Four Decades of Finnish Educational Sociology

Abstract

This section focuses on educational sociology and social pedagogy, two designations mirroring somewhat different perspectives on very much the same reality. The first article presents Finnish Educational sociology from the 1950s to the 1990s and is based on doctoral dissertations and other significant or typical studies in the field. The author argues that empirical research originated during the 1950s and the early 1960s. A typical theme of early research emphasized the school class as a miniature society. In initial studies on the activities and social participation of youth, society itself was already dealt with as a structural entity. In the 1970s, when the Finnish comprehensive‐education system was built, educational policy and the socialization process were the major themes. Then, in the 1980s, the march towards diversification and the development of a range of educational sociologies started. Finally, the expansion of evaluation research was realized in the context of the deep Finnish economic depression of the early 1990s. The lesson here is very sociological: the social context does matter. The second article focuses on development of theory and research related to social pedagogy in Norway, a ‘new’ Norwegian subfield within the discipline of education which was bom almost three decades ago. It is marked by some influential intellectual patterns 1970s from the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In the discourse on social pedagogy in Norway the reception and utilization of inspirations from the Norwegian positivism debate, the new sociology of education and post‐positivist social theory were the main academic sources of development which motivated normative and empirical research on a number of new themes. The author argues that the subfield of social pedagogy has led to a renewed understanding of the role of normative theory within education as an academic field of knowledge, to a broad acceptance of the possibilities of qualitative research strategies, and a new emphasis on integrative research efforts; but at the same time this engagement has reduced the outcome of a unique contribution to a thorough reconstruction of educational research and scholarship.