ABSTRACT
Bad student behaviour is argued to be one of the major challenges for schools today. In response to the challenge, there is a strong body of literature aiming at fixing student behaviour. In this paper, we look into professional knowledge discourses regarding ‘bad student behaviour,’ focusing on one national context, Finland, to explore how disturbing behaviour is discursively established in the professional literature for teachers seeking help with challenging student incidents. We analyse expert sources that are readily available for Finnish teachers (n = 19), looking at what fields of science are represented, whose voice is represented, how the problem is defined, and where it is located. We conclude that the professional discourse about disturbing behaviour in Finland places the problem on the individual child or family while also silencing the individuals in question and portraying them as deficient. Furthermore, the sources produce a decontextualised notion of behaviour and describe it as either acceptable or unacceptable, completely overlooking any societal, historical or cultural aspects of behaviour or other mitigating circumstances. The findings resonate with research findings from other international contexts.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. For example, see Anguiano, Citation2001; Barbetta et al., Citation2005; Bennett, Citation2006; Brainard, Citation2001; Emmer & Stough, Citation2001; Fairbanks et al., Citation2007; Gordon, Citation2001; Haydon & Musti-Rao, Citation2011; Hester et al., Citation2009; Jeffrey et al., Citation2009; Lake, Citation2004; Lewis et al., Citation2005; McKenna & Flower, Citation2014; Nahgahgwon et al., Citation2010; Ratcliff et al., Citation2010; Reglin et al., Citation2012; Scarpaci, Citation2007; Sørlie & Ogden, Citation2007; Sun, Citation2015; Wadesango, Citation2013; Wheatley et al., Citation2009.
2. häiriökäytös, häiritsevä käytös, ongelmakäytös, haastava käytös, and lapsi, nuori.
3. All of the direct translations used here are rather clumsy, but eloquent translations would require interpretation.
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Notes on contributors
Maija Lanas
Maija Lanas (PhD) is a senior research fellow and a lecturer in the University of Oulu, the Department of Education, and a docent of teacher education in the University of Helsinki. Maija’s research is both empirical and theoretical, and looks at discourses in school. She looks at questions such as: what do we see as disturbance in school? What is the space we give to love in school? Does teacher education produce social exclusion?
Eva Bendix Petersen
Eva Bendix Petersen is a post-structuralist psychologist and sociologist of education. She is currently Professor of Higher Education in the Department of People and Technology at Roskilde University, Denmark. She is known for her work on academic cultures and labour, her critique of the neoliberalisation of universities, and her experimentation with new scientific genres, for example, ethnographic dramas
Kristiina Brunila
Kristiina Brunila works as a professor of social justice and equality in education in the University of Helsinki. She lead the AGORA for the study of social justice in education -research centre and I am a founding member of the Nordic Centre of Excellence: Justice through Education in the Nordic Countries. With my research group we are providing new openings, theorisations and critical analysis of sociology and politics of education.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5563-636X
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