Gendered Structures of Finnish Comprehensive Education Through the Lens of Trans Studies

About the Webinar

Leikki Valaskivi outlines the theme of the webinar as follows:  

"Gender diversity is an increasingly visible and relevant phenomenon in Finnish comprehensive education (grades 1-9), but the subject has yet to be extensively researched in a Finnish context. In my doctoral research I argue that gender must be reconceptualised through trans theory and understood as fundamentally diverse, if we hope to produce meaningful change in the inequal gendered structures of Finnish comprehensive education. 

I am conducting my research at Tampere University in the Faculty of Social Sciences, in the subject of Gender Studies. My research is transdisciplinary and utilises multiple datasets. 

In my presentation, I will introduce findings from my first two articles, published and in review, respectively. The topics of these studies are

1. past school experiences of trans young adults and
2. discourses surrounding gender diversity among teacher education students. 

I will also present the broader theoretical discussion of my research, which includes trans pedagogy and trans theory, and Foucauldian theory of power and critical discourse analysis."

About the Organizer

The Collegium Gender Perspectives in Education is interested in issues related to critical perspectives on gender and education. The collegium is open to everyone.