The concept of inclusion in schools has outgrown the traditional focus on students with special needs to one that also addresses the educational rights and social inclusion of all students. In Icelandic schools, inclusive education is now a strategy that emphasizes social justice by ensuring social and academic well-being for every student, a naturally compatible perspective with the country’s long-time priority on public education and common Nordic values. At the same time, student diversity is increasing in the historically homogenous nation. This has become ever more pressing partly due to escalating globalization and immigration patterns in the last decades. Using ethnographic research methods, we examine the power structures constructed through social, cultural, and academic relationships occurring in the everyday experiences of students in mixed learning settings, which will provide insight into how inclusive education practices can be more responsive to inclusive education policy. The main research question is, Under what conditions do social or academic inclusion and exclusion arise in everyday mixed classroom settings? To answer this, we include perspectives from students, teachers and parents who all exert their understanding of social grouping and priorities in different ways. We see the classroom as a physical and social space in which the actors (students and teachers) construct and reconstruct hierarchical relationships. In such environments, students’ social relationships are constantly negotiated in the day-to-day operations of the school across multiple social divisions such as gender, ethnicity, class, and perceived academic ability. We also acknowledge the role of parents who exert social and cultural capital to influence their children’s schooling. Social categorizations and relationships are constantly negotiated in the classroom at different levels and different degrees, but seldom examined collectively to link their relevancy to the inclusive education agenda. 

The education system is a social space permeating with legitimized power imbalances. Failure to address the power imbalance has been a primary challenge of implementing inclusive practices in schools (Artiles et al., 2011). As a social field, education is one which, in local contexts and over time, has “reproduced itself more than others, and those agents who occupied dominant positions were deeply imbued with its practices and discourses” (Thomson, 2014, p. 74). Because the school space comprises multiple and overlapping sources of social inequalities, this study utilizes an intersectional approach to broaden Bourdieu’s work regarding social space, habitus, and class to include gender and ethnicity and perceived academic abilities (Francis et al., 2012). Applying an intersectional lens to overlapping social constructions (Rollock et al., 2015) allows us to address how multiple domains of power, advantage, and identities are carried out in what appears to be a functioning inclusive educational setting (Thomas & Macnab, 2019).  

Research on immigrants in Iceland is growing but narrow, with few studies that address the needs of students of different ethnic backgrounds  in the context of inclusive education practices (Gunnþórsdóttir et al., 2019), and none with social class status variations. Much of the research is currently under the scope of multicultural education and Icelandic language competencies. Diversity and multicultural studies in Iceland have largely depicted immigrant background students as a monolithic group, marginalized within a school system that has not met their social and educational needs. The well-being of immigrant background students reported to be below that of their native Icelandic peers (Runarsdottir & Vilhjalmsson, 2019). 

This study is part of a larger, collaborative transnational research, MAPS (https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/mixed-classes-and-pedagogical-solutions), spanning macro-, meso, and micro- levels of education in urban, diverse schools (Magnúsdóttir et al., 2020; Wolff et al., 2021) and funded by NordForsk. The present study fills a micro-level research gap in Iceland, where there are few ethnographic investigations with a focus on social diversity and identity. We use a small sample from one urban Icelandic primary school. The school chosen represents one of the most ethnically and economically diverse in the capital city. For that reason, class and ethnic minorities are over-represented here in terms of the population average, but the school is nevertheless seen as one of the most balanced in social and ethnic diversity in the broadest sense. Our rich multi-layered data includes ethnographic fieldwork that yielded 91 hours of participant observations throughout the course of one school year with this group of 38 students and their teachers, sociograms from students’ surveys, and in-depth interviews with 13 teachers and 7 parents. An ethnographic approach is an ideal way to study the social order of space, where the observer is immersed in the site, and the participants are actively contributing to the construction of relationships and interactions. What we observe is class, race, and gender expressed through bodily dispositions, working through each other into physical, visible practices (Byrne, 2006). The observations and student surveys were then used to identify social leaders among the group, specifically those students who are seen as social leaders and those students who are seen as achievement leaders. We applied a qualitative social network analysis (Grunspan et al., 2014) using Gephi software for network visualization and analysis to construct sociograms, or visual representations, of the students’ social relationships based on who they admired as friends and academic peers, an effective tool to discuss hierarchical structures and power dynamics of a defined social space. This analytical tool is comparable to what Lin (1999) first called a ‘position generator’ to measure accessed social capital and is a useful way to operationalize Bourdieu’s concept of social space and habitus. Additionally, interviews from teachers and parents provided oral narrative accounts and direct information (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007) about their influence as social agents, and how students’ differences are used to advantage or disadvantage their place in the school.

Educational research argues that parents seek a good mix in reference to a visible presence of ethnic (not social) diversity that would presumably minimize racist encounters and promote positive ethnic identity (Ball et al., 2013; Byrne, 2006; Reay et al., 2011). Schools may likewise benefit when a ‘good ethnic mix’ contributes positively to the social value of school. This agrees with our findings, particularly where the most active parents are White middle-class, value the diversity of the school and hope that it teaches their children to be more “open-minded.” Re/constructions of social class was observed across all data but especially via interviews with middle class parents and immigrant parents. The most socially popular students were both of immigrant background, a component of the low stratification found among social groupings, where immigrant and native student friendships were more equalized. However, there was steep stratification among academic achievers, dominated by White middle-class students. Academic inclusion was significantly disrupted by these factors. Interviews with teachers indicate that they understand the broad scope of inclusive education, particularly in the local Icelandic context, but at times applied a “lower-order thinking” approach to inclusivity (Lingard et al., 2003), conforming to a national normative identity. Despite achieving a good mix or visible diversity there remains the risk of covert dismissal of non-dominant cultures, or promotion of integration rather than inclusion. Using a range of data from participant observation to sociograms to interviews, we argue that the social space and pro-inclusive environment of this diverse classroom does indeed contribute to social inclusion, but has limited impact on academic inclusion, where there remains concern for increasing segregation as long as systematic inequalities are not confronted and invalidated.

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