Life-course, generations and education in contemporary Finnish society

• Ari Antikainen Joensuun yliopisto
• Jarmo Huotsonen Joensuun yliopisto
• Hannu Huotelin Joensuun yliopisto
• Juha Kauppila Joensuun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33336/aik.96935

Abstract

The article deals with the observations and interpretations of training and learning in the lives of Finns made in connection with the project Koulutuksen merkitystä etsimässä (In Search of the Meaning of Education). The research material was collected applying the life-history approach in oral life-story and thematic interviews. The authors present their interpretation of three contemporary educational generations: 1. Generation of the war and scant education, 2. Generation of structural change and increasing educational opportunities, and 3. Generation of social well-being and many educational choices. At the generation level, the role of education has changed from being an ideal to something that is taken for granted. Alongside the changes in the working life and in the status of the school, the institutionalisation of people’s life-courses is believed to explain the loss in the subjective significance of education.
The link cultural construction of identity is examined in the light of ego/self classification in various stages of the interviewees’ life-stories. The said classifications differed in regard to generation and educational status, for instance. Learning experiences steering one’s life-course, and possibly those changing one’s identity or one’s relationship with it, were defined as important learning experiences. Hardly any of these important learning experiences had occurred with it, the person being solely in the role of a pupil or student at school.