Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy : Lessons from Finland

Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Gabriele Molzberger (eds), Disciplinary Struggles in Education Tampere University Press 2019, 83–115 http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-359-002-1 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy Lessons from Finland Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde Abstract The chapter discusses the concept of discipline in relation to struggles over knowledge production and power. It uses as an example the pathways of studies on adult and vocational education between the academy, politics and practice, especially beside the study of general education, which much earlier gained an institutionalised and recognised position in the academy and in educational knowledge production. Applying a genealogical and actor network-theoretical approach, the chapter argues that the disciplinarisation or scientification of educational knowledge is not primarily an issue of conceptual and theoretical progress. Rather it indicates relations and power struggles between actors in the academy, politics, economy and practice. Keywords: Disciplinarisation; adult, vocational and general education; genealogical and actor network-theoretical approach. Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 84 Introduction The dominating interpretation among Finnish adult educators emphasises the formation of adult education as a field of study that followed a logical progress from practice to the conceptualisation of practice to theory and metatheory (Durkheim, 1956; Lehtonen, 1979; Alanen, 1977; Tuomisto, 1985, 2005, forthcoming; Finger, 2001). We argue that the academisation and scientification of neither adult education nor vocational education follow the conventional story. Instead, understanding the process demands a critical sociohistorical analysis, a study of the dynamics between different fields (of educational science) and questioning the antagonistic division between practice, research and politics as well as edification and economic development in education. Based on our studies, we argue that, at least in Finland, the sciences of (general) education, adult education and vocational education had diverse roots before becoming educational sub-disciplines in the faculties of education, established in the 1970s. While the differentiation in general education may be attributed to increasing specialisation and professionalization, the making of the fields of adult and vocational education was due to their close connections to political and economic change. Their disciplinarisation happened quite separately from that of general education. While it is possible to map differences in their underlying theoretical and conceptual frameworks, we argue that the actual solutions have rather been outcomes of intertwined power struggles in politics, economy, academy and practice. Although increasingly taking place in transnational settings, such struggles are still worth noticing when considering the disciplinary status of adult and vocational education in different contexts. Instead of providing a comprehensive overview of the histories of the adult education and vocational education disciplines in Finland,1 we focus on the early years and vital turning points of their disciplinarisation to highlight the entanglement of their transformation with social, political and economic 1 Although we are aware of the controversial notions of ‘science’ and ‘discipline’, in this article we focus on their function as tools in struggles about hegemony in knowledge creation. We are also aware about the many other demarcations in/between adult and vocational education, such as youth education/work, social pedagogy, management and HRD studies, work science etc., but assume that our approach could be widened to them as well. 85 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy programmes. In the next section we briefly discuss the main theoretical and methodological starting points of our approach. The following three sections provide examples of the concrete implementation of those programmes in analysing the disciplinarisation of adult and vocational education. In the final section we introduce preliminary conclusions and discuss the potential of our approach for future research. Figures visualise the actors initiating the disciplinarisation of adult and vocational education and the shifting positions of the disciplines in the changing actor networks.2 A list of abbreviations of the main actors can be found at the end of the chapter. Theoretical and methodological starting points Among the starting points of our research is the assumption that research fields, with their distinctive conceptualisation, emerge as part of political programmes (Latour, 1993; Narotzky, 2007). Therefore, we consider that historicising and contextualising – genealogical, actor-based, relational – analysis is required to make sense of the societal, political and economic functions of adult and vocational education disciplines. Our attempt is motivated by concerns about understanding and influencing the present, where adult and vocational education are confronted by current challenges of the globalisation of the economy, the supranationalisation of politics and ecological, economic and social crises. This, we believe, requires a critical revision of their basic concepts (Pätäri et al., 2016). The crafting of our ‘reflexive historical materialist’ (Narotzky, 2007) approach has been influenced by Michel Foucault’s genealogy and Bruno Latour’s actornetwork theory (ANT), which both consider the emergence and transformation of events as contingent processes. Instead of telling the story from the standpoint of ideas, ‘founding fathers’, progress or regress, we aim to show it as a complex of relations between events and actions. 