From monocultural to intercultural educational research

In this article, the author looks at the Swedish educational system and the consequences that the Swedish multicultural society has had for this system. The author especially focuses on the consequences that multiculturalism has for research into educational issues and how research itself needs to become intercultural.     

Amazonian Native Youths and Notions of Indigeneity in Urban Areas

The indigenous presence in urban areas of Amazonia has become more visible as Indian populations have negotiated their own spaces and acted in new contexts previously reserved for the dominant society. This article looks at ways in which today's young Indians in an urban area define and interpret their new cultural and social situations, drawing from research conducted with Apurinã, Cashinahua and Manchineri youths in Rio Branco, a city in Acre state, Western Brazil. These young people occupy a variety of “native” and “non-native” habituses and develop their notions of indigeneity within complex social networks as part of their strategy for rupturing the otherness associated with indigeneity. The text contributes to the discussion on the theory of practice and identity politics, as well as embodiment. Young Indians in urban Amazonia constitute their agencies in multiple ways and use various embodiments based in the practices and knowledge of their native groups and those of urban national and global society. The young natives break with the image of Lowland South American Indians as peoples uncontaminated by urban influences and help promote new interactions between native populations in the reserve and the city.     

Role of motives and attributes in consumer motion picture choice

The study focuses on consumer motion picture motives and choice criteria. Its purpose can be specified into the following objectives: (1) to examine the motivational basis of cinema attending. (2) to examine the predictive ability of movie motives and consumers' attribute importances in preference regressions of four types of movie, (3) to carry out a motion picture choice analysis by predicting audience membership with discriminant analysis. The data is based on a convinience sample of Finnish consumers (N = 228) attending one of the following types of movie: adventures/ thrillers, human/ social dramas, sex movies, entertainment movies.The results of a group of multivariate analyses (factor analysis, canonical correlation, preference regression, and discriminant analysis) indicate that consumers attending different types of films have distinctly separate motivation bases, as well as attribute importance profiles, underlying their movie choices. Each movie type had a specific preference structure, expressed by the regression coefficients. Finally, the discriminant analysis suggests that the general motive and attribute variables are effective also in predicting motion picture choice. On balance, the results were mutually supportive and exemplify the managerial usefulness of quantitative consumer analysis also in the case of such abstract leisure products as motion pictures.     

An analysis of internationalisation and intercultural outlook in Swedish teacher education

Foucault's discourse concept provides an instrument for the critical examination of internationalisation and, respectively, inter‐cultural education in Swedish teacher education. Three different discourses concerning internationalisation are treated in the article: solidarity with developing countries, immigrant knowledge, and integration within the EU. Attention is focused on the analysis of intercultural teaching upon those visions that governed implementation of the concept in teacher education, and on reality as it appears in evaluations of teacher education. The question is whether a dilemma exists for teacher education in realising the goals of intercultural education, or whether these goals merely act as teacher education's false banners? The article concludes with perspectives on the future of the development from immigrant knowledge to intercultural learning.     

Critical factors of intensive family work connected with positive outcomes for child welfare clients

Mechanisms producing positive change in troubled families were analysed. The study aimed to answer the questions: What kind of case and client outcomes does intensive family work (IFW) produce for child welfare clients? From the perspective of family workers, what kind of critical factors for positive child, parent and family outcomes can be identified? The study used child welfare case files of 35 families with 93 children from one social office and interviews with 20 family workers and IFW managers in 5 municipalities in Finland. The shades of worries scale was used in evaluating the change in each family's situation. The case outcome measures for children included changes in the child's status in open care, short-term placement or foster care. During IFW, positive changes took place in 23 families out of 35 (66%). Twenty-seven children from 16 families did not continue as child welfare clients. Eleven children were placed into foster care during IFW and two years after it. The critical processes for outcomes included time, trust building and engagement, practical help, facilitating communication and guaranteeing the best interest of the child. IFW was considered effective for positive outcomes for the majority of families with complex needs.     

Prenatal Health,Educational Attainment,and Intergenerational Inequality: The Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 Study

In this article, we study the effects of prenatal health on educational attainment and on the reproduction of family background inequalities in education. Using Finnish birth cohort data, we analyze several maternal and fetal health variables, many of which have not been featured in the literature on long-term socioeconomic effects of health despite the effects of these variables on birth and short-term health outcomes. We find strong negative effects of mother’s prenatal smoking on educational attainment, which are stronger if the mother smoked heavily but are not significant if she quit during the first trimester. Anemia during pregnancy is also associated with lower levels of attained education. Other indicators of prenatal health (pre-pregnancy obesity, mother’s antenatal depressed mood, hypertension and preeclampsia, early prenatal care visits, premature birth, and small size for gestational age) do not predict educational attainment. Our measures explain little of the educational inequalities by parents’ class or education. However, smoking explains 12%—and all health variables together, 19%—of the lower educational attainment of children born to unmarried mothers. Our findings point to the usefulness of proximate health measures in addition to general ones. They also point to the potentially important role played by early health in intergenerational processes.     

Societal innovation at the interface of the state and civil society

The need to adapt to economic globalization and “wicked” problems such as climate change and poverty presents enormous challenges to modern developed societies. These challenges call for new solutions, not only in the form of technological or business innovations, but also through society-wide reform and renewal. In this paper, we outline a societal innovation framework to better understand the stage on which these societal challenges are being played out. Our approach builds on the classical view that considers innovation, an (radical or incremental) improvement that is both novel in its context and deployed by people. These societal innovations change the interface of the state and civil society for stakeholder benefit.     

Becoming International,becoming European: EU Research Collaboration at Finnish Universities

This article analyses the significance and consequences of the exceptionally extensive mobilization of Finnish researchers into EU-funded research from the perspective of university research. The focus is on the views of university researchers and heads of departments and research units concerning such questions as the quality and relevance of EU projects; the relationship between EU collaboration and other international collaboration; and the future attractiveness of EU-funded research. The study shows that Finnish university participation in EU collaboration is moving from an exploratory stage towards a more established stage in which collaboration is becoming more selective. In order to increase the appeal of EU projects among academics, EU programmes should give more space to curiosity-oriented research and become more flexible.     

School Difficulties and Immigrant Background: conclusions about intercultural education

This article, based on my doctoral thesis, presents a study with respect to teachers' thinking regarding school difficulties and their attitudes toward students' immigrant backgrounds. The intention of my doctoral thesis was to study the factors surrounding immigrant students' schooling. In the prevailing thinking in Sweden, students with immigrant backgrounds are often associated with problems and difficulties, not only in administrative circles but also in practical pedagogical discussions taking place in the schools. These problems are the starting point for an analysis of the reasoning and present thinking regarding immigrant students and their school situations.