Medical approach and ableism versus a human rights vision: discourse analysis of upper secondary education policy documents in Iceland

ABSTRACT

Trends towards inclusive education have informed educational policy worldwide although the term is still controversial, and the implementation disputed. In this article, we focus on the discourse in policy documents relating to students within upper secondary schools in Iceland, both at the national level and in selected upper secondary schools. The study is situated within the Disability Studies in Education paradigm. A six-step historical discourse analysis was applied when analysing official documents. Findings indicate different legitimating principles in the discourse: on the one hand, a medical approach to determine students’ abilities in conjuncture with an ableist approach and, on the other hand, a human rights vision which is intolerant of the ableist approach. The findings also suggest that texts present students in general as having every potential to become strong, independent and accountable individuals; while, conversely, texts concerning the education of students labelled as disabled tend to present them as individuals with low self-esteem and with special needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical discourse analysis
• upper secondary school
• inclusive education
• support
• intellectual disabilities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Anna Björk Sverrisdóttir http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7813-7088

Ingolfur Asgeir Johannesson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8212-5944

Notes

1 In addition to these 30 schools, there are small or highly specified schools, focusing on the fishing industry, farming, home economics, and visual arts, most which do not offer these programmes. The other seven upper secondary schools that do not offer such programmes are for the most part gymnasia as well as the Commercial College of Iceland (Menntagátt [Educational Portal], n.d.b).

2 This exception was an unreleased regulation (at that time) relating to the duties of everyone in the school community (Regulation on the responsibilities and obligations of members of the school community in upper secondary school, 326/2016). After reading the regulation it was clear that it was not relevant to the focus of the study.

3 In order to access the school curricula the first author visited the homepages of the selected schools. Only two of the six schools had a school curriculum in a PDF format (FB 2015; FVA 2016), two schools had a tab named school curriculum under which one could find the components that belonged to the school curriculum (MH 2016, 2017; VA, n.d.). One school specified that the whole web was the school curriculum when the word school curriculum was typed in search (F Mos 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2016) and one school did not have any school curriculum, the search on the school web did not return any results (M Tr 2015). Where available, material was collected from the web that corresponded to the given tabs, but the PDF curricula were also used as a guide as to what material to collect. Material was copied from the web into a word document in order to make the material more accessible for the analysis. Information about staff and school operations not directed specifically at students was not copied and analysed. This also applies to teaching plans unique to subjects taught in schools.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by NordForsk [grant number 57741] and Anniversary Fund of University of Iceland.

Notes on contributors

Anna Björk Sverrisdóttir

Anna Björk Sverrisdóttir is a PhD Candidate at the University of Iceland, School of Education. She completed her BA in Social Education and M.A. degree in Education studies from the University of Iceland.

Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson

Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson is professor of education at the University of Iceland, School of Education. He completed his BA and Cand.Mag. in history from the University of Iceland and PhD in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research interests include education policy, curriculum, gender and education, and upper secondary education.