Building a more inclusive education and school system has been one of the key objectives in the most recent reform of learning support in Finland. Old support system was seen too bureaucratic, and it focused merely on the three support steps. Now the scope should be in concrete support measures and early interventions. Although creating an inclusive school involves much more than the existence or non-existence of special classes or special schools, justifying the use of class-based special education lies at the heart of the inclusion debate. However, in Finland decisions about school placement are not made solely by teachers or officials responsible for allocating resources. Opinions on how support should be organised are also sought from the child or pupil themselves, from their guardians, and, when necessary, from healthcare professionals. The aim of this study is to examine how different actors justify placement in special education classes at the start of schooling.  

Society, culture and the structure of the school system have an input in parents’ attitudes towards inclusion. Some studies have shown that parents might have a more positive attitude towards inclusion in general than they have to the specific beliefs to its benefits. If a parent themselves has a child who needs special support their inclusion attitude might be a more negative but there is evidence that this might be reaching a plateau at least in some countries. A big question for the parents seems to be the nature of the childs needs. Physical disabilities and learning difficulties are accepted by the parents but especially children with behavioural issues are considered the hardest ones to teach in normal size classrooms. Even if a parent has a positive attitude towards inclusion they might be worried about the schools resources and the abilities of the teacher together with the societal status of the student needing support.  

Children’s own voices are often not brought out in early childhood education documents, nor are children’s own views on their support needs frequently investigated. Barriers to hearing the voices of children in need of support have been identified at both the child level and in professionals’ attitudes and the resources available. Little is known about young children’s own views about different schools, classes and support measures.

Previous studies have shown that healthcare experts are used as authorities and specialists in pedagogical documents, and their views and the diagnoses they provide influence pedagogical decisions and the planning of support. It is therefore important to examine the types of justifications used by healthcare professionals when recommending placement in a special education class for a child at the start of schooling.

The study is situated within the Finnish context. However, the development of inclusive schooling and the identification of beliefs and attitudes that hinder inclusion constitute key challenges more broadly across Europe. Accordingly, the central question of this study is: Why would a special education class be considered preferable to a so-called mainstream classroom?

The data consisted of 31 pedagogical statements and 20 attachments from the healthcare sector. The pedagogical assessment was a document in use until 31 July 2025, in which the teacher evaluated the need to initiate or discontinue intensified support. It was required to include, among other things, descriptions of the child’s learning progress and the child’s previous intensified support, as well as an assessment of the effects of different forms of support. The data were collected from six large or medium-sized municipalities in the Southwest Finland region. Municipalities with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants were excluded from the study due to potential identification risks. In small municipalities, only a few decisions on special support are made each year, and in such cases, identifying an individual child, preschool, teacher, official, or school placement might become possible, even though municipalities, schools, or identifiable factors emerging from the material—such as diagnoses—are not published. For large cities, the data were collected using a combination of cluster sampling and stratified sampling: first, schools providing class-based special education for first-grade pupils were selected. After this, an invitation to participate in the study was sent to the guardians of all first-grade pupils receiving special support in the selected schools. In smaller cities and municipalities, invitations were sent to all families of first-grade pupils receiving special support. Of the invited guardians and children, 23% gave their consent for their children’s documents to be used in the study. The pedagogical documents used as research material are, without exception, confidential. Research permits were obtained from each municipality participating in the study. Written consent for the use of documents in this research was requested from the pupils and their guardians. In addition, the documents were pseudonymised before being used for research purposes. A favourable ethical review statement for the study was issued on 16 April 2024 by the Ethics Committee for Human Sciences of University of Turku. The data is analysed using reflective thematic analysis.

As preliminary results we have found three ways to justify special class placements. First theme is named the Superiority of Special Classes, where actors imply that special class is somehow better and support is more easily available there. The second theme is the Child’s Attributes where the child is seen so needy that special class is a self-evident choice. The third theme is the Argument from Authority, where actors actually don’t present their own opinions but refer to a teacher, a doctor or a therapists. The data confirms previous findings that the voice of children themselves is frequently ignored in pedagogical documents. Only a few comments about the class placement from the child itself was found. The comments from the guardians were found in most of the documents but they were quite short and raised a new question: Who’s opinion it really was? These documents are only the end point of a long negotiation that parents go through. In many cases the child has had support measures for years in early childhood care and pre-school and in these processes the parents have had several meetings with teachers, doctors and therapists. In that light it is not at all clear, how these opinions and perspectives are formulated and how different actors influence each other.

Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2021). One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis? Quality Research in Psychology, 18(3), 328–352. Paseka, A. & Schwab, S. (2020). Parents’ attitudes towards inclusive education and their perceptions of inclusive teaching practices and resources. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 35(2), 254-272. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2019.1665232 Qvortrup, A. & Qvortrup, L. (2018). Inclusion: Dimensions of inclusion in education. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 22(7), 803–817. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2017.1412506 Sharma, P. (2021). Barriers faced when eliciting the voice of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities for their Education, Health and Care Plans and Annual Reviews. British Journal of Special Education, 48(4), 455–476. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8578.12386 Tegtmejer, T., Hjörne, E. & Säljö, R. (2023) Diagnoses and special educational support. A study of institutional decision-making of provision of special educational support for children at school, European Journal of Special Needs Education, 38:3, 363-377, DOI: 10.1080/08856257.2022.2089510