2 To remind about the struggle between adult, vocational and general education, we use colors for tentative part in the struggle: yellow for general, blue for vocational and green for adult education. Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 86 The genealogical approach implies that disciplinarisation is understood as a struggle over knowledge production among different actors and institutions, embedded in transformation and power relations of society, politics and economy. Instead of debating about the truth of disciplinarisation or the scientific quality of general, adult or vocational education, we ask how certain bodies of knowledge became constituted and started to condition themselves and their targets. Following Foucault, we turn Kant’s question of what in the apparently contingent is actually necessary to the question what in the apparently necessary seems contingent (Foucault, 1971, 1980; Dean, 1994; Gutting, 2013.) The standard narratives tend to take the contemporary professionalised and scientific practice as a starting point and to view the past as a teleological process towards the present, which determines the selection of objects in interpretations. As historians such as Michael Welton (1994, 2010) state about historical studies on adult education, their challenge is the problematisation and theorisation of their objects. In genealogical analysis, we ask what was theorised and conceptualised in the production of scientific knowledge about adult and vocational education, and what was left out. Accordingly, the responsibility of historical research towards the future is to affirm the present as a progressive movement (Dean, 1994, pp. 23–29). Our interest is specially to search for struggles which are marginalised or silenced in the disciplinary narratives even though they may be most vital for the transformation of educational sciences (Foucault, 1980, p. 81). The standard story’s institutional point of view and its segregation of practice from theory can be problematised by broadening its empirical approach and use of primary sources. This can be done by confronting previous research with examples of ignored sites and actors of knowledge production. Bruno Latour’s ANT provides a ‘travel guide’ for our study about disciplinarisation through the relations of actors and the formation of collectives (Latour, 2005; Lehtonen, 2015). ANT traces the history of enrolments of actors into assemblages, their appearances and disappearances, and the spokespersons of assemblages. Instead of debating with prevailing discourses about disciplinarisation, we follow actors in the midst of the tortuous history of disciplinarisation (Latour, 2005, p. 103). Using ANT concepts, we ask whether the disciplinarisation of adult and vocational education has been an attempt to 87 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy turn to a ‘black box’ – hiding what happens inside from outsiders – in order to be recognised as independent units that have autonomy to decide who is eligible to act in their name and what concepts are used to describe their action. In Latour’s flat ontology in which all human and non-human actors follow the same metaphysical principles, black boxes can mean facts that are taken for granted, groups that are established and well-organised or machines (Latour, 1987; Harman, 2009). Accordingly, the constitution of disciplines can be seen as a simultaneous process of fact construction and group formation, where concepts, theories, methodologies and paradigms are negotiated. Through opening black boxes, we can study how facts are constructed and what is taken for granted in disciplinary transformation and how groups of people negotiate over the place of a discipline inside academic faculties and departments. We ask who were negotiating and which actors and facts were enrolled into the discipline. Following Latour, we ask how strong the disciplinary black boxes are, by which kind of people they were accompanied and what kinds of connections they had to other collective actors in other disciplines, in educational practice, in policymaking or in working life. (Latour, 1987; Callon et al., 1981.) As stated by Olli Pyyhtinen and Sakari Tamminen (2011), Foucault’s and Latour’s approaches can be considered complementary since they both emphasise intentionality as distributed over relational field of networks that change and move, associate and differentiate, though Foucault refers to these assemblages as dispositifs and Latour as actor-networks. We also build on their notion about compensating Foucault’s search for assemblages preceding current ones by Latour’s travel guide to study the concrete folding of actors in their present. (Pyyhtinen & Tamminen, pp. 136–143.) Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 88 In the midst of economic and societal movements: The self-conception of emerging adult and vocational education ‘disciplines’ (1920s–1940s) The standard story locates the start of educational science in Finland to 1852, when the first professorship was established in the University of Helsinki, qualifying teachers for gymnasia. Folk school teachers were trained in a separate seminar from 1863, in close collaboration with the School Board (KH) in the ministry of education. Initiatives on including folk edification in educational science were put forth in 1920, but the predecessor of the discipline of adult education, the study of folk edification, started in the Civic College (School of Social Sciences) in 1928 as part of social sciences. A chair followed in 1946, and the faculty of social science was established in 1949. Vocational education, alternatively, was promoted in sector ministries and departments as a component in the promotion of national industries. The following simplified figure (Figure 1) shows how influential actors were positioned soon after Finnish independence (1917) and the Civil War (1918), Figure 1. Engines in the disciplinarisation of adult and vocational education in the 1920s. 89 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy when many political, economic and educational programmes, planned earlier, could be implemented, but political and societal tensions remained extreme. It demonstrates how separate the networks of knowledge production in folk edification and vocational education were from each other and from general education and teacher training. These will be discussed in more detail in the next two sub-chapters. Disciplinary struggles in the ‘study of folk edification’ According to the standard story, the first stage of the disciplinarisation of adult education science (aikuiskasvatustiede) is the systematisation of the practice, which had emerged in social movements, folk enlightenment and edification work since the 1850s. The first phase is claimed to be accomplished by the beginning of the ‘study of folk edification’ (kansansivistysoppi) in 1928 in the Civic College, as the start of ‘practical theory’ and the professionalisation of the practice of folk edification. The College was established after the Civil War as a new form of folk and higher education. Its focus was on civic education and the education of civil servants with no matriculation examination required for admission. The story goes hand-in-hand with T. I. Wuorenrinne’s (1941) canonised and historically reproduced interpretation of the development of the practice of folk edification that stresses the shifts of the core concepts from education (1500s–1850s) to enlightenment (1850s–1917), arriving at edification (after 1917) (see Tuomisto, 1991; Aaltonen et al., 1991). As the concepts ‘mature’, so does the breakthrough of scientific adult education in the period of edification. The story seems to reflect enlightenment’s idea of progress and knowledge as the backer in the pursuit of social and academic betterment. To understand the disciplinary and disciplining nature of adult education, it is vital to analyse how the disciplinarisation materialises in the data largely neglected in the previous research, especially in the first academic theses (master’s theses from 1933, PhD theses from 1955) or in the first journals (‘Folk Enlightenment’, Kansanvalistus, est. 1916). The restricted data of the standard story subjugate the students and the numerous practitioners, especially women, who contributed to Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 90 the discussion on conceptions and ideas of folk edification, and excludes them from the disciplinary community (Pätäri, forthcoming). At the same time, these restricted data remain silent about the personal unions and struggles over the hegemony that prevailed between the representatives of the study of folk edification, the state administration and national organisations of folk edification. The legitimate producers of disciplinary knowledge, the disciplinary agents of power, represented the hegemonic relations between the academic actors, practice and politics of folk edification, where the knowledge was contested, trialled and legitimised and in turn the positions and relations of the influential spokespersons established. Close connections with media and publishing were also important in projecting their conception of the folk onto the public. In a small country, a tight nexus of higher education, practice and politics has been characteristic of folk edification and the programmatic nature of its disciplinarisation. The standard story seems not interested in how the practice of folk edification contributed to the discipline and disciplinarisation even though it is named as the starting point of academic adult education. While the initiatives to start the study of folk edification in universities failed and the planned links to folk school teacher seminars never took off, the first academic degree in folk edification was specifically for teachers in 1928. Instead of analysing the material history – thesis research with its close relation to practice or study requirements – the standard story rather applies international explanations and advocates ideals about how the discipline should be constructed to be justified as an academic discipline. In line with the bypassing of practice, the key concepts of ‘folk’ (kansa) and ‘edification’ (sivistys) are treated as lower stages of ‘citizen’ (kansalainen) and ‘adult education’ (aikuiskasvatus) (see Lehtonen, 1979; Kalli, 1979; Alanen, 1977; Aaltonen, 1981; Tuomisto, 1985, forthcoming; Suoranta et al., 2012). The standard