Sirpa Lappalainen
Biographic Data
| ID | 200133 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sirpa Lappalainen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sirpa |
| FAMILY NAME | Lappalainen |
| SIGNATURE | LAPPALAINEN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1413-3037 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Normative whiteness in Finnish university education
Teaching nature and nation in the Swedish mobile preschool
Ideas of nature, nation and childhood are intertwined in Nordic early childhood education. We explore in ethnographic data the ways nature is taught in Swedish mobile preschools. We show how everyday nationalism manifests in the teaching practices of 'good' pedagogy in nature. We argue that depending on who is teaching and learning, various constructions of nationhood emerge enabling the re-imagination of a single national imaginary to a plural o…
Towards Earthly politics in education
Early childhood/educational environmental imaginations transmit national, global and planetary views of the world through texts, visual representations and material objects. These representations produce politics, including nationalism and globalism, and play a part in policy making as well as in how children learn to view and relate to the world. Education, however, needs a new political attractor during anthropogenic climate change that differe…
‘Literacy for labour’ in the competency-based VET in Finland
In Finland, the vocational education and training (VET) qualifications lead into work. Also, active citizenship is one of its aims, and qualification enables application to tertiary study. In terms of these aims, literacies are central. In the context of competency-based VET, we analyse how a curriculum of literacy is realized during literacy lessons. The theoretical background lies on sociocultural understanding of literacies as social practices…
Feminist ethnography as ‘Troublemaker’ in educational research
The focus of this article is on the history and current trends of feminist ethnography in Finland. It highlights the impact of feminist ethnography in Finnish educational research and illustrates how feminist ethnography has succeeded in asking novel questions and developing methodologies by drawing on multiple feminist theories. The article is based on a review of studies, selected to represent the multiplicity of themes, theoretical approaches …
Governing citizenship for students with learning disabilities in everyday vocational education and training
In recent decades, disability policy programmes and conventions have been underlining how improving educational opportunities, especially for post-compulsory education, improve the employability and independence of disabled people, and thus their position in society and as citizens. However, little attention has been paid to actual educational practices and how they relate to these policy objectives. This article focuses on post-compulsory educat…
Swearing as a method of antipedagogy in workshops of rap lyrics for ‘failing boys’ in vocational education
Public debates in Finland on the unwillingness of boys to learning literacy have called for masculine role models to promote reading. This article analyses a privately funded project where two adult males lead a series of gangsta rap workshops during the Finnish language and communication lessons. The workshops were aimed at students in male-dominated fields in vocational education and training (VET). From a methodological perspective, this study…
Learning Nation in Early Childhood Education
This study investigates how nation is taught, learned, practiced, and performed in early childhood educational settings in Australia and Hungary. Analysis, based on comparative multi-sited ethnography, reveals nationhood as a taken for granted, unreflexively promoted framework for organizing social life. The “pedagogy of nation” operates in different ways in these two settings. In Australia, it draws on contemporary patterns of lifestyle, whereas…
Gender and social class in Nordic early childhood educational ethnography – a meta-analysis
This article provides a meta-analysis of what characterises existing ethnographic research on gender and class in the context of Nordic early childhood education. The encompasses research on education and gender or social class in the Nordic countries published in Nordic and non-Nordic scientific journals as well PhD theses published in the Nordic countries. The analysis suggests that even though Nordic countries have a reputation for being ‘role…
Walls, seats and the gymnasium
This article focuses on how students make use of different spaces in one compulsory school in Iceland and how gender is produced through activities in these spaces. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted for three months in 2016 among 8th and 9th graders at one public school in Iceland. Our analysis is based on poststructural and material theorisation in a country with one of the most progressive curricula in the world. It indicates that the school…
Becoming tolerable
Although Finnish politics relating to the Roma tend to be perceived internationally as fairly successful, several obstacles exist for the Roma in education and the labour market. Training of Roma mediators has been actively promoted in Finland to improve the school performance and equality of Roma pupils. This article, based on ethnographic research, focuses on exploring how the current discursive terrain around the topics of tolerance and prejud…
Nordic perspectives on disability studies in education
