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This study sought to gain a deeper understanding of the spatiality and spatial justice of guidance counselling in basic education. The spatial framework was applied to analyse the recognition of diversity and adolescents' positioning in guidance counselling (lessons, excursions and information events). This study used a phenomenological research approach based on fieldwork, observations and lifespan interviews conducted with a class located in a disadvantaged urban neighbourhood in Finland. The outcomes reveal how adolescents adjust or take counter positions to prevailing expectations attached to their neighbourhoods. The transition to upper-secondary education was geographical, social and cultural, and the guidance counselling was able to provide inclusive and affirmative support for transitions. Simultaneously, guidance is vehicle for cultural adaptation to the working-class position and tend to lack a recognition of the diversity and counter positions of adolescents. This paper discusses the multicultural competence of counsellors and the potentiality of group-based guidance.

In this paper we examine the objectives and meanings of the career guidance provided in comprehensive education as set out in discussions in the Parliament of Finland. We approach the topic through an exploration of parliamentary sessions concerning three major legislative proposals for reforming compulsory education in Finland. The premise is that the parliamentary discussions concerning guidance provided in comprehensive education reflect the rationalities that underpin guidance in different eras in Finland and elsewhere. Examining these rationalities provides a way to explore the principles which frame career guidance policy in Finland. Using the actantial model as a methodological tool, the analysis aims to discover the actantial positions in the parliamentary discussions and the interactions that emerge between these. The various actantial narratives demonstrate the way in which guidance is influenced by wider ideological trends. The actantial analysis portrays a shift from the more structural corporatist approaches of the 1960s when the object of guidance was to fulfil the needs of society, towards more third way individualism in 1990s. The current reform of 2020 to extend compulsory education and reinforce guidance may represent some return to more structural approaches.

Tracking pupils based on their abilities or other aptitudes is a common practice in many countries. In Finland, selective classes with a special emphasis have become popular. The societal and individual effects of tracking are a topic of ongoing educational discussion. Tracking has been seen to increase educational inequality, but still it has been defended as an important practice enabling individualised and adjusted teaching. This study examined whether studying in a selective class with a special emphasis has an effect on the development of pupils' action-control beliefs from grade seven to nine. Results showed that pupils who studied in classes with a special emphasis showed greater achievement and were more likely to have highly-educated mothers than pupils in classes without an emphasis. This selectivity explained most of the differences found in action-control beliefs between classes. Pairwise comparisons showed small differences in the change of certain action-control beliefs between classes.

This article concentrates on the transition from comprehensive school to the upper secondary level from the viewpoint of migrant background girls. Emphasis is on understanding the "bounded agency" and the ways in which gender and family background are expressed in the modalities of the agency. Previous studies show that ethnic minorities have more difficulties in school, and they continue to higher education less frequently than the majority of students. We are interested in the aspirations of migrant background girls (n = 34) concerning their post-comprehensive transition. Our focus is on the experienced agency during the last year of comprehensive school. Our research questions are: What kinds of modalities do migrant background girls use when considering their educational choices? How do these modalities reflect their bounded agency? The study shows that although the experienced agency is universal among the age group, there are specific ethnic and gender connotations.

Transitions from one level of education system to another and from education to work are structured by socio-economic and institutional structure factors, while at the same time they are appropriated by individuals in their biographical constructions. Patterns to career trajectories are also dependent on social class, immigrant origin and level of academic achievement. This paper elaborates the ways young people are envisioning their post-comprehensive trajectories in Finland. Based on an analysis of qualitative interview data (n = 113) with immigrant- and Finnish-origin youths in the final year of their comprehensive education (ninth grade), patterns of envisioned educational trajectories are identified and the reasoning behind them recognised. The analysis introduces six possible envisioned educational trajectories, based on combinations of envisioned educational choices and occupational destinations. They portray the multiple relational aspects and intertwining processes of the decision-making processes, but also underline the nature of them as self-made reasonings of skills, stress, friends, life management and aspirations. Study guidance and counselling should support the decision-making processes as a part of the holistic life-design process.

In Finland, the pupil bodies of schools consisting of children living in the nearby area (school district) has been a central principle ever since the founding of the 'folk school' network in the 1890s. Children were allocated to schools on the basis of residence. This policy was changed in the mid 1990's and the free school choice was introduced in Finland. Although a major change in the school policy the opening of the school choice was not much discussed in the public or in the parliament. It was introduced by a promise to give parents more freedom, to better respond to the needs of the talented pupils, and to bring forth more high quality schools. The evaluation of possible unintended consequences on equality was neglected. In this article we ask: How the socio-economic position of the family is related to the school choice of the child? What is the role of socioeconomic status and educational level of parents in explaining the differences in attitudes towards the uniformity of comprehensive school system, and what, in turn, is the role of parental attitudes in explaining the school choice? To answer these questions we analyse large survey data collected in five biggest cities in Finland in spring 2012 (n=2 617). We conclude that school choice in Finland is particularly exercised by highly educated families whose children do well in school. Of the single factors the most predictive indicator of exercising the choice is the child's average of latest report card, but also variables indicating socio-economic background strongly predict the parental choice.

