Abstract
The paper presents some findings of an ethnographic study of one mainstream school in Iceland over a 2 year period where the social construction of special educational needs was the main focus. Processes of inclusion and exclusion featured as paramount themes in the search for answers to questions such as why a school working to a policy of inclusion finds it so hard to carry it out in practice. The voices of teachers, school managers, pupils and parents are heard on the criteria and circumstances of exclusions from ordinary classes and from the mainstream school. It seems that the policy of inclusion has resulted in increased numbers of pupils being expelled from school.
Inclusion has become a dominant issue internationally in the field of special education (UNESCO, 1994; Pijl, 1997). The principal implications of the movement lie not so much in the integration of pupils with special educational needs or disabilities in mainstream schools, as in the development of new structures and practices in mainstream schools so as to meet the educational needs of all children, irrespective of culture or abilities. The basic premise in this organisational perspective is that special educational needs are artefacts of the practices of ordinary schools, which can be traced to the organisational characteristics of those institutions. The argument is that pupils' learning difficulties arise, not so much out of deficits within the pupils themselves, but out of the inappropriate responses that are made by their schools to those difficulties. Thus, they tend to stigmatise those pupils by providing support for them in a segregated way without altering the established forms of the school's organisation and pedagogy. Thus the main function of special education, as it is, is not to respond to the pupils's real needs, but to preserve the stability of the mainstream education system.
This study was done in Iceland where the National Curriculum Guide states that
The government's policy is that disabled pupils are educated together with other pupils as far as possible. At compulsory school level all pupils have the right to attend their neighbourhood school, unless parents and school experts deem the pupil's circumstances such that it would be in his or her interest to attend special school. (Iceland, 1999)
Whatever the equivocations in this statement ('…as far as possible […] unless […] it would be in his or her interest to attend special school'), it rests on a recognition that inclusive education is a matter of attaining equity through improved quality of education for all, and thus to be aimed for. Inclusion is thus an official government policy, demonstrated, for instance, by the deletion of the term 'special education' from the Compulsory School Act.
Despite some exemplary demonstrations of good inclusive practice in Icelandic schools (Marinósson, 1993; Marinósson, Forthcoming; Marinosson, 1998) it has become equally clear that the majority of compulsory schools do not follow the official policy (Marinósson, 1983; Valgeirsdóttir, 1992). In looking at several schools attempting to move in this direction, I began to wonder whether this development was quite as straightforward as many influential leaders of this movement maintained. There was a glaring discrepancy between the policy of schools and their practice; between teachers' attitudes to the integration of pupils with disabilities into mainstream schools and their reaction when such pupils were to be enrolled in their class. There was dissonance between different people's understanding of what inclusion meant to them as well as their suggested ways of achieving it. I therefore wanted to know how, precisely, the school responded to the diversity of its pupil needs and what was the reason for the apparent gap between their needs and the school's educational offers? What prevented this ordinary school from carrying out the policy of inclusive education?
In order to approach an answer to such questions it is necessary to tap the meanings of those who influence the operation of ordinary mainstream schools in some way, particularly as regards pupils with special educational needs. They are the teachers, the school managers, the administrators, the politicians at local and national level, the experts who support the school with disabled pupils, the parents and the pupils themselves. It is also necessary to look at the purpose, status and function of the compulsory mainstream school in its present context and how it has come to be what it is today. Furthermore one needs to look at how schools' responses to pupils' special educational needs has evolved through the years, not just in Iceland, but also in those countries that have influenced Icelandic policy and practice.
This becomes extremely cumbersome very fast unless one delimits the study in some way. It was thus decided to look at one school only and study it in depth over a period of 1-2 years (they became almost three in the end). The study took on a double purpose: first, to describe the function of the school as regards how it responded to the special educational needs of its pupils and secondly, to attempt to understand the reasons for its responses. In this way it was hoped that one could get at the 'grounding assumptions' of the school's operation, something which might be generalisable to other schools.
This was therefore a case study of one school and its associated functions, such as expert services, district collaborative agencies, parents and its area education office. The school was a compulsory mainstream school, for pupils aged 6-16 years old, the number of pupils on roll at the time of the study around 700. The neighbourhood of the school was relatively homogenous with regard to race, religion and income, with mixed private and publicly supported housing.
It was decided to choose a methodological framework based on social constructionism and symbolic interactionism. The point of studying and discussing the social construction of SEN is to raise consciousness about the way we create, mould and produce the phenomena which we later accept as reality. It is to point out that special education and the concept of special needs need not bee as it is; could be otherwise (Hacking, 1999). The latter, symbolic interactionism, holds that society is constituted by an exchange of gestures and language which stand for mental processes. In this way individuals interpret the behaviour of others by ascribing meaning to these symbols (Mead, 1934).
Social constructionism became the lens through which I interpreted the school's operation whereas symbolic interactionism became the magnifying glass I could point towards individual events in the school to understand them better.
In line with the above framework, the methodological approach employed was an ethnographic one, and the methods of data collection used were in-depth interviewing, participant observation and document analysis. The data was mostly collected during the period April 1997 to May 1999, when I spent a total of 72 days in the school. Observations were done in classrooms, meetings and other places, a total of 65 locations observed. 98 interviews were conducted and 160 documents collected. The analysis of the data was guided by the principles of grounded theory.
