Leader
Professor Leena Syrjälä is
the leader of the research project. In her research
she has developed especially narrative-biographical
approach in educational research. In the latest
research project the narrative method was developed
to meet the concrete needs of working life.
Syrjälä’s main research interest is
methodological and she continues developing
storytelling methods in practice.
Leena Syrjälä has been the
director of the Finnish National Graduate School of
Education (KASVA) fsor years 1999–2002 and since
that period she has been continuing as a board
member. She is also a board member of KERTONET
(Finnish Network of Narrative Studies). These two
networks will be collaborators for this research
project.
Other research
group members
Senior researcher, Dr. Eila
Estola´s special interest is ethics in
teacher’s stories, lately also gender issues in
early childhood education. Estola concentrates on the
themes of this research project from the perspective
of young children, their families and other
educators.
Professor Timo Järvikoski
is working as a senior researcher. His special
interest is environmental awareness. In his research
he aims to provide new insights to developing
environmental education and environmental policies in
our research areas and perhaps also in larger
contexts.
Professor Pauli Tapani
Karjalainen conducts well-known research in human
geography. His interests deal with the wide-ranging
problem of environmental experience, especially the
concept of place as a core geographical question. By
means of phenomenological philosophy and methodology
Karjalainen has analysed various sources, such as
environmental images created by environmental art and
fictional literature, both poetry and prose. At the
moment Karjalainen is working on what he calls
“geobiography”, the question of the
relationship between one’s lived spaces and the
biographical awareness, a project in which the nature
of lived time will also be taken into concern.
Professor Rauni
Räsänen´s special interests are ethics,
multicultural education and intercultural
co-operation. In addition, the changes of values that
globalisation is based on and the negotiations on the
borderlines of cultures and places are her research
focuses.
Professor Vappu
Sunnari has led a project and a research network
on gendered power relations and violence in the
North-Finnish and Northwest Russian schools. One of
the central reasons for organising the project and
the network was in the rapid and contradictory
societal changes that are taking place locally and
globally, schools and the life of school children as
included.
Post doc
researchers
Dr. Timo P.
Karjalainen is an environmental sociologist
and in this project he has a special interest to
develop methods of gathering and analysing local
knowledge through stories and participatory
processes. He aims to provide new insights to
developing environmental (and social) impact
assessment by taking local knowledge and experienced
health into account more systematically.
Post graduate
students
Pauliina Rautio,
M. Ed., BA. Research interests include informal
and self-education especially in everyday contexts
and in relation to aesthetics and ethics. Doctoral
thesis under way with working title
"Photographing Porridge and Other Aesthetic
Encounters. The self-educative relevance of
developing a sense of beauty in the everyday".
Maija Lanas, M.
Ed.
Marikaisa
Kontio-Logje M. Ed. Learning in everyday life is
the focus of this post gradutate study. How do young
children learn and develop metacognitive skills and
knowledge in their culturally organized activities?
This is part of international study of young
children's cultural development. What are goals of
childrearing in a place of strong local culture and
global world?
Graduate students
Antti Mainio is
interested in village schools in the Northern areas.
International
co-operation and contacts
Dr. Freema Elbaz-Luwish,
Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel.
She is an internationally well-known researcher on
teachers’ lives, knowledge and careers,
narrative and life-story research, multiculturalism,
and border pedagogy.
Dr. Geert Kelchtermans
is professor and chair of the Center for Educational
Policy and Innovation, University of Leuven, Belgium.
He has extensive and internationally recognized
research experience with narrative-biographical
approaches and contextualised case-study methodology.
His research has focused on teachers’
professional development and school development (e.g.
micro-politics in schools), as well as on policy
implementation.
Professor Riley E. Dunlap,
Department of Sociology & Anthropology,
University of Central Florida, is one of the most
famous environmental sociologists in the world today.
He has developed theoretical grounds for
environmental sociology, and investigated e.g.
environmental concern and environmental movements.
Professor Helen Meshkova,
Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences,
Moscow, has done research particularly on
environmental concern and Russian and Turkish
people's social and political attitudes.
Professor Ludger
Müller-Wille, with McGill University (Canada) is
a well-known researcher in cultural anthropology and
cultural geography in both subarctic Scandinavia and
subarctic and arctic Canada.
