A proactive player of the future? Working life discourses in the Finnish upper secondary school curriculum

AbstractThe present study examines the educational speech that appears in the upper secondary school curriculum. Teaching and the organisation of teaching is guided by the written reality of the curriculum.The Foucaultian approach is applied to study the discursive events, i.e. expressions presented as true. The study is based on the interest in the role of education policy and working life in the construction of the general Finnish upper secondary education curriculum. As an educational policy management document, the curriculum creates an aim for the reality of teaching and learning. It maintains values related to upper secondary education, in this case for career orientation, as discourses of task, fluency, anticipation, and activation. The working life discourses emphasise efforts to accelerate transitions in working life, bring forward career-related decisions, and glorify success and activity. This article discusses the emphasis the working life in the curriculum has for the ideal of Bildung in contemporary upper secondary school education.