Disability studies in education (DSE) is an interdisciplinary field derived from the need to re-conceptualise special education dominated by a medical perspective on disability. In this article we identify what characterises DSE research and consider whether there is a case for arguing for a specific field of DSE in Finland and Iceland. Our analysis is based on a review of 59 studies published by Finnish and Icelandic scholars during the time per…
Educating ‘Euro-citizens’
Vocational teachers' gendered reflections on education, teaching and care
In this article, we discuss teachers' reflections on the relation between teaching and care in the two most gender-segregated sectors of vocational upper secondary education in Finland, namely Health and Social services and Transport and Technology. We first discuss the concepts around education, teaching, taking care for and caring about students, using theoretisations of care and feminist pedagogies. Using teacher interviews and field notes, we…
Discussions that ‘tickle our brains’
In this article, we discuss the usefulness of collaborative, multi-sited and cross-cultural ethnography. Giving three examples from our work, we suggest that it is possible to find new kinds of interpretations by joint reflections that draw from several studies with their own research questions. The cases presented discuss teachers' embodiment and sexualisation, construction of normality in educational settings and gendered patterns in post-compu…
Gendered divisions on classed routes to vocational education
In this article our focus is on the persistent gendered divisions in educational routes of young people who choose a vocational path after compulsory education in Finland. We analyse how gendered subjectivities are constructed within the practices of educational and vocational guidance and within student cultures in the comprehensive school, as well as the way in which young people process understandings of themselves and their expectations durin…
School as ‘survival game’
In children's lives the start of school is a turning point: compulsory education is their first encounter with civil duties. This important step in the process of becoming individual citizens is permeated with strong emotions and ambivalent expectations. However, the representations of school are created, established and negotiated in educational experiences preceding the start of school. In this article I explore the ways in which school is cons…
Making differences and reflecting on diversities
This paper focuses on embodied practices in processes of nationalization among preschool children at the age of 6. It analyses how children define themselves and others, how they characterize and frame Finnishness through embodiment. The analysis is based on an ethnographic study in two preschool classes. It is argued that nationality works in a gendered way as a source of inclusion and exclusion in children's peer relations: those children who m…
Gendered divisions on classed routes to vocational education
In this article our focus is on the persistent gendered divisions in educational routes of young people who choose a vocational path after compulsory education in Finland. We analyse how gendered subjectivities are constructed within the practices of educational and vocational guidance and within student cultures in the comprehensive school, as well as the way in which young people process understandings of themselves and their expectations durin…
Making differences and reflecting on diversities
This paper focuses on embodied practices in processes of nationalization among preschool children at the age of 6. It analyses how children define themselves and others, how they characterize and frame Finnishness through embodiment. The analysis is based on an ethnographic study in two preschool classes. It is argued that nationality works in a gendered way as a source of inclusion and exclusion in children's peer relations: those children who m…
Discussions that ‘tickle our brains’
In this article, we discuss the usefulness of collaborative, multi-sited and cross-cultural ethnography. Giving three examples from our work, we suggest that it is possible to find new kinds of interpretations by joint reflections that draw from several studies with their own research questions. The cases presented discuss teachers' embodiment and sexualisation, construction of normality in educational settings and gendered patterns in post-compu…
Vocational teachers' gendered reflections on education, teaching and care
In this article, we discuss teachers' reflections on the relation between teaching and care in the two most gender-segregated sectors of vocational upper secondary education in Finland, namely Health and Social services and Transport and Technology. We first discuss the concepts around education, teaching, taking care for and caring about students, using theoretisations of care and feminist pedagogies. Using teacher interviews and field notes, we…
Swearing as a method of antipedagogy in workshops of rap lyrics for ‘failing boys’ in vocational education
Public debates in Finland on the unwillingness of boys to learning literacy have called for masculine role models to promote reading. This article analyses a privately funded project where two adult males lead a series of gangsta rap workshops during the Finnish language and communication lessons. The workshops were aimed at students in male-dominated fields in vocational education and training (VET). From a methodological perspective, this study…
Becoming tolerable
Although Finnish politics relating to the Roma tend to be perceived internationally as fairly successful, several obstacles exist for the Roma in education and the labour market. Training of Roma mediators has been actively promoted in Finland to improve the school performance and equality of Roma pupils. This article, based on ethnographic research, focuses on exploring how the current discursive terrain around the topics of tolerance and prejud…
