Defining student diversity: categorizing and processes of marginalization in the Swedish school.

• An interesting issue in the history of schooling is how diversity between students has been, and still is, represented. What are the categories that are used in the educational system to account for learning difficulties and low school achievement? And what are the consequences – for schools, for the children, and even for society – of the adoption of various kinds of explanatory categories. This presentation reports an analysis of how diversity is understood, defined and attended to in the Swedish school at present. To elucidate this complex problem, we will report a case-study of categorizing practices and their consequences that concern the uses of so-called neuropsychiatric diagnoses, notably AD/HD. We will argue that such categories play a very important role in a) mediating between the interests of collectives and individuals in schools (and in society in general), and b) in the formation of identities of children in and out of school. In the present study, an analysis of the interaction between the parents of a boy (5.5 years old) and various representatives of the institution (school psychologist, principal, teacher, preschool teacher) is reported. We have followed so-called pupil welfare conferences, where the problems of this boy have been discussed between the professionals and with the parents (mostly the mother) during two school years. The meetings have been audio-recorded and transcribed. It is shown that the parents and the professionals in school have different explanations of the boy’s difficulties in school. The parents, while not denying that their son causes problems at school, argue that the boy will mature and that the problems will disappear. Among the arguments they make, they claim that they both had problems of the kind ascribed to their son when they were young, and these problems disappeared with age. The parents thus refuse to have their son subjected to a psychological examination. The representatives of the school, however, try to convince the parents that a neuropsychiatric examination of the boy will be beneficial for everyone. The rhetoric of the institutional representatives during this long period include arguments that it will be easier for the school to handle the problems if they know that the boy ‘has’ AD/HD, and they also claim that it will be easier for the parents to relate to their own son when they know what his problems are. In this manner one tries to create an alliance with the parents that a psychological examination ending up in a diagnosis is beneficial to everyone: the teachers, the school, the parents and the boy. The results also show that the IEP for the boy hardly changed at all during the two years of negotiation about the problem. It is also noted that the boy himself has no say in the process when his school problems are discussed. When finally produced, the diagnosis resulted in a placement in a special class, which per se normalises the relationship between the parents and the school. There are no more complaints from the school. Thus, the two year long process of negotiation can be understood as a social and rhetorical drama, where the category AD/HD is the resolution to a complex institutional problem in the modern welfare state.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Communication Studies (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

sociology of education

pupil welfare conference

ADHD

identity

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)