Governing students for work and for life - guidance for students with special educational needs in Finnish VET

Abstract

Guidance has gained an increasingly important role in education. In this study, guidance for students with special educational needs within competence-based and customer-oriented, Finnish vocational education and training (VET) is examined from a governance perspective. Data were collected via focus group discussions among different categories of staff at one VET provider. A close-to-text analysis of the data was then performed followed by an investigation based on the Foucauldian key concepts, governmentality and power. Three versions of guidance were identified. In the first version, students are regarded as active and self-governing people, whose own motives and interest in education need to be identified and taken into account. In the second version, students are described as having difficulties in carrying out their studies and are given a passive role and exposed to objectifying governance by means of disciplinary power. In the third version, students are assumed to have a great need for support and are subject to a thorough, yet subtle, governance by means of pastoral power. The results are discussed with a focus on student categorisation and subject positions.