Students with profound and multiple disabilities in education in Sweden: teaching organisation and modes of student participation

Abstract

This article examines education practice for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Sweden and the conditions by which it is characterised. It draws on results from the author's doctoral thesis, which analysed participation and interaction in five training school classes (Träningsskola) for students with profound and multiple disabilities, focusing on the organisation of the teaching and modes of student participation in educational practice. It examined the consequences of these modes and patterns of interaction that staff and students create together for participation. Empirical material was collected via classroom observations and 40 hours of video recordings in 5 classes in a training school, in spring 2009 and spring 2010. Study participants were 20 school students, aged 6 to 19 years (11 boys and 9 girls), and 28 members of the teaching teams (special teachers, music teachers, physical education teachers, and 16 assistants). The project design was inspired by an ethnographic approach and constructed as a classroom study. A small portion of the data was transcribed and analysed for use in this article. Detailed transcripts were created from data from video recordings, using conversation analytic notations to gauge the interaction between students and paraprofessionals. The analytic approach was inspired by “conversation analysis”, which provides a method of analysis of modes of participation used when students and staff members interact. Modes of participation that emerged related to varying expectations on students in different educational situations. Demands placed on the students in different activities elicited a range of responses: the attentive and responsive student; the emotionally engaged student; the choice-making, autonomous student; the exploring student; the inattentive student; the student as a recipient of care; and the playful student. There are implicit ideas in educational practice about the conditions under which students in training schools engage in participation, whether these students are aged 6 or 19 years of age. It is argued that more active styles of student participation would be encouraged with communicative, rather than individualistic teaching styles. In turn, this would provide more opportunities to create horizontal relationships with peers or with students without disabilities, or both.

Keywords:

• compulsory school for students with intellectual disabilities
• interaction
• participation

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by Kristianstad University and Malmö University, Sweden. No restrictions were placed on free access to or publication of the research data, and the author has no financial or other conflict of interest in publication of the results. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the text.

Notes

1. The Big Wheel Book by Nygren (1992) is a picture book, with pictures of different kinds of vehicles that described with a short sentence.