story’s statements about the role of folk movements seem ambivalent, and they hardly inform about the competing unifying principles and social and political interests of the time or makes explicit the social democratic ethos of the story. The rural edification movement, with its Youth Societies (nuorisoseurat) and folk high schools (kansanopistot), was the pioneer of the Finnish folk enlightenment and edification work. The dominant ideas of the independent peasantry crystallised in Christianity, communality and ‘earth-mindedness’, 91 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy where the land was considered as the foundation for economic, political and ethical independence and progress. However, the study of folk edification emerged with the urban, industrial social-democratic workers’ movement, steered by the social liberals and Young Fennomans. Their political agenda included socialist internationalism and democratic cooperatism, and their aim was to build bridges between different social groups, especially in urban and industrial surroundings. In their idea, the aspiration of workers’ edification work should be that all classes have full democratic rights in the society. Independence and the Civil War formed a turning point, in which the workers’ movement started to identify with employees in urban areas and in the large manufacturing industry. After the war, the social democratic-reformist fraction took over the control of the movement from the communist-revolutionaries. The workers’ institutes became central in pedagogical innovation and theoretical discussion and thus in the disciplinarisation of folk edification. The workers’ edificators started to advocate for a scientific and rational approach and worldview that the Civic College and study of folk edification were suited to actualise well. (Heikkinen, 2016.) Among the influential discipliners and gate keepers of the knowledge production of social democratic folk edification were Zachris Castrén and T.I. Wuorenrinne. With other influential organisers of the new discipline and reconceptualisers of edification work and folk, they emphasised the recognition of urban workers. The network included Väinö Voionmaa, the Chancellor of the Civic College, the leader of temperance movement and the Folk Enlightenment Society (KVS) as well as the developer of the Workers’ Edification Association (TSL, Työväen sivistysliitto, est. 1919). Castrén is the acclaimed and canonised social reformist authority of folk edification. He was the first teacher of the study of folk edification (1929–1938), the leader of the youth association movement, the first principal of the Helsinki Workers’ Institute (1913–1938), the first president of the Union of Workers’ Institutes (1919–1938) and an active member of the liberal Young Finns and the Progressive Party as well as an active newspaperman. In Castrén’s 1920s agenda for study of folk edification, systematic knowledge and understanding were required by all citizens to participate in democratic life, which required the contestation of thoughts with the burning issues of the day. His ambition was to promote the integration of the society and the practice of folk Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 98 of refugees from Karelia, war payments and reconstruction dominated economy and politics. The growing demand for subject teachers for gymnasia (academic secondary) and the increase of empirical educational research, which proved useful in the emerging national planning, encouraged the expansion of general education and teacher training to all parts of the country. Although teacher seminars remained separate, calls for comprehensive school reform and the academisation of folk school teacher training became louder (Pennanen, 1997; Ahonen, 2011). The disciplinarisation of adult and vocational education started to take new routes. The School of Social Sciences was establishing itself as an academic university and transformed into the University of Tampere, supplying civil servants and professionals especially to public sector and civil society organisations. The Department of Vocational Education (AKO) in the ministry of trade and industry took a leading role in the integration of national industries through the integration of different sectors of vocational education. Figure 2. Transition period from post-WWII to welfare state reforms 1950s–60s. 99 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy Although the disciplinarisation of adult, vocational and general education continued in distinctive actor networks, these became increasingly institutionalised, as indicated in the following Figure 2. According to the standard story, the third stage of the disciplinarisation of adult education – the theorisation of educational practice – took place by the end of the 1960s. It is also argued that the expansion of vocational adult education effected to the concept change from the study of folk edification to adult education science (aikuiskasvatustiede) in 1966. However, during the 1950s and 1960s, the academic interest in and research on practice was marginal, although the study of folk edification was still considered to belong to the social sciences. The change was steered by the theoretical orientation of Urpo Harva, the first professor of the study of folk edification (since 1946). He held a central position in the heart of folk edification, including the KVS, central organs of workers’ institutes, folk high schools, study centres, inspectors in the School Board (KH) and the Society for the Study of Folk Edification (est. 1940). However, with a background and interest in philosophy and pedagogy, influenced by the Anglo-Saxon concept of liberal education, he remained distant to their tradition. Alternatively, workers’ edification expanded and gained an official status after World War II, especially through social democrat trade-unions and municipal Workers’ and People’s institutes, whose leaders – such as Wuorenrinne – were defending the distinctiveness of folk edification. As they anticipated, conceptual change would also lead to changes in policy and practice and threaten its independence and status. Although the concurrent scientification of the study of general education presumably encouraged Harva to move from concepts of folk and edification to adults and education, no connections were built with education science, which was established in the 1960s in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Tampere (Aaltonen et al., 1991; Rasila, 1973). When looking at the developments in vocational education, it cannot be claimed that there were interests to extend to, and by no means to occupy, the study of folk edification. The rare offerings from Aarno Niini (director of the AKO – Department of Vocational Education) and Oiva Kyöstiö (first doctoral thesis on the history of vocational education) about ‘occupational edification’ as parallel to ‘general edification’ were silenced. On the contrary, inspectors in Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 100 the AKO began to develop a model institute for fostering vocational teacher education and research. (Heikkinen, 2012.) Together with the leaders of big industry and the AEL, it established the Institute of Vocational Teacher Training in Hämeenlinna (AHO) in 1958. The institute focused on the technical sectors, which were most strategic in improving work efficiency in the big export industry, while the rest of the vocational teacher training units remained annexed to other industrial branches. Teachers were inspectors and trainers from the Institute for the Advancement of Occupations (AEL), from factory schools and from the psychotechnical laboratory of Finnish Railways but also a few professors of education gave lecturers in pedagogy and didactics. (Heikkinen, 2012, 2013.) The establishment of the AHO compensated for the frustration of Aarno Niini because the AKO had not achieved the status of a leading agency in controlling the national workforce, despite its central role during World War II and the reconstruction period. In the AHO, conceptions of vocational education were based on psychotechnique and experimental psychology, with elements from humanistic education and management training in the armed forces. Besides the AKO, AEL and AHO, the Institute for Leadership (est. 1946) was part of the collaborating network, which directed the disciplinarisation of vocational education, especially through its first director, previous army officer Antero Rautavaara. In his influential presentations and publications, he propagated vocational education as the liberator of the will to work among the human machinery – workers, employees – of production by developing their positive dispositions and by integrating their interests and values into the work community. It cannot be claimed that the proponents of vocational education were developing concepts or theories based on vocational education practice. Rather they created recipes for activity, which would merge the roles of industrial supervisor and vocational teacher and support effective and encouraging management of the company. (Heikkinen, 2012.) During the 1950s–60s, there was a shift towards adaptation to the export industry-dominated Finland in both adult and vocational education. Adult education in the academy was promoting the self-understanding of the social democrat workers’ movement in representing the principles of democracy and the wellbeing of the populace. This implied, however, accepting the position of 101 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy ‘labour market partner’, where the other partner, the employers in the big export industry, allied with their collaborators in administration. They authorised the main providers of vocational education, also for adults. Into the lap of educational science (1970s–) During the 1960s–1970s, the projects of Agrarian and Small Farmers’ Finland collapsed. Despite efforts in regional politics and sub-contracted small enterprises, backed by bilateral trade agreements with the Soviet Union, the collapse of small farming was followed by a massive migration to Sweden and south-western sub-urbanising areas in Finland. The political victory of the Social Democrats, combined with the breakthrough of the radical youth, student and cultural movements, paved the way for the Finnish version of a ‘Nordic welfare state’, providing equality of access and opportunity to health and social care and education, implemented quickly during the turn of the 1970s (Heikkinen et al., 2011). In 1974, the faculties of education were established in seven universities, when primary school teacher training was academised. The departments of teacher training and general education represented the majority in the new faculties of education. Despite resistance, the Department of Adult Education at the University of Tampere (UTA) was moved from the Faculty of Social Sciences to the Faculty of Education. The positions of the key actors in the struggle over positions of adult, vocational and general education at UTA are shown in Figure 3. Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 102 According to the standard story, researchers started to study the scientific nature and theories of adult education in its mature, metascientific stage of the 1970s. One of the main spokespersons was Aulis Alanen, lecturer and professor of the only Finnish Department of Adult Education at the University of Tampere (1973–1991). Alanen had a background in workers’ movements and trade unions and committed his career to promoting workers’ associational and institutional (trade-union folk high schools) edification. He started to construct the grand narrative of adult education/folk edification, building on the definitions and interpretations of Castrén and Wuorenrinne. While accepting the inclusion of adult education in educational sciences, he strictly demarcated it from schoolish and externally directed education. (Alanen, 1977; Tuomisto, 2014.) However, in practice, he and other staff in the department were deeply involved in policymaking. Alanen was a friend and collaborator of key figures in workers’ movements, such as Veli Lehtonen (director of educational affairs in the central organ of Finnish trade unions, SAK), and in adult education administration (KH), such as Kosti Huuhka (the author of the first doctoral thesis on adult education, Figure 3. Struggle over adult and vocational education in the 1970s–80s. 103 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy 1955) (Tuomisto, 2014). In the committee for adult education/training, together they were spokespersons of future reforms, setting the criteria for what could and should be defined as adult education and be entitled to state support.8 Although Alanen and his colleagues also participated widely in established forums of folk edification – the KVS, the Society for Research in Adult Education (ATS, until 1971 the Society for Study of Folk Edification), etc. – theoretical and empirical research in adult education remained narrow and advocative, though this was understandable because of scarce resources. The metascientific phase was actually characterised by the battle over the identity of adult education as a science, where ‘international’ explanatory models were popular, both among the defenders of the tradition and the critical opponents from the Marxist student movement (Kalli, 1979; Lehtonen, 1979). In the technocratic education politics, adult education was considered as a part of the education system, and vocational education could no longer be ignored. Especially the University of Tampere and the Centre for Development of State Administration (Valtionhallinnon kehittämiskeskus, VHKK) were following the trends in Nordic and Central-European research on work and occupations, the democratisation of work and the imperatives from internationalisation and computerisation regarding the competences, social organisation and management of workers and work processes. Many studies and initiatives were put forth to establish research on work-related adult education (Tuomisto, 1982, 1986). The establishment of sectoral research institutes in ministries liquidated plans about developing a multidisciplinary research-centre on work-life, where adult education and comparative research could play a crucial role. At the same time cognitive psychology became fashionable in the education of social and health care professionals. Instead of adult education, however, the psychology-led initiatives were first channelled to the social sciences (Work-life Research in Tampere) and to work-psychology (University of Technology in Helsinki, the VHKK and the State Institute for Occupational Health) (Heikkinen, 2012). 8 Other key figures of the committee came from the Finnish Employers’ Union (STK), thus the committee was one arena for settling the ‘division of labour’ between social democrat-led adult education and conservative vocational education/adult training, discussed a bit later in this section. Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 104 The principal of the AHO, Seppo Oinonen, set the goal to establish a research centre there for vocational education during the 1960s. Also, a committee led by professor Väinö Heikkinen (UTA), who was collaborating in staff training with the United Paper Mills (UPM), suggested in 1971 that vocational teacher education should be moved into university, following the plans about the academisation of primary school teacher education. During the 1970s vocational orientation started in general and adult education at UTA: the initiators had a common background in conducting attitude surveys with teacher trainees, in teaching and staff training in the factory schools of big industry and in the Foundation for Free Education.9 In the era of left radicalism in universities, both the leaders of the big industry and the National Board of Vocational Education (AKH) were sceptical towards the new faculties of education. Adult education and work research were also rejected, while their collaborators in state administration might have interpreted vocational education as welfare-service and a tool for democratising work-life.10 (Heikkinen 2012; 2007.) One may question why the first professorship in vocational education started in the Department of Primary School