Normative whiteness in Finnish university education
Teaching nature and nation in the Swedish mobile preschool
Ideas of nature, nation and childhood are intertwined in Nordic early childhood education. We explore in ethnographic data the ways nature is taught in Swedish mobile preschools. We show how everyday nationalism manifests in the teaching practices of 'good' pedagogy in nature. We argue that depending on who is teaching and learning, various constructions of nationhood emerge enabling the re-imagination of a single national imaginary to a plural o…
Feminist ethnography as ‘Troublemaker’ in educational research
The focus of this article is on the history and current trends of feminist ethnography in Finland. It highlights the impact of feminist ethnography in Finnish educational research and illustrates how feminist ethnography has succeeded in asking novel questions and developing methodologies by drawing on multiple feminist theories. The article is based on a review of studies, selected to represent the multiplicity of themes, theoretical approaches …
Governing citizenship for students with learning disabilities in everyday vocational education and training
In recent decades, disability policy programmes and conventions have been underlining how improving educational opportunities, especially for post-compulsory education, improve the employability and independence of disabled people, and thus their position in society and as citizens. However, little attention has been paid to actual educational practices and how they relate to these policy objectives. This article focuses on post-compulsory educat…
Learning Nation in Early Childhood Education
This study investigates how nation is taught, learned, practiced, and performed in early childhood educational settings in Australia and Hungary. Analysis, based on comparative multi-sited ethnography, reveals nationhood as a taken for granted, unreflexively promoted framework for organizing social life. The “pedagogy of nation” operates in different ways in these two settings. In Australia, it draws on contemporary patterns of lifestyle, whereas…
Walls, seats and the gymnasium
This article focuses on how students make use of different spaces in one compulsory school in Iceland and how gender is produced through activities in these spaces. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted for three months in 2016 among 8th and 9th graders at one public school in Iceland. Our analysis is based on poststructural and material theorisation in a country with one of the most progressive curricula in the world. It indicates that the school…
School as ‘survival game’
In children's lives the start of school is a turning point: compulsory education is their first encounter with civil duties. This important step in the process of becoming individual citizens is permeated with strong emotions and ambivalent expectations. However, the representations of school are created, established and negotiated in educational experiences preceding the start of school. In this article I explore the ways in which school is cons…
School as ‘survival game’
In children's lives the start of school is a turning point: compulsory education is their first encounter with civil duties. This important step in the process of becoming individual citizens is permeated with strong emotions and ambivalent expectations. However, the representations of school are created, established and negotiated in educational experiences preceding the start of school. In this article I explore the ways in which school is cons…
Making differences and reflecting on diversities
This paper focuses on embodied practices in processes of nationalization among preschool children at the age of 6. It analyses how children define themselves and others, how they characterize and frame Finnishness through embodiment. The analysis is based on an ethnographic study in two preschool classes. It is argued that nationality works in a gendered way as a source of inclusion and exclusion in children's peer relations: those children who m…
Gendered divisions on classed routes to vocational education
In this article our focus is on the persistent gendered divisions in educational routes of young people who choose a vocational path after compulsory education in Finland. We analyse how gendered subjectivities are constructed within the practices of educational and vocational guidance and within student cultures in the comprehensive school, as well as the way in which young people process understandings of themselves and their expectations durin…
Discussions that ‘tickle our brains’
In this article, we discuss the usefulness of collaborative, multi-sited and cross-cultural ethnography. Giving three examples from our work, we suggest that it is possible to find new kinds of interpretations by joint reflections that draw from several studies with their own research questions. The cases presented discuss teachers' embodiment and sexualisation, construction of normality in educational settings and gendered patterns in post-compu…
Vocational teachers' gendered reflections on education, teaching and care
In this article, we discuss teachers' reflections on the relation between teaching and care in the two most gender-segregated sectors of vocational upper secondary education in Finland, namely Health and Social services and Transport and Technology. We first discuss the concepts around education, teaching, taking care for and caring about students, using theoretisations of care and feminist pedagogies. Using teacher interviews and field notes, we…
Educating ‘Euro-citizens’
Nordic perspectives on disability studies in education
