(Summary of the lectio praecursoria 21.11.2025)
The study began with a central question: What do adolescent students find significant in school? At a time when concerns about student engagement and well-being are increasing, the research seeks to understand what happens when students are allowed to act, lead, and shape their own learning. In this study, the focus is on power —not hierarchical, but object-oriented power, rooted in meaningful pursuits and collective action — and specifically, on how adolescents generate and gain power directed toward a significant object in a Change Laboratory formative intervention.
Historically, power has been a difficult concept in education. In Finland, it was largely avoided after the 1970s, when school councils became politicized. As a result, the core idea of student empowerment—meaningful engagement in school activities and learning—was overlooked. Meanwhile, school alienation and the lack of student influence have become more evident.
Power is vital for understanding the structures that shape schooling and warrants closer examination, particularly student power, which has been largely overlooked. Cultural-historical activity theory offers new perspectives on these entrenched issues. Schools, as traditional institutions, have long operated through hidden power structures. A century ago, these structures were openly acknowledged: students were expected to obey. Today, such language is unacceptable, and participation is the preferred term. However, this shift has created a paradox: students are formally granted influence, but in practice, it often remains limited or symbolic. This contradiction between stated goals and actual practices is significant. Superficial reforms tend to overlook deeper systemic issues rooted in institutional history that contribute to alienation. Instead, efforts should target systemic conditions that restrict both students and teachers, rather than isolated symptoms or individuals. Schools’ potential to help young people find what truly matters to them – to discover significance – remains underutilised. If the current system of haste and performance pressure persists, crucial opportunities for development will be lost.
To address these challenges, a Change Laboratory intervention was conducted within a larger research project where students identified meaningful issues and developed long-term projects. This open-ended approach allowed students to form groups around shared interests with confidence of support. The study highlights the need to rethink how schools support adolescents, focusing not only on academic success but also on engaging with what is meaningful to them.
This dissertation examines students who produced a documentary addressing bullying, diversity, and acceptance. The Change Laboratory occurred during school hours within the regular school setting, involving staff and integrating into daily routines rather than being extracurricular. The focus was on empowering students to explore what matters to them and society, recognising their potential to act, influence, and lead the learning process.
Initially, the focus was on student agency—how students take initiatives and make decisions. Significance, in other words, what students themselves find meaningful, needed to be made visible. As the process unfolded, the findings indicated that the phenomenon extended beyond agency toward empowerment. Students began to produce what is conceptualised as object-oriented power – power rooted in meaningful goals and collective action. This shift, from agency to power, emerged naturally through the process.
The findings revealed that students took and developed numerous initiatives during their documentary project, each connected to a meaningful object. Over time, these initiatives evolved through ongoing dialogue and reflection, with initial observations forming the basis for further action. Initiative-taking was a collaborative effort where students and adults worked together to shape and refine ideas. Eventually, interconnected initiatives formed paths that guided the project forward. Identifying and working on a meaningful object began with a conflict of motives that required decisions to be solved. These decisions became essential steps in transforming the object into a tangible outcome.
Students exemplified power through six types of discursive actions – the most frequent being taking ownership of the process and committing to taking concrete actions. Notably, transgressive actions – those challenging norms and adult authority – were rare but crucial turning points in the process. Actions exemplifying students’ power evolved gradually, reflecting a dynamic and non-linear process. Initiative paths contained discursive actions of student power, showing that initiatives and decisions were not only outcomes of the process but also essential instruments for constructing and exercising power.
Power developed as a stepwise process corresponding to an augmented model of transformative agency by double stimulation (TADS), adapted from Sannino’s work. The principle of double stimulation explains how transformative agency and empowerment emerge out of efforts to overcome a conflict of motives by means of a cultural artifact that allows the actors to break out of the paralyzing conflict and to engage in productive actions on an expanding object. In practice, power was generated through action, initiated in response to a conflict of motives acting as a first stimulus – in this case, the conflict between the desire to intervene in bullying and the fear of becoming oneself a target of bullying. The conflict created the need for a second stimulus, in this case, the documentary film.
The findings further showed that, through collaboration with people and organisations beyond the classroom, known as expansive de-encapsulation, students began to see how their actions could have a real-world impact. Such boundary-crossing shifted power relations, as students increasingly took the initiative and challenged adult authority.
Adults’ actions played varied and crucial roles: asking questions and making suggestions, providing concrete help, reinforcing students’ ideas, co-planning, respecting student ownership, and occasionally setting limits. Adult participation reflected collaboration rather than oversight, helping students clarify goals, sustain progress, and take responsibility for their work. Interestingly, even restrictive actions, while limiting choices, often prompted students to question authority and became turning points in gaining power. Overall, power was not transferred but co-constructed through dialogue, negotiation, and joint activity, as adults created conditions for students to develop ownership and collective power through meaningful collaboration.
Power is conceptualised as a process that unfolds through interconnected actions. It begins with identifying a meaningful object amid conflicting motives and advances through collaborative efforts to resolve these tensions. This collective journey starts with encountering a motive conflict and identifying a significant object toward which actions of power are directed. Identifying and building on this object is challenging and time-consuming. T Understanding how adolescents generate and gain power requires a perspective that integrates key components: initiatives and decisions, discursive actions, expansive de-encapsulation, and adult actions. The complex interplay among these elements reveals the intricacy of the students’ power-gaining process.
In this study, the concept of object-oriented power was developed. Object-oriented power connects power and agency through meaningful, collective activity. Power is not static but is generated through agentic engagement with a significant object that responds to real needs and contradictions. The importance of an object lies in its capacity to resolve tensions and guide purposeful activity. Generating power requires instruments, initiatives and decisions, and unfolds through negotiation and boundary crossing. Therefore, power and agency are closely linked, both emerging from confronting contradictions and developing new ways to act collectively.
The Change Laboratory shows that empowerment rises when students are trusted to pursue meaningful interests, helping to reduce inequalities in school power dynamics during a time of widespread alienation. It illustrates how schools can serve as spaces of inquiry where students address personal and societal issues through shared planning and decision-making. Involving teachers and students in planning makes the curriculum more relevant by giving students influence over content and process, turning learning into active exploration rather than fixed knowledge. Socially relevant projects also foster partnerships beyond school, connecting education to real-life contexts and reinforcing schools as spaces of empowerment, learning, and renewal.
The dissertation is available online at: https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-4176-3
