Browsing by Subject "työpajatoiminta"

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract The purpose of this master’s thesis is to find out views of young adults attending workshop activities. This research intends to find out how school experiences have affected their lives and their further education and employment. This research is based on the earlier known connection between school dropout and the process of social exclusion and aims to find out more on the possible role of special education in this process. The research group was chosen to include young adults who attend workshop activities because it is very likely that they have had risk factors for social exclusion present in their lives. The research material consisted of seven theme interviews that were analysed by using theme analysis. The interviews included conversation about school motivation, teachers, further education and choosing a profession, substance abuse, the significance of friends and family and learning difficulties. The informants were 21 to 29 years old and they all attended workshop activities in a quite small town in southern Finland. The informants had ended up in workshop activities due to unfinished second-degree education or long-term unemployment. The research showed that both school and free time related factors had had an influence on the informants’ lives. Especially learning difficulties, social support, substance abuse, bullying experiences at school, teachers, the sense of not belonging to school and friends turned out to be significant factors. All together the informants didn’t seem to think school experiences were the most important factors in life, but the research material still showed signs of school being able to influence the life paths of youngsters by at least giving some directions for the road.

Workshops can be seen as a one kind of occupational model in the field of the social employing. The objective of social employing is to support the employment of those persons who are in a weak labour market position and to maintain their ability to function. The objectives of the workshops, which are offering work experience and learning of life management, maintain the same goal as social employment. Workshop services in Finland are relatively little scientifically studied in spite of their fairly long history. The workshop as a concept is still quite sparsely defined and also an unknown occupational model to the large part of people. The starting point for this study was to clarify what the workshops are like, what the services are like and how learning can be seen from the point of view of the workshop services. The objective of this study was to analyse how the apprentices experience the workshop services as well as learning in the workshops and thus describe how the workshops are shaped at the youth workshops. According to earlier studies the apprentices have experienced the workshops as useful periods in their lives and also they believe that other people in society appreciate the experience that apprentices have been received from the workshops. This study can be described as a qualitative study. Its methodological foundation is in phenomenology and especially in existential phenomenology. The research material consisted of seven individual interviews and two group interviews. In the group interviews five apprentices were those who had also participated in the individual interviews and one apprentice who did not participate. The interviewees' ages were between 17-22 years. The interviews were carried out as semi-structured interviews. The method which was utilised in the analysis of the research material is developed by Juha Perttula (2000). This analyse method is based on existential phenomenology. The apprentices considered that significant experiences in the workshop services were the entry to the workshop, the form of activity of the workshop, workshop community, the achieving of life management and work experience, the understanding of the significance of the education and the planning of the future. Regarding to learning the attitude, on-the-job learning, the importance of the mentors, the new information and new skills achieved were significant experiences at the workshop for the apprentices. The apprentices' experiences reflect well the achievement of the objectives which are set for the workshop services. Results of this study are also compatible to the results of earlier studies of apprentices' positive experience of the workshop services. The results can be utilised in developing the workshop services to offer more versatile experiences than before and to improve learning conditions on the workshops. The arranging of the on-the-job learning and the significance of the actions of mentors should also be noticed.

The danger in tightening economic situation is that increasingly more people become margin- alized employment and education – at its worst entirely outside of our society. This research is aiming to create a picture of how the individuals are connected to the society. My special interest is how the people are getting on the edge or are totally left outside of the society. One of the major concepts of being part of the society is the concept of involvement. The in- volvement contains carrying and receiving real responsibility including individual’s own and the whole society’s performance. The dimensions of involvement are personal and social and this means that individual has right to her/his own identity and right to be respected. At the other hand society has to be a place where the individual should be recognized as him/her self, as a valuable person and part of the society. Opposite to involvement the literature often presents social exclusion. Social exclusion is a process were individual slowly drops out of the society’s norms and functions. Person can be excluded from for example education, working life, welfare services, and social relations as well as from the democratic decision-making. Social exclusion has brought up a great concern in Finland. Due to this concern in 2013 the government decided to initiate a project in order to prevent social exclusion. Part of it was the Youth guarantee that aimed to improve the youth’s possibilities to get a degree after the compulsory basic education and improve their chances to get employed. One of the tools youth guarantee has used is Workshop activities that aim to support the youth’s own life con- trol, increasing their involvement and preventing their social exclusion. There is a lot of literature on the subject of being part of the society, involvement, social ex- clusion and workshop activities. The interesting point is that there is no common view on how to scientifically define to these concepts. The varying concepts were seen to be making it more difficult to prevent social exclusion, since effective support demands to recognize those individuals that are in danger to be excluded.