Disability studies in education (DSE) is an interdisciplinary field derived from the need to re-conceptualise special education dominated by a medical perspective on disability. In this article we identify what characterises DSE research and consider whether there is a case for arguing for a specific field of DSE in Finland and Iceland. Our analysis is based on a review of 59 studies published by Finnish and Icelandic scholars during the time per…
Gender and social class in Nordic early childhood educational ethnography – a meta-analysis
This article provides a meta-analysis of what characterises existing ethnographic research on gender and class in the context of Nordic early childhood education. The encompasses research on education and gender or social class in the Nordic countries published in Nordic and non-Nordic scientific journals as well PhD theses published in the Nordic countries. The analysis suggests that even though Nordic countries have a reputation for being ‘role…
Walls, seats and the gymnasium
This article focuses on how students make use of different spaces in one compulsory school in Iceland and how gender is produced through activities in these spaces. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted for three months in 2016 among 8th and 9th graders at one public school in Iceland. Our analysis is based on poststructural and material theorisation in a country with one of the most progressive curricula in the world. It indicates that the school…
Becoming tolerable
Although Finnish politics relating to the Roma tend to be perceived internationally as fairly successful, several obstacles exist for the Roma in education and the labour market. Training of Roma mediators has been actively promoted in Finland to improve the school performance and equality of Roma pupils. This article, based on ethnographic research, focuses on exploring how the current discursive terrain around the topics of tolerance and prejud…
Governing citizenship for students with learning disabilities in everyday vocational education and training
In recent decades, disability policy programmes and conventions have been underlining how improving educational opportunities, especially for post-compulsory education, improve the employability and independence of disabled people, and thus their position in society and as citizens. However, little attention has been paid to actual educational practices and how they relate to these policy objectives. This article focuses on post-compulsory educat…
Swearing as a method of antipedagogy in workshops of rap lyrics for ‘failing boys’ in vocational education
Public debates in Finland on the unwillingness of boys to learning literacy have called for masculine role models to promote reading. This article analyses a privately funded project where two adult males lead a series of gangsta rap workshops during the Finnish language and communication lessons. The workshops were aimed at students in male-dominated fields in vocational education and training (VET). From a methodological perspective, this study…
Learning Nation in Early Childhood Education
This study investigates how nation is taught, learned, practiced, and performed in early childhood educational settings in Australia and Hungary. Analysis, based on comparative multi-sited ethnography, reveals nationhood as a taken for granted, unreflexively promoted framework for organizing social life. The “pedagogy of nation” operates in different ways in these two settings. In Australia, it draws on contemporary patterns of lifestyle, whereas…
Feminist ethnography as ‘Troublemaker’ in educational research
The focus of this article is on the history and current trends of feminist ethnography in Finland. It highlights the impact of feminist ethnography in Finnish educational research and illustrates how feminist ethnography has succeeded in asking novel questions and developing methodologies by drawing on multiple feminist theories. The article is based on a review of studies, selected to represent the multiplicity of themes, theoretical approaches …
Towards Earthly politics in education
Early childhood/educational environmental imaginations transmit national, global and planetary views of the world through texts, visual representations and material objects. These representations produce politics, including nationalism and globalism, and play a part in policy making as well as in how children learn to view and relate to the world. Education, however, needs a new political attractor during anthropogenic climate change that differe…
‘Literacy for labour’ in the competency-based VET in Finland
In Finland, the vocational education and training (VET) qualifications lead into work. Also, active citizenship is one of its aims, and qualification enables application to tertiary study. In terms of these aims, literacies are central. In the context of competency-based VET, we analyse how a curriculum of literacy is realized during literacy lessons. The theoretical background lies on sociocultural understanding of literacies as social practices…
Normative whiteness in Finnish university education
Teaching nature and nation in the Swedish mobile preschool
Ideas of nature, nation and childhood are intertwined in Nordic early childhood education. We explore in ethnographic data the ways nature is taught in Swedish mobile preschools. We show how everyday nationalism manifests in the teaching practices of 'good' pedagogy in nature. We argue that depending on who is teaching and learning, various constructions of nationhood emerge enabling the re-imagination of a single national imaginary to a plural o…
Sociology (18 works) · Pedagogy (15 works) · Ethnography (12 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Social science (9 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · Global Education and Multiculturalism (7 works)