G4 Doctoral dissertation (monograph)
Mallikansalaisen säröilevä ihanne : opettajaksi sopivuuden ja sopimattomuuden määrittely suomalaisessa opettajankoulutuksessa vuosina 1920-1945 (2021)

Ylikotila, A.-K. (2021). Mallikansalaisen säröilevä ihanne : opettajaksi sopivuuden ja sopimattomuuden määrittely suomalaisessa opettajankoulutuksessa vuosina 1920-1945 [Doctoral dissertation]. Jyväskylän yliopisto. JYU Dissertations, 411. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-8783-1

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Ylikotila, Anna-Kaisa

eISBN: 978-951-39-8783-1

Journal or series: JYU Dissertations

eISSN: 2489-9003

Publication year: 2021

Number in series: 411

Number of pages in the book: 234

Publisher: Jyväskylän yliopisto

Place of Publication: Jyväskylä

Publication country: Finland

Publication language: Finnish

Persistent website address: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-8783-1

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Open Access channel

Abstract

The major turning point for Finland was gaining its independence in 1917 and the subsequent civil war. Policymakers believed that lack of education of the lower classes was a key cause of the conflict, arguing that people needed to be educated to create a peaceful society. Creating a new civic nation was a process requiring civic-minded citizens: teachers had a key role in educating and civilizing future citizens. In many ways, teachers were expected to define the nation’s future: they were not only educators but exemplars of the civic-minded citizen. Teachers were expected to be well-behaved and civilized as well as hardworking. They had to possess Christian morals and patriotic values. Teaching, in the eyes of the teacher trainers, was a moral craft that needed to be honed. The main focus of this doctoral thesis is the process of becoming an ideal teacher in the Finnish education system from the 1920s to the first half of the 1940s. The goal is to identify which offenses were deemed so immoral in the teacher training institutions that the misbehaving students were not allowed to become teachers. By examining the offenses and the penalties handed out, it is possible to define which kind of offenses transgressed most against the ideal of a teacher. In Finnish society, the ideal teacher as well as the ideal citizen were strongly based in one’s class and gender, which is one of the main focuses of this study. In this study, five different Finnish teacher training colleges are observed and compared to each other. The data was collected using the archives of the Finnish teacher training colleges—most importantly, using the protocols of the teacher councils of the colleges in question. The method used in this thesis is category analysis: the collected data have been arranged to show examples of the most common forms of misbehavior and the possible effects of gender on a given penalty. Through this analysis, it is possible to define the sphere of agency allowed to a teacher trainee and how much this agency was limited by attributes such as gender and class.

Keywords: teacher training; citizenship; citizens; ideals; teacherhood; professional identity; teacher training institutions; school discipline; misdemeanours; punishments; history of education

Free keywords: history of education; teaching profession; teacher training colleges; gender norms; gender history; Finnish history; welfare system; agency

Contributing organizations

Ministry reporting: Yes

Reporting Year: 2021