Antti Saari

Tampere University | UTA · Education and Culture

Itsekasvatus on ihmisen oman ajattelun, moraalin ja tunteiden kehittämiseen kohdistuvaa, pedagogisesti orientoitunutta toimintaa, jolla on merkittäviä yhteiskunnallisia ulottuvuuksia. Tarkastelemme Aleksi Paavilaisen tapaa hahmottaa itsekasvatusta artikkelissaan Sosialisaatio ja varhaiskasvatus kapitaloseenin aikakaudella. Väitämme, että Paavilaise...

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan Erich Frommin (1900–1980) ajattelua itsekasvatuksen eli ihmisen omaehtoisen kasvun ja kehityksen näkökulmasta. Tarkastelun pohjalta muodostuu ekoterapeuttisen itsekasvatuksen malli, joka uudelleenkontekstualisoi Frommin rakkauden teoriaa ja yhteiskuntakriittistä otetta kapitaloseenin ajassa. Artikkeli argumentoi kapitalos...

Self-cultivation—taking pedagogical action to educate oneself—is an integral part of non-formal adult education. Ever since Greek antiquity, it has been a central ingredient in the western philosophical and educational tradition. However, we argue that the global challenges that have emerged in the present era of the ecological crisis call for a ne...

Kuvaamme artikkelissa erään aktivistiryhmän toimintaa itsekasvatuksena. Ryhmän toiminta edustaa kaupungeissa kasvavaa neljättä sektoria. Ymmärrämme ’itsekasvatuksen’ filosofi Michel Foucault’n ajattelua hyödyntäen itsestä huolehtimisena, jossa ihminen muokkaa ja harjoittaa itseään uudenlaisten tietämisen ja olemisen muotojen tavoittamiseksi. Itseka...

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, pressure to digitize the education sector has reached a new level worldwide. Beyond being framed as the only way for education to properly respond to the pandemic, digital technologies are envisioned to facilitate more efficient and informed decision-making on educational provision in the welfare state, including...

Los textos de los currículos nacionales son ejemplos de las dificultades inherentes a la representación y construcción de las nociones de ciudadanía en una sociedad democrática. Mientras que los soberanos predemocráticos recibían consejos maquiavélicos del tipo «espejos para príncipes», el currículum escolar moderno encarna una «lógica especular» d...

Vaikka keskustelu tulevaisuudesta on välttämätön osa koulutuspolitiikkaa, on tulevaisuudesta tullut viimeisten vuosikymmenten aikana muotisana, jonka jatkuvaa käyttöä koulutuspoliittisissa strategia-asiakirjoissa ja asiantuntijaverkostoissa ei ole juuri teoretisoitu tai problematisoitu. Tämä koulutuksen hallintaan ja ohjaukseen tulevaisuuskuvilla p...

This article studies topological reflexivity in educational policy discourse, when policy is considered in terms of eradicating the distances involved and increasing mobility and commensurability. Topological reflexivity is critically evaluated from a Lacanian point of view as a form of political fantasy which structures reality within the coordina...

The future is rarely problematised in education even though it is self-evident in everyday schoolwork and present also in the management of education. However, we should understand how different future visions influence our understanding of education. In this paper, we apply rhetorical analysis and study how the future of education is rhetorically...

Behaviorism, systems theory, and cybernetics are central hallmarks of post-World War II social and behavioral sciences. One of the central nodal points in such discourses is the concept of feedback. It refers to a sequence of actors or functions linked together with flow of information. In the feedback structure, each operation affects and provides...

Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies

There are currently two broad forms of critique undergirding environmental education theories: the first is one of subtraction from perceived reality as it seeks to reveal and remove illusions and ideologies, while the other takes the inverse form of adding to reality in the form of investigating how matter comes to matter. We suggest a third form...

The modus operandi of many pedagogies indexed under the rubric “critical” and “transformative” is to acknowledge and overcome oppressive structures ingrained in dominant societal ideologies. Yet in practice, some of such pedagogies may be susceptible to what Gert Biesta has called the “logic of emancipation.” This means that those who are to be ema...

The article focuses on infrastructures as heterogeneous assemblages. Our claim is that to examine something as elusive as data infrastructure calls for an epistemological and methodological approach consistent with the fluid ontology of the object of study. Moreover, we assert that there is no position of exteriority from which to critique data inf...

Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies

Artikkelissa käsitellään yhteiskuntatieteiden tutkimusmetodologiassa esiintyvää, yhteiskunnallishistoriallisten rakenteiden ja yksilön kokemusten välistä rakennetta. Se kiinnittyy hallinnan ja ideologioiden kriittisen tutkimuksen metodologiaan. Ongelmakentän tarkentamiseksi analysoidaan kahden tutkimusperinteen tarjoamia välineitä rakenteen ja koke...

While contemplative approaches have recently garnered much attention in different areas of transformative education, the interpersonal and relational aspects of contemplative training have received less scrutiny. This article examines the relational dynamics involved in contemplative education from a Lacanian viewpoint. The concept of transference...

Images of brains circulate today as rationales for decision-making and selectivity in policies, curriculum, preservice teacher education and inservice professional development. The excitement over brain-based research, its visual reach and authorizing role accompanies longstanding debates in which the status attributed to biology, physiology and al...

