| 1. |
- Benjamin, Saija, et al.
(författare)
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Addressing Hostile Attitudes in and through Education—Transformative Ideas from Finnish Youth
- 2022
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Ingår i: Youth. - : MDPI AG. - 2673-995X. ; 2:4, s. 556-569
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Amid global disturbances, the calls for educational institutions to promote peace and counter hostility intensify. However, policymakers and other adults typically draft the various programs developed for schools to pursue this mission. While young people have valuable insights into the realities and issues around them, their ideas are rarely solicited in this respect. This study contributes towards filling this gap by bringing insights from Finnish youth on how to address hostile attitudes and foster the development of more peaceful futures in and through education. The data were gathered through an online survey sent to students in upper-secondary education (16- to 20-year-olds) in Finland. The survey included an open-ended question on how schools could address hostile attitudes. In total, 2744 students answered this question, and their responses composed the data of this study. Through qualitative analysis, we found that their suggestions concerned both the academic and social dimensions of school education in addressing hostile attitudes. The students highlighted that to change people’s attitudes and beliefs, they need to know more, and most importantly, they need to know differently. They proposed self-reflection and dialogue as pedagogical tools for the critical examination of one’s taken-for-granted assumptions. The students’ ideas align well with the tenets of transformative learning, which could be valuable in developing educational approaches for more peaceful societies.
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| 2. |
- Benjamin, Saija, et al.
(författare)
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Nuorten elämänkulun haasteita ja vastoinkäymisiä
- 2022
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Ingår i: Nuorisotutkimus. - : Nuorisotutkimusseura. - 0780-0886. ; 40:3, s. 59-76
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Adversity and challenges faced by young people during the life course. Perspectives on resilience in the light of the theory of sustainablewell-beingIt is important to pay attention to young people’s resources and ways to cope with adversity. Resilience plays a central role in the construction and maintenance of sustainable well-being. This article is based on life course interviews with 45 young people in upper secondary education in Finland. The analysis focuses on the challenges faced by young people and the ways they dealt with the adversities they experienced. These are analysed in the HDLB framework through the four dimensions of needs (Having, Doing, Loving, Being) (Helne & Hirvilammi 2015; 2021; 2022). We suggest that structuring young people’s challenges and the resources available to them according to the HDLB dimensions is helpful. It enables understanding the connection between adversities and the needs they generate, and identifying the resources that young people have at their disposal. This also helps professionals to tailor appropriate support for a young person when needed.Keywords: life course, resilience, adversity, resources, theory of sustainable well-being
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| 3. |
- Benjamin, Saija Riikka, et al.
(författare)
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Threshold of Adversity : Resilience and the Prevention of Extremism Through Education
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nordic Studies in Education. - : Cappelen Damm AS - Cappelen Damm Akademisk. - 1891-5914 .- 1891-5949. ; 41:3, s. 201-218
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article introduces the concept of ‘threshold of adversity’ as an, at present, tentative means of understanding the turning points to radicalization and extremism within educational systems. The conceptual frame is, we argue, of pedagogical and policy relevance across and beyond Nordic countries. Across Nordic countries, the main objective for the prevention of radicalization and extremism through education (PVE-E) is to strengthen the students’ resilience against ideological influences. Given the specialist complexities of the interdisciplinary research literature on terrorism, from which much PVE-E derives, for teachers and policy-makers, understanding the theoretical contexts, which underlie such policy innovations and their pedagogical implementation, are, understandably, problematic. To discuss extremism and the possibilities of its prevention especially in the education sector, an understanding of what exactly is being prevented or fought against is needed. Our conceptual ‘threshold of adversity’ model offers at least a starting point for a more practicable pedagogical implementation.
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| 4. |
- Benjamin, Saija, et al.
(författare)
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Safeguarding social justice and equality : Exploring Finnish youths' 'Intergroup Mindsets' as a novel approach in the prevention of radicalization and extremism through education
- 2023
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Ingår i: Education, Citizenship and Social Justice. - : SAGE Publications. - 1746-1979 .- 1746-1987. ; , s. 174619792211358-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- As part of citizenship education, the prevention of radicalization and extremism through education (PVE-E) is an urgent initiative of global educational policy. According to research, radicalized individuals, despite the ideology held, have mindsets that challenge equality and social justice. In this light, this study examines the intergroup mindsets of Finnish students aged 16–19 in vocational institutions through a mixed methods research survey (n = 383). Three distinct intergroup mindsets were found in a profile analysis. The findings demonstrate that the intergroup mindsets of the students are predominantly egalitarian, open-minded, and inclusive. However, there are also students whose mindsets are anti-egalitarian and pro-dominance, and for whom Finnishness is a marker of borders and social exclusion. If intensified and manipulated, the views of these youth may become radicalized with serious implications for national security and societal cohesion.We argue that in PVE-E, the focus on critical thinking must be complemented with transformative approaches that support the development of mindsets based on social justice and equality.
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| 5. |
- Benjamin, Saija, et al.
