Students negotiating the borders between general and special education classes: an ethnographic and participatory research study

ABSTRACT

Although Finnish basic education is based on inclusion, 37% of students receiving special support still study in either separate schools or separate classes in comprehensive schools. In this study we explore how policies of inclusion are implemented in a school with separated special educational needs (SEN) and general education (GE) classes. More specifically we conducted a two-year ethnographic study focusing particularly on exclusion and the sense of belonging in a lower secondary school (students aged 13–16) in the capital region of Finland. During the fieldwork, several students attending the SEN-class expressed an interest in changing from the SEN-class to a GE-class, or in breaking the borders between SEN and GE classes in other ways. As part of the negotiations with the school, students who criticised the GE- and SEN-class division were offered an opportunity to transfer to GE-classes but in the end, all of them wanted to stay in the SEN-class. In this investigation, we focus on the students’ reasoning and the teachers’ reactions when students negotiate the borders between SEN and GE-classes. In this study we found a clash between integration and inclusive thinking.

KEYWORDS:

• Special educational needs
• exclusion
• inclusion
• integration
• ethnography
• collaborative research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. To secure confidentiality we have either changed or removed the names of the people and places.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland under Grant 264654.

Notes on contributors

Anna-Leena Riitaoja

Anna-Leena Riitaoja, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests are focused on othering, marginalisation and belonging in education and social services as well as diversity and social justice in teaching and social work professions. Her current project examines construction of migrant families and ageing migrants in social work professional knowledge base.

Jenni Helakorpi

Jenni Helakorpi is a doctoral student in the Nordic Centre of Excellence Justice through Education, at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. In her PhD-project she studies the policies and practices which aim to promote the basic education of Roma and Traveller minorities in Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Gunilla Holm

Gunilla Holm, PhD, is a professor of education in the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki and director of the Nordic Centre of Excellence in Education ‘Justice through Education’. Her research interests are focused on photography as a data collection method as well as social justice issues in education related to race, ethnicity, class, and gender. She has published widely on cultural diversity issues in education related to youth and teacher education.