Working Inclusively with the Special

Author(s):

Inger Assarson(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

04. Inclusive Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

04 SES 04 B, The Skilled Practitioner

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-19

09:00-10:30

Room:

FFL - Aula 17

Chair:

Mara Westling Allodi

Contribution

Since 2008 study programs for special needs teachers restarted in Sweden. The new programs are two-fold where one track leads to advanced academic level with high demands on scientific thinking and reflecting and the other on professional competence in Swedish language or mathematics for pupils in special needs in these areas. The new programs break from deeply rooted traditions of exclusion connected to the prevailing role of special needs teachers and have inclusive education as its main goal. However these changes are unknown by schools and as the new special needs teachers apply for jobs the expectations are mostly about working with excluding solutions linked to pupils’ difficulties. The main challenge for the new special needs teacher in the struggle for the inclusive school seems to be extending their competences to reach more pupils as well as in helping the teachers organize education to benefit all.

The aim of this study is to analyze how the professional and the scientific tracks in the education programs are experienced by students when entering the labor market after their examination.

The professional role of the teacher is constructed at several levels from a global level, amongst others UN declarations, to a socially constructed level within the private sphere. Being a good teacher is not only constructed by teachers’ experiences in practice in the classroom but also to an equal extent from reflections impacted by the personal life story (Goodson & Numan, 2003). Furthermore it involves an understanding for teaching and education as socially and politically constructed. Popkewitz (2000) emphasizes the increasing demands of political goal fulfillment as a result of the marketing of education. Schools in a neo-liberal free market are part of dynamics of shaping space for competition and liberty of choice (Ball, 2009). Prosperity for liberal ideas has lead to new forms of steering. A modern power making is grounded on individual choices and a presumed rationality in order to secure quality in governmental institutions (Rose, 1999). The pursuit of competitiveness and excellence entails assessments of both schools and pupils where quality is measured against a baseline of normality. Butler (1997) detected the paradox between understanding and mastering praxis for getting access while simultaneously this mastering implies a submission of generic rules and prescribed positions. In conducting pupils according to neo-liberal demands on effectiveness and competitiveness in school teachers are themselves subjects to this conducting either submitting it or making resistance (Foucault, 1982).

Method

In the first group of special needs teachers 14 out of 17 students passed. These newly graduated were followed for two and a half years after entering the labor market. The empirical material consists of notes from seven meetings with the group discussing subjects related to their work situation. These meetings were relatively free and simultaneously worked as collegial support. Between these meetings the teachers were sent in narratives from their practices and were interviewed individually, in pairs and in groups. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed according to the handling of those power dimensions occurring in the tension of mastering and submission, in building alliances, and in the dilemma between protection and exposure. Besides the process of legitimating and authorization is analyzed regarding developing inclusive education.

Expected Outcomes

There is immense tension on the newly graduated teachers in finding their role as inclusive and at the same time special needs teachers, as agents for their subject and advocates for inclusion, protectors of the vulnerable and at the same time exposing them to the prejudices of others. The main strategy seen in the study comprises building alliances with the headmasters and like-minded colleagues. The science track is experienced to give authority especially within their subject. In the arguments for inclusion the knowledge of the connection with democracy, regulations from UN as human rights, children’s right and the Salamanca Declaration to some extent give strength to their claim for participation for all children. However the exposure of these vulnerable kids in schools may be hurtful to them thereby leading to a protectionist tendency in small separated groups. Competitiveness and increasing demands rule the agenda and in mastering praxis they are forced to submit to values and attitudes counteracting inclusion for these pupils. In arguing for inclusion they see competence in qualified dialogues as important for reaching reluctant colleagues.

References

Ball, S. (2009). Privatising education, privatising education policy, privatizing educational research: network governance and the ‘competition state’. Journal of Education Policy, 1 (24), s. 83–99. Butler, J. (1997). The psychic life of power: theories in subjection. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press. Foucault, M. (1982). The Subject of Power. Afterword. I: Dreyfus, H. & Rabinow, P. Michel Foucault. Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Goodson, I.F. & Numan, U. (2003). Livshistoria och professionsutveckling: berättelser om lärares liv och arbete. (Life story and professional development: narratives on teachers’ lives and work) Lund: Studentlitteratur. Rose, N. (1999). Governing the soul: the shaping of the private self. (2. ed.) London: Free Association Books. Popkewitz, Thomas S. (2000). Reform as the Social Administration of the Child: Globalization of Knowledge and Power. In N. C. Burbules & C A Torres (Red.). Globalization and education. Critical perspectives. New York & London: Routledge, 157-186

Author Information

Inger Assarson (presenting / submitting)

Stockholm University

Stockholm

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