Writing qualitative research texts often involves the acknowledgement of the researcher being imbued in the systems of meaning that he or she is studying. This provides a background for incitement to reflexivity, i.e. how one’s own life history and broader cultural context is etched in epistemological and ontological assumptions about the object. T...

Although often labelled obsolete and ethically dubious, twentieth-century behaviourist principles of learning have been central to the development of instructional technology and the design of modern learning environments. Using Andrew Pickering’s philosophy, this article addresses behaviourism as a mangle of practice to highlight the conceptual an...

Escalating ecological events like global warming haunt our lived experience of place and demand thinking the concept anew in environmental education research. Using Timothy Morton’s notions of hyperobjects and dark ecology as a springboard, we articulate the uncanny—the withdrawn, unknowable, excessive and anxiety-provoking—aspects of place that ev...

Despite undisputable evidence, it is painfully clear that the knowledge of the current climate change does not have a significant effect on our lifestyle. Thus at the superficial, or propositional level, we know very well that climate crisis exists, but still act as if we do not. Perhaps the knowledge of our own implication in the very lifestyle th...

Since the turn of the millennium, mindfulness discourses have penetrated various areas of governing health, well-being, and happiness. A recent sub-genre of popular mindfulness literature is teaching and parenting. This sub-genre includes technologies of the self that inculcate responsible, autonomous subjects who control their own emotions and are...

In this paper we examine how the two registers of objectivity – the absolute and the procedural - relate to the politics of performativity and the expanding infrastructures of testing. The tension between objectivity and performativity is not new to scholars of quantification. Charles Goodhart’s law states that ‘when a measure becomes a target it c...

This paper offers an overview of contemporary inscriptions of mindfulness, their conditions of possibility, and examples of the braining of mind on which contemporary neuro-meets-contemplative turns are dependent. We examine key nineteenth-century events integral to the formation of Biologies Old, in which historic debates over ‘the death of God’ i...

This article discusses the rhetorical strategies in Finnish educational policy documents dealing with digitalization. The documents argue that the national education system is in dire need of digital technologies in order to modernize its pedagogy and secure national economic competitiveness. Finnish municipalities, schools and teachers have high l...

The article discusses the allegedly decontextualized and ahistorical traits in positivist educational research and curriculum by examining its emergence in early twentieth-century empirical education. Edward Lee Thorndike’s educational psychology is analyzed as a case in point. It will be shown that Thorndike’s positivist educational psychology str...

In recent discourses on adult education it has become a commonplace to note that adult learning and professional development should touch the ‘deeper’ or ‘higher’ recesses of human existence instead of mainly focusing on learning technical skills or attaining preset standards. These higher aspects are often depicted as spiritual experiences. In par...

Since the turn of the millennium, positive psychology has become a significant part of contemporary psy-complexes around the world. In this chapter, we explore how the practicality of positive psychology is established through a certain regime of truth that introduces conditions on how happiness can be discerned and acted upon in schools. Using Mic...

Moral philosophy and moral education have prominently dealt with cognitive and rational aspects of morality, therefore neglecting the body. This article opens moral education's relation to bodily experience by situating phenomenological studies of the body as linked to contemplative pedagogy. We deal primarily with the concept of moral perception i...

Moral philosophy and moral education have prominently dealt with cognitive and rational aspects of morality, therefore neglecting the body. This article opens moral education's relation to bodily experience by situating phenomenological studies of the body as linked to contemplative pedagogy. We deal primarily with the concept of moral perception i...

In recent years there has been a global call for more scientific knowledge about education as a basis of governance. This means that exact descriptions of the reality of schooling should inform decisions about what works in education. In this article, evaluation and testing are analysed as cartography, the art of mapping educational spaces, which b...

Various kinds of contemplative practices have been a part of the western philosophical tradition since the Age of Antiquity. Today, however, philosophy as a way of life has ceased to be an integral part of academic practice. The capability to gain knowledge or understanding is believed to come out of pure intellectual endeavor, without exercising t...

1900-luvun alussa ensi askeleitaan ottanut yhdysvaltalainen kasvatuspsykologia onnistui muotoutumaan koulutusjärjestelmän ongelmanasetteluiden kannalta merkitykselliseksi tiedon alaksi. Avainasemassa oli Edward Lee Thorndiken funktionalistinen tutkimusohjelma ja siihen liittyvät oppimisen siirtovaikutusta eli transferia koskevat tutkimukset. Artikk...

Kirjoittaja tuo elinikäisestä oppimisesta käytyyn kriittiseen keskusteluun sitä täydentävän, valtateoreettisen näkökulman, joka nojaa Michel Foucaultin ja foucault’laisten kasvatustieteilijöiden tuotantoon. Tätä foucault’laisen elinikäisen oppimisen analyysiä hän luonnehtii Kenneth Wainia lainaten epäilyn politiikaksi. Se etsii vallankäyttöä juuri...

Elinikäistä oppimista hallitaan houkuttelemalla yksilöä suhtautumaan omaan elämäänsä ja oppimiseensa yrittäjämäisesti. Tämä hallinta pyrkii rajaamaan yksilön tapoja tunnistaa elinikäisessä oppimisessa oman vapautensa ja tavoitteidensa toteutuminen. Usein tämän kaltaista yksilöivää vallankäyttöä on tarkasteltu foucault’laisen hallintavallan näkökulm...