Urban neighbourhoods and guidance counselling in basic education: a spatial justice approach

Abstract This study sought to gain a deeper understanding of the spatiality and spatial justice of guidance counselling in basic education. The spatial framework was applied to analyse the recognition of diversity and adolescents’ positioning in guidance counselling (lessons, excursions and information events). This study used a phenomenological research approach based on fieldwork, observations and lifespan interviews conducted with a class located in a disadvantaged urban neighbourhood in Finland. The outcomes reveal how adolescents adjust or take counter positions to prevailing expectations attached to their neighbourhoods. The transition to upper-secondary education was geographical, social and cultural, and the guidance counselling was able to provide inclusive and affirmative support for transitions. Simultaneously, guidance is vehicle for cultural adaptation to the working-class position and tend to lack a recognition of the diversity and counter positions of adolescents. This paper discusses the multicultural competence of counsellors and the potentiality of group-based guidance.