Educating worker-citizens: visions and divisions in curriculum texts

Abstract

In this article, we are interested in how employment – or employability – is connected to citizenship, and how the ideal subjectivity of worker-citizens is discursively constructed in curriculum texts. The ‘worker-citizen’ is a social construction that connects closely the notion of worker and the notion of citizen. Our analysis is based on Finnish national curricula for upper secondary vocational education. We consider upper secondary vocational education as a field in which individuals learn the new orders of the labour market. Curriculum texts define desirable goals and ideals for what future citizens and future employees should be like. As a result, we argue that flexibility characterises the ideal subjectivity that is discursively attributed to worker-citizens in accordance with neo-liberal reasoning: they have internalised the ethos of entrepreneurship and lifelong learning, and are capable of accepting changes and crossing national borders in order to follow the needs of the labour market. Worker-citizens are willing to accept a minimal level of social security provided by the state, and to look after their own health and employment. However, as consumers they express national loyalty. Personal objectives of worker-citizens are congruent with the objectives of industry and the workplace.

Keywords:

• vocational education
• citizenship
• worker-ideal
• curriculum
• discourse analysis

Notes

An earlier version of this article, ‘Educating ‘Proper Workers’: visions and divisions in curriculum texts’ was presented in Nordic Educational Research Association Conference, 6 March 2008, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1. This study is part of the larger research programme Citizenship, Agency and Difference in Upper Secondary Education – With Special Focus on Vocational Institutions and its subproject Studying to become a practical nurse: ethnographic research in school-based vocational education in social and health care, funded by the Academy of Finland (see www.helsinki.fi/ktl/AMIS). The aim of the research programme is to analyse cultural processes, institutional practises and the experiences of teachers and students by focusing on dimensions of difference. These include gender, social background, ethnicity, sexuality, background in special education and age and their interconnections.

2. Natural Resources Sector; Technology and Transport Sector; Business and Administration Sector; Tourism, Catering and Home Economics Sector; Health and Social Services Sector; Culture Sector and Leisure and Physical Education Sector (www.oph.fi).

3. School-based vocational education includes at least 20 out of 120 credits for work-place learning outside of schools. A vocational qualification can be obtained also through apprenticeship training, which is based on an employment contract between the student and employer, and confirmed by the education provider. It can also be obtained through a competence test administered by a qualification committee.

4. In autumn 2010, while this article was already on review, a new National Core Curricula was accepted. In the new curricula Common emphasis and Core skill have been replaced by the ‘Key skills of/for lifelong learning’.