Teacher Training (HOKL) at UTA in Hämeenlinna in the 1980s instead of in the departments of adult education or (general) education. The Institute of Vocational Teacher Training in Hämeenlinna (AHO) and the UPM made up the knot where the threads were pulled together – the STK and its co-operators in AKH in the departments of adult education and (general) education at UTA. The crucial spokesperson was Matti Peltonen, the professor of adult education during 1978–84, who worked in the vocational and staff training of UPM and in AHO as well as in AKH and in STK, where he moved in 1982 as the chair of its Council for Educational Affairs. Both Peltonen and the future professor of vocational education Pekka Ruohotie had completed their doctorates in the Department of (general) Education under 9 The Foundation for Free Education acted during 1973–1991, resisting leftist education policy, for example by intervening in recruitment of staffs in faculties of education, especially in teacher education. (E.g. Suutarinen 2008.) 10 In University of Jyväskylä an assistant professorship in vocational didactics was established in 1975 in Department of Teacher Education, with expectation to collaborate with the Institute for Vocational Teacher Training in Jyväskylä (AJO) and the national Institute for Educational Research. 105 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy the supervision of professor Väinö Heikkinen. He supported the establishment of the professorship in HOKL, where his colleague, Matti Suonperä – already collaborating with AHO – was appointed as the director. The mutual relations between HOKL, AHO and AKH were stabilised by Juhani Honka, the principal of AHO, whose doctoral thesis about vocational teacher training was supervised by Peltonen, who moved to AKH in 1985, and after its closure to UPM as an HRD manager. Studies in vocational education were exceptional because of the close relations to industry and the administration of both students and contracted teachers. The discipline built exclusively on American career and organisational psychology, and the foci in teaching and research were occupational updating, encouraging leadership, career and learning motivation and organisational feedback systems. Early notions about adult education, lifelong growth, societal factors of industrial development and participation in education were soon forgotten. (Heikkinen, 2012.) Although vocational teacher training was harmonised during the unifying reform of vocational education in the 1980s, it remained sector-specific until 1993, when it was substituted by general pedagogical studies. The transformation of AJO and AHO into polytechnics paved the way for the closure of sector-related units. The state subsidies for new polytechnics made initiatives about moving teacher training into universities superfluous. The ministry of education massively funded MA, licentiate and doctoral studies in order to qualify vocational teachers for polytechnics, which boosted the disciplinarisation of vocational education. Under the title Research Centre for Vocational Education (AkTKK), it became in 1993 part of the Department of Education (merging the departments of adult and youth education), starting MA and doctoral programmes in vocational education in cooperation with AHO, OPH11 and the ministry of education, which administered polytechnics. While interest in vocational issues was growing in units of adult education elsewhere in Finland, the discipline of vocational education emphasised separation from adult education, with a focus on occupational socialisation and choice, i.e. lifelong occupational growth. Educational, 11 As a finalization of the convergence of sector-specific vocational education, on the one hand, and of all forms and stages of education, on the other hand, National School Board (KH) and National Board of Vocational Education (AKH) were substituted by the National Board of Education (‘teaching’, OPH) in 1991. Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 106 psychological and sociological sciences were criticised for the exaggeration of ‘institutional issues’. Student and worker motivation, skills and abilities remained central topics beside vocational teacher careers and polytechnics. Cooperation in national skills competitions (started by STK, AHO and AKH in the 1980s) and World Skills-Olympics with the International Vocational Education and Training Association, OPH and the ministry of education promoted AkTKK in specialising in excellence in work and in vocational studies. (Heikkinen, 2012.) The disciplinarisation of vocational education was encouraged by the foundation of the Society for Research on Vocational Education (OTTU) in 1992 (the only foreign member of the American Association for Research on Vocational Education and Training). The ministry of education sponsored OTTU’s journal and promoted collaboration between OPH, the ministry and AkTKK, vocational teacher training units and the network of polytechnic developers. (Heikkinen, 2007.) From the 1990s, the landscape of educational research in Finland was changing remarkably due to the deepest economic recession in Europe, the collapse of the socialist regime and joining the European Union in 1995. While industrial relevance, the promotion of economic competitiveness, principles of lifelong learning and competence-based learning were adopted in all educational policies and reforms, researchers of adult and vocational