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Educating ‘Euro-citizens’: A Study of a Vocational Uppers Secondary Programme in Health Care and Social Services in a Finnish (Sub)Urban Setting

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Abstract

In previous decades, education was largely a national project for Finland, but more recently, it has been coopted by transnational, especially European policy-making. It is argued that education is designed now primarily to produce capable citizens for the trans-national labour-market. In this chapter, analysis focuses on the aims concerning the creation of the ideal labour market citizen by means of the upper secondary vocational programme, Health Care and Social Services. I focus in particular on the core subject of ‘Social, Business and Labour Market’, which is seen here as an arena, in which expectations for future labour market citizenship are manifested, even if in a condensed form. The analysis draws on 3-year ethnographic study of an upper-secondary vocational institute, having a college in a suburban area, where average income is relatively low and unemployment rates are high. Both from a social and physical point of view, the college is the obvious choice of students from working-class backgrounds. The analysis is guided by poststructuralist and material feminist theorizing, intertwined with contextualised ethnographic perspectives. Vocational curriculum documentation produces the ideal subjectivity of labour-market citizenship in accordance with neo-liberal reasoning and emphasis on transnationalism. However, the analysis of cultural practices in the female-dominated area of Health Care and Social Services provides a more complex picture, indicating ambivalence and to an extent, resistance. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the importance of Europeanisation in Finnish vocational education in urban settings, the power of teachers and students to disrupt the discourse of European neoliberalism and the implications and spaces available for the urban youth involved.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The research projects were funded by the Academy of Finland and were entitled: Citizenship, Agency and Difference in Upper Secondary Education – With Special Focus on Vocational Institutions (project number 1131548, led by Elina Lahelma) and Learning to become practical nurses: Ethnography on Vocational Education of Health care and Social services (project number 1133632, led by Sirpa Lappalainen).

  2. 2.

    Practical nurse is a protected occupational title licensed by the National Supervisory Authory of Welfare and Health.

  3. 3.

    In 2014, the average wage in the public sector was 3094 euros (Official Statistics of Finland 2015), whereas according the Finnish Union of Practical Nurses, the average wage of a qualified practical nurse was 2076 euros (Super 2015).

  4. 4.

    The Finnish upper- secondary education system is strictly divided into general (gymnasium) and vocational institutions. The former offers an academic, all-round programme of studies that prepares students for the matriculation examination.

  5. 5.

    Due to suspensions and dropouts, the group’s size tended to decrease during the year.

  6. 6.

    The nine core subjects are Swedish, second national language, foreign language, mathematics, physics and chemistry, business and labour-market subjects, physical education, health education, arts and culture.

  7. 7.

    This particular teacher tended to use colourful expressions and juxtapositions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Sirpa Lappalainen

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  1. Sirpa Lappalainen
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  1. Dept. of Educational Policy & Lead'ship, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

    William T. Pink

  2. School of Education, Uni. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    George W. Noblit

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Lappalainen, S. (2017). Educating ‘Euro-citizens’: A Study of a Vocational Uppers Secondary Programme in Health Care and Social Services in a Finnish (Sub)Urban Setting. In: Pink, W., Noblit, G. (eds) Second International Handbook of Urban Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40317-5_38

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