Session Information
Contribution
The paper reports on an analysis of the self-understanding of special education (Nevøy 2007). The study is performed within the interdisciplinary field of science studies and draws upon a broad range of analytical models from the theory of science and the sociology of professions.
Drawing on various models of institutional theory, academic disciplines are seen as historically situated, constituted by shared practices, rules, and moral and linguistic forms of meanings, which over extended periods are taken as given. What, then, are the dominant themes and territory of the discipline; its knowledge content, perspectives and lines of development? How does the discipline express its societal role and function, and what are its critical and constructive research questions? These questions are addressed to a field characterised by rival schools of thought. The topic at issue is thus which knowledge perspectives are ascribed value and which are marginalized and excluded in the conflict-laden territory between the ‘individual-diagnostic’ and the ‘collective-inclusive’ approaches within special education.
Method
The empirical base consists of documents reporting the discipline’s academic career structure, i.e. the process of hiring staff for academic posts in special education at Norwegian universities. This empirical localisation is justified on the grounds that knowledge generation is a collaborative enterprise in which the discipline’s core knowledge is constituted through the recognition of the professional community. In this view, the communities’ job descriptions, its ‘peer-reviewers’, and in particular the peer-committees’ assessments and priorities as regards the competencies of the applicants, are considered strategic cases for analysing the discipline’s institutional self-understanding.
Expected Outcomes
The analysis reveals a pattern of priorities where individual-diagnostic knowledge perspectives from the past are re-established in the present and woven into the future. Through this circular action, the reproduction of a system of knowledge, of thought and action rooted in psychology, medicine and pedagogical-psychology, becomes apparent. By advocating the normal/abnormal distinction as a marker, the border around the discipline’s field of study and praxis is drawn.
Whilst the individual-diagnostic knowledge structure is clearly dominant, it is neither absolute nor static. Within the discipline’s subjugated components, the individual-diagnostic power structure is confronted by a pedagogic and pluralistic knowledge assembly that localises the discipline’s study and praxis within the field of education, and that opens up for the development of an inclusive pedagogy. The paper discusses this division of power within the field of special education in the light of three overlapping themes: i) academic legitimisation versus the development of a professional academic culture, ii) political legitimisation versus ethical-political involvement and reflection, and iii) barriers against neighbouring disciplines versus collaboration and dialogue within the discipline of pedagogy.
References
Nevøy, A. (2007). En analyse av spesialpedagogikkens institusjonelle selvforståelse. Doktorgradsavhandling ved UiS no 45. Stavanger: UiS.
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