This study examined changes in pupils' agency beliefs and control expectancy from grade four to grade six, and whether they were associated with studying in a class with a special emphasis on a subject as compared to studying in a class without emphasis. After controlling for the effects of mother's education, prior school achievement, and gender, we found that the average pattern of change varied for different action-control beliefs, and that class membership did not moderate these changes. Mother's education, pupils' prior school achievement, and gender all predicted class membership, but their effects on action-control beliefs varied depending on the type of belief. Implications for educational policy will be discussed.

Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms in Europe and beyond have sought to dismantle centralised bureaucracies and replace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasise parental choice and competition between diversified types of schools. Despite this general trend, Finland continues to emphasise the municipal assignment of school places, albeit with the possibility of locally controlled choice. The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the ways in which Finnish local education authorities -- involving both officials and politicians -- define themselves in relation to the changing conceptions of the Nordic welfare state model. The paper discusses the social costs and benefits of school choice in addition to the kinds of techniques these authorities use when aiming to control and manage the social costs and benefits of school choice. Based on nine in-depth thematic interviews with local education authorities, the modalities -- having to, being-able, wanting and knowing how -- will be analysed.

As one of the key elements of the Nordic welfare model, education systems are based on the idea of providing equal educational opportunities, regardless of gender, social class and geographic origin. Since the 1990s, Nordic welfare states have undergone a gradual but wide-ranging transformation towards a more market-based mode of public service delivery. Along this trajectory, the advent of school choice policy and the growing variation in the between-school achievement results have diversified the previously homogenous Nordic education systems. The aim of our paper is to analyse how Finnish and Swedish local education authorities comprehend and respond to the intertwinement of the market logic of school choice and the ideology of equality. The data consist of two sets of in-depth thematic interviews with staff from the local providers of education, "municipal education authorities." The analysis discloses the ways in which national legislation has authorized municipal authorities to govern the provision of education.

This article examines the educational trajectories envisioned by immigrant-origin youths. The mixed-methods research draws upon quantitative (N = 445) and interview data (n = 112). Whereas most prior research focuses on educational achievement or educational attainment of immigrant-origin youth, this article focuses on their outlooks concerning education and occupation. We determined the educational and career aspirations and expectations immigrant-origin youths have and in the ways their aspirations differ from those of Finnish-origin youths. We also seek to discover how this possible aspiration paradox is reflected in the trajectories envisioned by immigrant-origin youths. We confirm earlier findings showing that immigrant-origin youths have both a strong belief in education and the will to achieve success in tertiary-level education. We also argue for diversity of vocationally oriented youth: whereas Finnish-origin youths often share determinate vocational outlooks, immigrant-origin youths are more likely to aim for tertiary education via vocational education.

Young people in the Nordic countries have many options and face obligations to participate in career guidance and counselling (guidance). In Finland, young people are subjected to multiple institutionalized guidance practices especially in educational transition phases. Guidance has various objectives as a public policy, thereby setting a framework for guidance professionals too. By using Foucault's conceptualization on 'pastoral' power, we studied how guidance professionals ('shepherds') guide young people ('the flock') towards 'wellbeing'. Our aim was to analyse how pastoral power is manifested in guidance practices by asking what governmental discourses the guidance professionals refer to when talking about guidance and how these discourses are practiced in guidance. Our data comprise Finnish guidance professionals' interviews (n = 15). As a result, dominant governmental discourses of employability, economic efficiency and lifelong learning were identified. Guidance involved pastoral power and demanded employability and educability for the young. Guidance professionals have a crucial role in implementing governmental discourses into guidance practices. These practices create a narrow perspective for young people and guidance professionals, who are simultaneously the mediators and targets of governmental power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms have sought to dismantle centralised bureaucracies and replace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasise parental choice and competition between increasingly diversified types of schools. Nevertheless, the "Finnish variety of "post-comprehensivism" continues to emphasise municipal assignment of school places, in the form of the "neighbourhood school principle"; albeit, in its current form, with the possibility for locally controlled choice and competition, channelled especially through classes "with a special emphasis". Based on nine in-depth thematic interviews with experts in provision, management or evaluation of local level compulsory education, this paper focuses on how the conceivable costs and benefits of school choice are recognised and controlled in urban Finnish municipalities. Two distinctive discourses were found to be embodied in the portrayals of the costs and benefits of choice: the "legitimization of school choice"; and "promoting the comprehensive system". The legitimation of school choice discourse is built on the acceptable, but strictly limited reasons for choice, and necessity of school choice. In contrast, the discourse of fostering the comprehensive system is based on the ideology of equality of educational opportunities. It is constructed upon the traditional, universal, non-selective features of the comprehensive school. Against this background, possibilities for school choice can be, and must be, locally controlled--even restricted, if needed--in order to prevent a vicious circle of failing schools in deprived neighbourhoods.

This article analyzes the ways in which the right to education and freedom of education are expressed in local school choice policies in Finland. We aim to discover the elements that form democratic iterations on the right to education and freedom of education by contrasting their manifestations in three local institutional spaces for parental school choice. We focus on different levels of structures and agents including national legislation, local spaces for school choice, municipal demographics, and the impact of socioeconomic status and institutional space for school choice on parental attitudes.