Getting on the right track? Educational choice-making of students with special educational needs in pre-vocational education and training

Abstract

This paper explores the educational choice-making of students with special educational needs in the context of Finnish pre-vocational training and one of its programmes, ‘Preparatory and Rehabilitative Instruction and Guidance for Disabled Students’. The authors enquire into the kinds of educational choices available for students in the preparatory programme, and how student counselling meets their educational hopes and future plans. The analysis draws on an ethnographic study of special needs education in post-compulsory education in Finland. It shows that students need to reflect on their educational plans within institutional and diagnostic restrictions and guidance. The authors state that educational choices can be negotiable, but more attention must be given to deconstructing the self-evidences and institutional barriers linked to the transitions of young adults with special educational needs.

Keywords:

• pre-vocational training
• special educational needs
• educational choice-making
• student counselling

Notes

1. The study has been conducted in the research project of the Academy of Finland entitled ‘Citizenship, Agency and Difference in Upper Secondary Education – With a Special Focus on Vocational Institutions’. The Finnish Doctoral Training Network on Educational Sciences KASVA has funded the study.

2. The ethnographical study of the second author, which explores the questions of social justice and the precariousness of adult immigrant education in Finland, is discussed elsewhere (see Niemi and Kurki 2013).

3. The support in basic education is currently organised through a tripartite system. The focus is on the earliest possible support in order to prevent the emergence and growth of problems. Students first get general and then intensified support. If more extensive support is still needed, the student receives special support, which requires an official pedagogical statement of the need for special support (FNBE 2014).

4. The structure of pre-vocational programmes will be restructured in 2015. This restructuring will unite the separate programmes into one preparatory programme called ‘VALMA’, which aims to serve most of the students at the pre-vocational level. However, Preparatory Programme 2, which prepares students for work and independent life, will remain unchanged as before (for example, Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture [FMEC] 2014).

5. The ‘Equality is Priority’ (YES2) project, funded by the Finnish Ministry of the Interior and the European Union, implemented a life-historical interview study of educational pathways of former special needs education students (Niemi, Mietola, and Helakorpi 2010).

6. These names are pseudonyms.