Sosiaalisen transformaatio sosiaalialan asiantuntijuuden diskurssissa

Abstract

Päivi Niiranen-Linkama tarkastelee väitöskirjassaan sosiaalialan asiantuntijuuden rakentumista ja sosiaalisen merkityksiä sosiaalialan toimijoiden opettajien, opiskelijoiden ja työntekijöiden puhetavoissa. Tutkimus ajoittuu suomalaisen ammattikorkeakoulutuksen alkuvaiheeseen ja siinä syntyneeseen tarpeeseen jäsentää asiantuntijuutta sosionomikoulutuksessa.- Tutkimus toi esille sosiaalialan moderniin asiantuntijuuteen liittyvät hegemoniset kamppailut yksilön, instituutioiden ja yhteiskunnan tasolla. Sosiaalialaa yhdistävänä sisäisenä puhetapana tunnistettiin osallisuuden puhetapa, joka määrittyi tutkimuksessa hegemoniseksi, uutta moraalijärjestystä luonnehtivaksi, Niiranen-Linkama summaa.Lisäksi Niiranen-Linkama tunnisti sosiaaliseen liittyvien arvojen olevan kerroksisia ja niiden muuttumisen viitteellisiksi. Myös tutkimuksessa nimetty kehittäjyyden puhetapa sai hegemonisia piirteitä.

The purpose of this study was to produce an interpretation of the social when dis-cussing the expertise of social work in Finnish polytechnics. How do the profes-sionals in social education and social work describe the social at ethical, practical and theoretical levels? How do they legitimate their expertise? The social was di-vided into three levels: social in societal, institutional and personal levels. The study was based on the historical and cultural aspects of the social, on the aspects of social work expertise and on the philosophy of values. The study was made from the perspective of the critical discourse analysis. The main research ma-terial was based on the interviews of polytechnic teachers and students and on the interviews of employees in the social field. The persons interviewed were of differ-ent age and of different educational and working life backgrounds, and they were all women. The research material was divided into different categories called posi-tions: subject, practical and episthemic positions. The interviews and discussions were analysed from the point of view of the critical discourse analysis but the ma-terial was also reflected in the light of research literature. The results indicated that the meaning of the social at the societal level has weakened. Teachers referred to the social as 'those values' but did not analyze their values in detail. The speech of students, especially young students, consisted of de-scribing the social more personally. Therefore, there seemed to be collective, uni-versal values for the social among the teachers and employees but more personal values for the social among the students. The social at the institutional level (occu-pational, practical) turned the social into hegemonic talk of participation. Especially teachers but also social workers shared a discourse of participation. The students spoke more directly about helping people and clients, not so much about participa-tion. Other discourses of institutional level established the legitimation of modern expertise by marking borderlines and underlining one's expertise. The personal so-cial established two different kinds of discourses. One was a hegemonic discourse of the social as collective values in culture and the other was the talk of the margin-alization of the social in society. The results indicated that historical and cultural issues have modified the discourses of the social and that institutional and societal changes modified those discourses as well.