ABSTRACT
Jacob L. Moreno calls sociometry a “technique of freedom”; it is a “true vehicle of power” which brings to the light of science those social laws that govern our everyday lives and to which individuals should learn to adapt. This chapter analyses the governmental and epistemological discourses involved in the conceptualization and research of the classroom as a social order. It examines 20th-century Finnish discourses of educational research that accentuate the connection between scientific knowledge and progressive, social classroom pedagogy. The chapter describes Matti Koskenniemi’s notion of the classroom as a social order that has its internal regularities and norms, which can be harnessed for pedagogical purposes. Koskenniemi’s characterization of the social order is described as enmeshed in wider political values and systems of meaning in representing Finnish society as a knowable and governable whole. The chapter also describes how Koskenniemi approaches the problem of acquiring knowledge of the hidden, abstract order through empirical observation and the use of sociograms.
