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How does the religious affiliation of the family affect the growing up process of young people? Religious minority as a socialization context is a scarcely researched topic. However, as a case study setting for examining the experiences of growing up-and bringing up-a relatively cohesive community provides an interesting context. The findings of this study present insights into value education, identity construction, and the negotiations on values and memberships. These are not only of interest for the researchers in the field but also make the book an essential read for the educators working in multicultural, multi-faith settings. The personal experiences presented in the book reveal the sometimes difficult negotiations the youth face in navigating between differentiation and belonging when there is a tension between the values of a minority group and the larger society. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate the diversity within both the majority and the minority communities, as well as exemplify the variety in the paths to a personally meaningful way of belonging.
This book was awarded as the Best PhD Dissertation of the Year 2011 by the Finnish Educational Research Association FERA
Report
Justification of the prize nomination: The choice of topic for Arniika Kuusisto's PhD dissertation is brave and timely in asking, how young people navigate with the negotiations of socialization, values and worldview in the complexity of the contemporary, multifaceted era and find their own agency. Although the study examines a religious context, it has wide applicability to understanding adolescence more generally. The researcher has managed excellently the interdisciplinary topic, which is mainly Educational and Theological but also includes valuable tones from Educational Psychology and Youth Research.
Theoretically well framed and justified empirical part of the dissertation utilizes a multi-method approach. The data are gathered from various age groups (teenagers, young adults, parents) using surveys, interviews and observation. The study is interweaved into an intact story, where the significances declared by different parties on the same topic, that is the socialization taking place in affiliation with the community, become visible.
The dissertation is an article-based dissertation, to which Kuusisto has personally written all of the original publications. The articles forming the entity have been published in international peer-reviewed research series. The compiling thesis part is compact and clear, successfully bringing up themes from the original articles into dialogue. Through the award, the Finnish Educational Research Association FERA wants to emphasize the importance of multi-disciplinary research on the youth and on multi-faceted nature of educational communities.
- Finnish Educational Research Association
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