bodily integrity. The imaginary domain is the moral and psychic space people need in order to form their personality, which is created in constant identificatory processes. The aim of the processes is imaginary coherence. As the personality is embodied, forming one s imaginary coherence always includes attempts for bodily integrity, also entailing attempts to arrive at an understanding of one's procreative capacities. Besides Cornell, I draw on Judith Butler's thinking and comprehend gender performatively as doing, and in relation to that agency as part of the performative process of one's personality. Reproductive agency is understood in this study as the possibilities to live differently the hegemonic forms of procreative life. I deal with three redescriptive themes: the family, economics and gender. The family is a central element in that it is considered the main location of reproduction. With regard to reproductive agency, the documents include problematic conceptions of the family. It is defined as a heterosexual, monogamous, conjugal relationship, which affects reproductive agency in that these notions do not allow for different modes of family life. The second prominent aspect, economics, features on two levels: the macroeconomic level of GDP, employment and competitiveness, and the level of family policies and concern about family finances. Macroeconomic-level argumentation is problematic in the context of reproductive agency because it implies that procreation is a duty of citizens, and thus has effects on values attached to reproductive potential. On the other hand, family policies may advance reproductive agency in supporting families financially. However, such policies also define how the family is understood, thereby affecting reproductive agency. The third theme, gender, intersects with many issues in the policy documents. All three texts consider the roles of men and women differently: women are primarily responsible for the family, and both men's and women's reproductive agency is affected in that the roles in the procreative process are predefined. EVA and the Family Federation see women as the main target of population policies, and consider it legitimate to try to change women s reproductive decisions. Implicit in the notion of reproductive agency is the idea that it should be possible to overcome and live differently the sex difference, but the three documents do not open up opportunities for that. The notion of reproductive agency makes it also possible to question the legitimacy of population policies in general and offers new perspectives on the vocabularies used in the three policy texts, providing insights into the values and logics that support the concepts.

"Ei sitä ainakaan helpommaksi tehdä sairaan opiskelijan elämää" : Pitkäaikaissairaiden kokemuksia korkeakoulutuksen esteistä ja mahdollisuuksista

This study examines the experiences of students with chronic illnesses in higher education. I chose to study rheumatic and other musculoskeletal diseases because they are group of diseases that are nationally significant in Finland. From students experiences I do interpretation of their agency. My research problems are: What kind of obstacles and possibilities student with chronic illness experiences in studying? What kind of obstacles illness set up for the agency or does it set any? How agency of student with chronic illness shows in the context of the university? I collected the data by using interview and focus group method. Additionally I had different kinds of documents of accessibility and equality in the university. Interviews were like halfstructured theme and open interviews. Focus group method I have applied. All the people that participated in the study were students from the university of Helsinki. They all have rheumatic or other musculoskeletal diseases. I have five interviewees and the group consisted of two people and the researcher. In the data analysis I use categorizing by the themes. Students that participated in my study spoke about their pain related experiences of their illness which also connected to their experiences of the higher education. Students agencies were limited the more they experienced pain. Pain forces students to certain activity one actions avoidance and another s favouring. If part-time studying would have been possible economically, it would have made the life easier for a part of the students. Students were aware of the available resources of their body for some of the students illness and life control set challenge and for some it set conditions. Students thought that university education is more possible to them than vocational education. Students didn t feel their own body limited in the context of university that emphasize intellectual and knowledge connected values and some of the students had reversed their illness as a resource of studying. However students felt their illness as a private matter and they considered illness profit and disadvantage before telling about it, which I interpretated limiting students agencies. In the university terms of students agencies were bond to individuality that came up in positive and negative. Freedom of studying was positive but official and individual study accommodations made agency bounded. Majority of the students didn t see possibilities to do differently in the university s practice but some of the students had recognised values underneath the practices that made it possible to reflect them, do differently and made space for agency.