‘The ADHD diagnosis has been thrown out’: exploring the Dilemmas of diagnosing children in a school for all

ABSTRACT

This study of institutional categorisation analyses how municipalities, psychiatric clinics and schools conceive of and act on school difficulties in the Danish school system. The research analyses the responses of municipalities and schools following changes in institutional practices for the allocation of special educational support. The main data consist of documents and of interviews with professionals involved in processing students’ cases and making decisions regarding provision of special educational support. The main results show that ways of understanding and handling school difficulties at the different levels of decision-making change when incentives to use psychiatric diagnoses (ADHD and other) are reduced. When school problems occur in the system launched during recent years, institutional actors increasingly look to the school context to locate the core of the problem and to search for its solutions in organisational structures and pedagogical practices. The consequences of these shifts in institutional practices and accountabilities are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Diagnoses
• school difficulties
• institutional categorisation
• inclusive schooling
• ADHD

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant by The Danish PhD council in Educational Research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Another widespread Danish administrative ideal is to decentralize financial responsibilities as well as the competences to refer students to special educational support to the singular school.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant by The Danish PhD council in Educational Research.

Notes on contributors

Thyge Tegtmejer

Thyge Tegtmejer, PhD, is a lecturer in social education at the University College South Denmark. His research concerns special educational support, learning and interaction, and institutional organisation.

Eva Hjörne

Eva Hjörne is a professor in Education at the Department of Education and Special Education at the University of Gothenburg. She is the Research Director of PRIS - Platform for Research on Inclusion and School Development. Her research concerns pupil health, school difficulties and inclusive education.

Roger Säljö

Roger Säljö is a professor at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning at the University of Gothenburg. He is director of LinCS, The Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society. Roger Säljö specializes in research on learning, interaction and human development in a sociocultural perspective, where he has published extensively.