education were no longer alone in defining their targets as human resources at the individual, organisational or national level (Heikkinen, 2007). When programmes and positions of adult education expanded from the 1980s to other Finnish faculties of education, their primary focus was on HRD and work-based learning and an unquestionable identification with educational science. The personal networks between adult education researchers, national associations of folk edification and civil servants in OPH and the ministry of education were breaking, and soon adult education units and experts disappeared from the ministry. Alternatively, while the polytechnics reform was accomplished, and the market for upgrading teachers was fading, vocational education without distinctive theories seemed easy to absorb both into general and adult education. It became replaced by the pragmatic research, development and innovation in the 107 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy vocational teacher training units of polytechnics, supported by the ministry of education and the OPH. Towards a reflexive materialist understanding of struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education Contrary to popular abstractions of ‘scientification of educational knowledge’, we argue that in the disciplinarisation of adult, vocational and general education this happened in close connection to contemporary political, economic and ideological projects and with minor backing from the critical empirical scrutiny of educational realities. For instance, we reveal different trajectories of the study of folk edification, which the canonised narrative has relegated to the margins of the stage of the professionalisation of practice (1920s–1950s). As a case we used the tension between agrarian and workers’ edification projects and how their conceptualisations of folk, edification and democracy differed as the knowledge base for the discipline. Concerning the separateness of the adult and vocational education disciplines in the 1970s, we argue that in the Finnish context, it was at least partly due to losing the option of revisiting and transforming the study of folk edification by including a critical occupationand worker-based approach. The establishment of faculties of educational sciences, dominated by teacher training, enforced linear interpretations of disciplinary histories. The study of vocational education identified with the managerial functions of the big export industry, with narrow concepts and theories, which hardly analysed or challenged the real, materialist history of vocational education. Rather it adopted the role as a handmaiden of vocational and polytechnics reforms. Alternatively, the initiatives from the radical, revolutionary youth and student movement to revise adult education remained abstract and shallow. While concentrating on short-term opportunism and naïve sabotage in university politics, they remained disconnected from the adult education realities and from the historical debates about folk edification and democracy. Anja Heikkinen, Jenni Pätäri & Sini Teräsahde 114 Narotzky, S. 2007. The project in the model: Reciprocity, social capital, and the politics of ethnographic realism. Current Anthropology, 48 (3), 403–424. Okkeri, A. 1941. Aikuiskasvatus ja kansanvalta. Master’s thesis, School for Social Sciences, Helsinki. 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Johdatus aikuiskasvatukseen. Itä-Suomen yliopiston Koulutusja kehittämispalvelu Aducate. (2. korjattu ja uudistettu painos.) Suutarinen, S. 2008. Vapaan koulutuksen tukisäätiö – koulukasvatuksen, opettajankoulu tuksen ja tutkimuksen näkymätön vaikuttaja 1973–1991. Kasvatus & Aika, 2, http://www.kasvatus-ja-aika.fi/site/?lan=1&page_id=114. Tuomisto, J. 1985. Aikuiskasvatuksen kehittymisestä käytäntönä, oppiaineena ja tieteenä. In E. Manni & J. Tuomisto (eds), Humanistin teemojen tuntumassa. Urpo Harvan juhlakirja hänen täyttäessään 75 vuotta. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis Ser. A, vol. 196. Tampere: ATS & Tampereen yliopiston aikuisja nuorisokasvatuksen laitos, 170–197. Tuomisto, J. 1991. Aikuiskasvatuksen peruskäsitteen historiallinen kehitys. In R. Aaltonen et al. (eds), Valistus, sivistys, kasvatus: kansanvalistuksesta aikuiskasvatukseen. Vapaan sivistystyön 32. vuosikirja. Tampere & Helsinki: ATS & KVS. Tuomisto, J. 2005. Searching for a new paradigm of adult education. In A. Heikkinen (ed.), Aikuiskasvatuksen tutkimuspolut. Tampere & Helsinki: ATS & KVS, 35–44. Tuomisto, J. 2014. Suunnittelukeskeisen aikuiskoulutuspolitiikan arkkitehdit: Aulis Alanen ja Veli Lehtinen. In K. Kantasalmi & M. Nest (eds), Valistajia, sivistäjiä, vaikuttajia ja poliitikkoja. näkökulmia aikuiskasvatuksen kentän vaikuttajiin. Suomalaisen aikuiskasvatuksen kentät ja kerrostumat. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 305–340. 115 Disciplinary struggles in and between adult, vocational and general education in the Academy Tuomisto, J. (forthcoming). Kansansivistysopista aikuiskasvatustieteeseen: oppiaineen ja tieteenalan synty ja vakiintuminen Suomessa. In A. Heikkinen & J. Tuomisto (eds), Aikuiskasvatuksen muuttuvat paradigmat. Suomalaisen aikuiskasvatuksen kentät ja kerrostumat. Tampere University Press. Virtanen, E. 1938. A.A. Granfeltin vaikutus kansankirjastoihimme. Master’s thesis, School for Social Sciences, Helsinki. Welton, M. R. 1994. 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