(författare)
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States of Mind : Peace Education and Preventing Violent Extremism
- 2022
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Ingår i: Peace Education and Religion. - Wiesbaden : Springer. - 9783658369835 - 9783658369842 ; , s. 285-304
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite international aims of enhancing peace and preventing violent extremism, work until now remains at the level of practical school education that combines ideals and realities for societal benefit. As a theoretical contribution to these pressing actualities of educational and political circumstances, this chapter will highlight open-mindedness as a central objective for twenty-first century peace education. Open-mindedness here refers to a mindset that is reflective and conducive to new perspectives and opinions. Thus, it is a disposition that is antithetical to prejudices, radicalization, and dogmatism. We approach the concept from two angles, namely, both socio-emotional and epistemic dimensions of open-mindedness and then discuss how these can be developed in students. Bridging ideas from studies on intellectual virtues, values, identity, worldview development, and radicalization, this chapter participates in the global and necessary efforts to promote peace and prevent the proliferation of hate and prejudices through education.
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| 6. |
- Gearon, Liam, et al.
(författare)
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Religion and Worldviews in Early Childhood Education and Care : Eight Parameters for Ethical Research
- 2022
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Ingår i: The Routledge International Handbook of the Place of Religion in Early Childhood Education and Care. - London : Routledge. - 9780367862251 ; , s. 178-193
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Given the enhanced prominence of religion across globally ever-more acute cultural pluralization across nation-states worldwide, research on religion in education is an area of correspondingly heightened ethical sensitivity. Identifying a lacuna on ethical guidance for research specific to religion and worldview research in early childhood education and care, this chapter offers a set of eight parameters to guide ethical research in this sub-field. We argue that the codification of ethical research practice actually had in fact its origins in the culturally, ideologically and religiously discriminatory context of Nazi atrocities and the post-Second World War trials which brought these to light. In many ways, we argue, the particularities of this historical setting heighten the importance of ethical research practice today. We thus provide a historical assessment of the origins and ends (or purposes) of ethics in social science and educational research as arising from the specific historicity of the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial and the Nuremberg Code for medical ethics which subsequently emerged from this post-Nazi context. Showing how across the social and educational sciences ethical considerations came relatively late (several decades after the Nuremberg Code), we show how the particularities of ethically guided research on religion in education came even later. In this context, if ethically guided research early childhood education and care (here ‘ECEC’) has itself, too, only gathered recent conceptual momentum, the particular issues relating to research on religion and worldviews in ECEC have themselves remained still somewhat neglected. In the light of this lacuna, we tentatively offer a set of eight benchmark parameters for ethical research on religion and worldviews in ECEC.
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| 7. |
- Gearon, Liam, et al.
(författare)
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The re-imagined other : Postcolonial perspectives on the place of religion in Early Childhood Education
- 2022
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Ingår i: The Routledge International Handbook of the Place of Religion in Early Childhood Education and Care. - London : Routledge. - 9780367862251 ; , s. 19-33
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- One significant dimension of postcolonial theory is the critical, often politically charged relationship between culture and its representation. Postcolonial theory examines such relationships of culture and power in an era after the formal endings of Empire(s). Religion and education both serve here as all important purveyors of cultural constructions of the power relations between peoples, most critically of all between the colonised and former colonial powers. For many working in postcolonial theory today, the legacy of colonialism is still apparent in systems of both religion and education. Gearon has extensively the crucial idea that political domination is dependent upon the creation of a culturally imagined ‘other’. An essentially colonial notion of ‘otherness’, we suggest, remains ingrained within the language of early childhood education care, as much in all phases of education. Re-imagining the religious other, this chapter provides a new reading of postcolonial theory for the context of religion and its place in early childhood education and care.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Kangas, Jonna, et al.
(författare)
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Outlining play and playful learning in Finland and Brazil : A content analysis of early childhood education policy documents
- 2022
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Ingår i: Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. - : SAGE Publications. - 1463-9491. ; 23:2, s. 153-165
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Early childhood education and care is a current interest in many countries. Many international studies have highlighted the importance of high-quality early education environments where learning and play are integrated. Studies show that these types of learning environments have a positive impact on children’s future prospects and overall development. Critical curriculum steering documents from Finland and Brazil form the basis of this study and can similarly be shown to define the quality of these environments, as well as providing definitions of playful learning in these differing cultural contexts. A content analysis explores patterns of the cultural and pedagogical difference of definition. This descriptive comparison permitted similarities and differences between the countries with regard to play to emerge. In this article, the authors explore what these different cultural and pedagogical definitions of play and playful learning are and what they might mean. The article thus makes a methodological contribution to a broader discussion of comparative studies of national curricula in early childhood education with specific regard to children’s engagement, learning and development in and through play. The theoretical conclusions are, however, more tentative, but the authors suggest some innovative ways to conceptualise cultural and pedagogical differences in play by making an analogy with Wittgenstein’s analysis of games in his Philosophical Investigations.
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| 10. |
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