Session Information
04 SES 10 B, Analyses of Policy Documents I
Paper Session
Contribution
The study analyzed conceptual change in the ongoing nationwide special education reform in Finland. The number of students having an official special education decision has been growing being around 8% of students in basic education in the year 2007. For half of those students education was organized in segregated special classes or schools – this despite of the country’s commitment to the Salamanca statement, UNESCO 1994. To intervene this development, the Ministry of Education launched a new Special Education Strategy, SES (Nov 2007). Of all the Finnish cities and municipalities (N=416), 65% applied for funding for the local reform of re-organizing basic and special education according to the new strategy. Of those, 90% (n=235) was funded in the first phase for the years 2008 and 2009.
The systemic-discursive framework (e.g., Luhmann) and the Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research paradigm (Engeström) were used in analyzing the advancement of the strategy in the organizational levels and the conceptual change and contradictions during the process.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Engeström, Y. (1987) Learning by Expanding: An Activity - Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research. Osoitteessa http://communication.uscd.edu/MCA/ Paper/ Engestrom/expanding/toc.htm, luettu 10.9.2008. Daniels, H. (2006) The dangers of corruption in special needs education. British Journal of Special Education. Vol. 33(1), 1-9. Hjörne, E., & Säljö, R. (2004) “There is something about Julia.” Symptoms, categories, and the process of invoking ADHD in the Swedish School: a case study. Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 3 (1), 1-24. Luhmann, N. (2004) Ekologinen kommunikaatio. Tammer-Paino, Tampere. Osgood, R. (2006) Language, labels, and lingering (re)considerations: The Evolution and function of terminology in special education. Philosophical Studies in Education, 37, 135-145. Persson, P. (2008) On other people’s terms: Schools’ encounters with disabled students. European Journal of Special Needs education. Vol. 23, No. 4, November, 337-347. Seidl, D. (2007) General strategy concepts and the ecology of strategy discourses: A systemic-discursive perspective. Organization studies 28(02), 197-218.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.