Here I focus on the exclusionary practices of the school. This is the converse of the question of why the school finds it so difficult to follow the policy of inclusive education. It is apparent that Mossy Mount school uses exclusion as a solution to problems of teaching that it finds difficult to handle. This refers mostly to behavioural difficulties and involves exclusion from mainstream classes and from the school itself. This is so despite the general policy of non-exclusion and stringent rules stipulating the conditions under which temporary suspensions are allowed. In general they allow temporary suspension as long as parents are notified immediately and given an opportunity to respond. Simultaneously the school is expected to make arrangements for the pupil to continue his attendance as soon as possible at Mossy Mount or another 'more suitable' school. Often this 'more suitable' school is a special school or -unit.
Why does the school exclude pupils from mainstream classes to place them in special units; or from the school altogether? Now we enter the explanatory phase of the study, which I am still trying to make sense of. We start with the nature of the school as an organisation. This is based on ideas by Ian Hunter who maintains that the school is not a failed realisation of some higher principle (democracy, equality, rationality, liberty) aiming for the complete development of the person, but a system composed by a plurality of ethical domains originating in the state's attempt to discipline its subjects (Prussia in the early 18th century). Thus the compulsory school is an improvised assemblage of technologies for social and moral training owing much of its structure to the apparatus of government bureaucracy on one hand and the pastoral systems of the Christian church on the other (Hunter 1994). The organisation of the school may thus be described as pastoral-bureaucratic. The pastoral refers to the notion of the teacher as a shepherd of his flock, with concomitant 'surveillance and self-examination' by the teacher and 'obedience and self-regulation' on behalf of the pupils. This is, according to Hunter, 'the core moral technology of the school'. The bureaucratic refers to the efficient deployment of human potential through structured administration and expert governance for the purpose of ensuring the welfare of the citizens.
On the basis of Hunter's conceptualisation I develop four elements of school structure that fit my data:
# The school as moral institution, based on Christian values;
# the
school as a bureaucratic institution, structured on the principles of
efficiency;
# the school as a pedagogic institution, caring for and
disciplining its pupils for their improvement
# the school as a
professional institution that is run on the principles of scientific knowledge
and on professional ethics and vested professional interests.
Contributing factors to exclusion seem, therefore, to be:
# the values surrounding the school, for instance that it is to be a
bastion of normality, i.e. a promoter of good Christian behaviour
# the
nature of knowledge in the school, for instance that it is mostly written and
scientific, i.e. measurable. But also that it is seen as being handed down from
authoritative sources
# the bureaucratic structure of the school, signified
by how it categorises both pupils and teachers
# the pedagogic principles
of the school, i.e. care and discipline, which have an uneasy relationship, the
ethos of care and support being broken with disciplinary measures when a
relatively undefined line is crossed.
In addition the power of the
professional groups of teachers and administrators contribute to the
exclusionary process.
But there are also counteracting factors, the major ones being principles of equality and justice within the school and in the wider community. In addition one may mention the fear of labelling and exclusion and the social commitment to individualisation of services.
This conflicting situation leaves the school in a set of dilemmas which it resolves by excluding those individual pupils whom it fails to manage. Despite being basically of a moral nature, the exclusions are justified on psycho-medical grounds, the pupils being individually assessed as being in need of special education. The exclusions are moreover structured on bureaucratic principles, i.e. on the basis of what the system already has to offer within stringent resource limitations, rather than according to the needs of the pupils. Thus, the school solves its problems by short term additions to the existing structure in place of restructuring for the future.
References
Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Hunter, I. (1994). Rethinking the School: Subjectivity, Bureaucracy, Criticism. St. Leonards, NSW, Allen and Unwin.
Iceland (1999). Aðalnámskrá grunnskóla. Almennur hluti [The National Curriculum Guide. General part]. Reykjavik, Ministry of culture and education.
Marinósson, G. L. and K. Gunnarsdóttir (1983). "Getur skólinn verið fyrir alla? [Can the school serve all pupils?]." Uppeldi og menntun. Tímarit Kennaraháskóla Íslands 1(1): 75-88.
Marinósson, G. and T. Traustadóttir (1993). Active Life for Disabled Youth. Integration in the School. Students with Disabilities in Icelandic Schools: Three Case Studies. Iceland, Ministry of culture and Education Reykjavík.
Marinósson, G. L. (In preparation). Fyrirmyndarskólar . Atviksrannsókn á þremur íslenskum grunnskólum og hvernig þeir bregðast við sérþörfum nemenda sinna [Exemplary schools. A case study of three Icelandic compulsory schools and how they meet their pupils' special needs].
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Pijl, S. J. and C. Meijer, Eds. (1997). Inclusive Education. A Global Agenda. London, Routledge.
UNESCO (1994). The Salamanca Statement and a Framework on Special Needs Education. Paris, UNESCO.
Valgeirsdóttir, S. J. (1992). Skyrsla um serkennslukonnun i leikskolum, grunnskolum og framhaldsskolum arid 1990 [ A report of an investigation on special education in pre-schools, compulsory schools and upper-secondary schools 1990]. Reykjavik, Ministry of Culture and Education. Figure 1 Explanatory modþel for exclusions from school
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