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- Isaksson, Joakim, 1976-
(författare)
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Spänningen mellan normalitet och avvikelse : om skolans insatser för elever i behov av särskilt stöd
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In Sweden, an increasing number of pupils are defined as having some form of difficulties in school. In order to receive special support measures in school, these difficulties must have been subject to a pedagogical examination that state that the pupil is in need of special support measures. This work of identifying and defining difficulties implies that questions about normality and deviance inevitably come into play in school. There has been an increasing demand in school politics to identify these difficulties as early as possible, and this demand has placed further pressure on school personnel in this issue. Furthermore, the personnel’s perspective on the difficulties is also important, i.e., in terms of their origin, because this has importance for the design and content of the special support measures. The overall aim of this thesis is to analyse the tension between normality and deviance that is manifested in the school’s work procedures for pupils with special educational needs. Related to the overall aim, four overarching research questions are addressed. How have pupils with special educational needs and special education been articulated in national policy documents during recent decades? What perspective on school difficulties are being portrayed in schools’ individual educational plans for pupils with special educational needs? How do school personnel identify and differentiate pupils with special educational needs from “normal” pupils? How do pupils with special educational needs and their parents experience the special support measures that they receive in school and what seems to be the main concern of such support measures? The thesis consists of four studies that are based on different empirical materials such as policy documents, individual educational plans (IEPs) and qualitative interviews with school personnel, pupils and parents. The methods that are used for analysing the material are policy analysis, content analysis and grounded theory. The results show that the target group for special support measures has been ascribed with different meanings (over time) in policy documents, something that has affected the recommendations of the support measures and the choice of actors who are assigned to provide such support. Furthermore, the IEPs, as well as the interviews, reveal that an individual perspective on school difficulties seems to be deeply rooted in school. The identification process of special educational needs followed three models: a pedagogical model, a social model, and a medical/health model. However, the process of sorting out and defining these pupils invoked ambivalent feelings in the school personnel and the school class usually became the frame of reference for normal or deviant behaviour. Finally, the pupils’ and parent’ main concern of special support measures in school were described as a struggle for recognition and inclusion. The results are discussed with theoretical perspectives on school difficulties and special education. In the concluding discussion, it is argued that pupils with special educational needs have to balance between normality and deviance in school, but also between a pedagogical and a medical discourse by means of having a medical diagnosis in school.
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| 2. |
- Lövgren, Veronica, 1963-
(författare)
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Villkorat vuxenskap : Levd erfarenhet av intellektuellt funktionshinder, kön och ålder
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to explore and analyse lived experience of social categorisations such as intellectual disability, gender and age. The following overarching questions will direct the focus of the thesis, on how 13 middle-aged (aged 38-60 years) women and men who receive disability services according to the Act (1993:387) concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS), describe their everyday life practices:- In what way(s) are the social categorisations disability, gender, and age expressed in the interviews? How do the participants relate their lived experience of the social categorisation in relation to arenas such as work, family, and leisure time? How can this lived experience be understood in relation to the structures and conditions that form the institutions within the disability services?With a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, the thesis is based on repeated audio- and video-recorded qualitative semi-structured interviews and field visits. The altogether 16 participants were divided into two groups: the main group consisted of 13 adults and a reference group, which consisted of 3 younger informants (aged 25-29 years).Despite political ambitions that state that people with disabilities should have opportunity to live like others, this thesis shows that their everyday life is, in fact, conditioned by institutional structures. The structures that conditions the disability services together with the social construction of disability, but also of age and gender, frames leisure time, social networks, family life, practicing partnership, mobility (especially for women), and working life – in short, these conditions their abilities to fulfil the expectations that are imbedded throughout the social construction of adulthood.The relationship with the labour force can be seen as an illustrative example: The ability to be part of a regular working force was central for the interviewees. However, the analysis showed that the work that was available for the participants, is a welfare state effort, that is situated in an intersection where a logic of care meets a logic derived from the open labour market, thereby creating a situation filled with contradictions. On the one hand, the informants felt an obligation to fulfil an almost Protestant work ethic. One the other hand, their work efforts are not acknowledged by society as work. On the one hand, daily activity is a voluntary right, on the other hand; the informants have little opportunity to relinquish this right, depending on the particular organisation of the disability services. The participants also expressed concerns about losing this work, a worry that can be seen as paradoxical in respect of their legislative right to daily activity. The analysis has highlighted how the participants, in many situations, suffer a disadvantageous position with regard to hermeneutical resources to make sense of their experience. They also face structural obstacles to fully live an adult life. This could be described as experiencing societal norms of what one is expected to live up to, but at the same time be deprived of real opportunities to fulfil these requests – thereby, to live a contradiction. Lived experience of intellectual disability, gender and age, can therefore be considered as being a lived experience of a conditional adulthood.
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