Session Information
04 SES 9.5 PE/PS, Poster Exhibition / Poster Session
Contribution
@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } The goal of this study is to add new knowledge in the stock of evermore important topic of understanding the implementation of educational reforms (cf. Fullan, 2006; Hargreaves 1999). We take advantage of an extensive reform in Finland, comparative in importance and extent to the foundation of Finnish Basic Education. A new Special Education Strategy (SPES) was launched in Finland by the Ministry of Education in 2007. There was the need for reconsideration of the system, because the number of the official special education referrals had been growing uncontrollably for years being 8% in the year of 2007 (Statistics 2007). For half of those students education was organized in segregated special classes or schools – this despite the country’s international commitments (e.g. the Salamanca statement, UNESCO,
1994) to promote inclusion and a common school for all. To solve this contradiction the new strategy emphasizes inclusion and the “neighborhood school principle”.
@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } The main research objectives were: (1) to analyze the conceptual change in the Special education strategy knowledge construction process. The change trend in municipality documents of four time-points was assumed to reflect the educational reform process in the field in general, by giving an overall picture of the reform advancement in the national level; (2) to identify the variation between the municipalities and to roughly classify the municipalities according to their stage of implementation of the strategy.
The systemic-discursive perspective (cf. Luhmann) was applied in order to understand the mechanics of the concept integration. For conceptualizing the change process we used, among others, the expansive learning model (cf. Engeström. 1989).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Daniels, H. (2006) The dangers of corruption in special needs education. British Journal of Special Education, 33 (1), 4-9. Engeström, Y. (2007) From Stabilization knowledge to possibility knowledge in organizational learning. Management Learning 38(3), 1–5 1350–5076. Engeström, Y. (1991). Developmental work research: A paradigm in practice. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 13, 79-80. Fullan, M. (2006) The future of educational change: system thinkers in action, Journal of Educational Change, 7: 113-122. Hargreaves, D. (1999) The knowledge creating school, Bristish Journal of Educational Studies, 47 2), 122-144. Hastings, R., Sonuga-Barke, E., Remington B. (1993) An analysis of labels for people with learning disabilities.The British journal of clinical psychology, 32 (4), 463-5. Norwich, B. (1999) The connotation of special education labels for professionals in the field. British Journal of Special education 26(4). Osgood, R. (2006) Language, labels, and lingering (re)considerations: the evolution and fuction of terminology in special education. Pilosophical studies in education, 37, 135-145. Seidl, D. (2007) General strategy concepts and the ecology of strategy discourses: A systemic-discursive perspective. Organization studies 28(02), 197-218.
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