Tuula Heiskanen

Studying Gendered Practices

The author is a Finnish woman writer, who from the shadow of her famous artist-cum-author husband has won herself a place in the Nordic cultural scene and international acknowledgement. Her text reflects the pressure of expectations she has felt while seeking room for herself and trying to fit family responsibilities with literary work. It sets up the exciting question of the dynamics of gender relations, the question of change and permanence, which is also the central tension of our book. Little Red Riding Hood meets the system of gender relations through Wolf, her husband. In our book we look at that in another perspective through the processes and structures of working life, including the interrelations of work and family.

Gender issues in action research: implications for adult education

Gender equality is a widely recognized value. Still, on the practical level, it is not easy to achieve true gender equality. Gender has proved to be a complicated issue both for research and practice. Gender change projects trying to make changes in detected disadvantages have repeatedly run into a problem: it is difficult to put gender issues on the agenda and it is difficult to keep them there. With three case examples, this article addresses the question of why it is difficult to approach gender issues in change projects and what conditions make this less difficult. It deals with the potential of action research of making a contribution to gender issues and emphasizes that change projects need a concept of gender which includes the relevant aspects of social structure and social process. In conclusion, the article presents implications for adult education, especially the challenge of developing concepts of empowerment and agency to comply with the postmodern condition and the challenge of creating spaces for interpretation and action.

Persistence and Change of Gendered Practices

Our book has tried to make several aspects visible: the practices that maintain gendering processes at workplaces and in society at large, the practices of living and acting in gendered social relations, the potential or actual breaking points in established practices and structures, and the difficulties people may face trying to change gendered practices. We have introduced cases which may seem either encouraging or discouraging examples, depending on the reader’s frame of reference. The cases point both to great durability and to a potential for change in gendered practices.

Spaces of innovation: experiences from two small high-tech firms

Purpose – By comparing two small high‐tech firms specialising in medical technology this article seeks to answer the following questions: What are the key characteristics of innovation processes in the case firms? How do the mutual relationships between mental, social and physical spaces explain the different pathways in the innovation processes in the firms?Design/methodology/approach – One case is based on an in‐depth study conducted by the authors. Regarding the other case, a secondary analysis is conducted of a case described in the literature. Both cases apply several data sources. The case firms are comparable in their most crucial aspects (field, main product, geographical location, joint learning space in the start‐up phase).Findings – The firms have many similar features. The study, however, draws attention to the factors that have made them substantially different as contexts of innovation activities. The differences are interpreted through the concepts of physical, social and mental space. Spec...

A knowledge‐building community for public sector professionals

The understanding of expert knowledge as shared, distributed and contextualised has gained ground. The case description in this article focuses on developing expert knowledge in a situation in which both knowledge needs and the definition of expertise fields changed radically in the public sector within a social crisis. The article examines an educational process against the idea of a knowledge‐building community as defined by Bereiter and Scardamalia in 1993. The aim is to highlight the pattern and flow of a progressive discourse. Alongside the idea of a knowledge‐building community, Boland and Tenkasis 1995 notion of perspective taking and perspective making is utilised. The article discusses the factors that contributed to the success of discussion in the setting in which the target group was characterised by the transcending of organisational boundaries and expertise fields.

Pursuing Theory and Practice When ‘Everything is Moving’

This article describes the basic elements of an intensive action research process. The process started from an educational programme offered to professional groups interested in the problems in developing the public sector as a forum that would transcend the boundaries separating different work organisations. The introduction of the programme coincided with a radical socioeconomic change that affected very basically the role of public services in Finland. The researcher/practitioner co-operation continued in different forms for several years. The article interprets the setting and processes of the programme through the concept of space, paying special attention to the dynamics between different aspects (physical, mental and social) of space.

Intersections of gender, age and occupational group in the Finnish defence forces

Purpose – Addressing the challenges expressed by organization researchers and Leslie McCall with her conceptual framework of intercategorical analysis, this paper contributes to the methodological debate on intersectionality. The purpose of this paper is to explore intersectionality on the organizational level in the Finnish defence forces (FDF). In the paper, the authors explore how the interactions between categories of gender, age, and position in the organization explain the concerns of employees in the changing military organization. Furthermore, the authors also investigate the types of intersectional mechanisms behind the empirical observations. Design/methodology/approach – The logistic regression analysis is based on a survey addressed to the whole salaried personnel in the FDF in 2011 (n=8,093, response rate being 54 per cent). Findings – In line with McCall’s (2005) intercategorical approach, the analysis shows that the plain examination of main effects of the variables will not suffice, but th...