Abstract
The paper is based on a qualitative study that explored the problem-solving culture associated with students' (ages 13 to 16) challenging behaviour in one Finnish upper comprehensive school. The data consist of interviews and documents. Data were gathered from teachers, other school personnel, students, and students' parents.
The paper consists mainly of the analysis of the videoed meetings of the student welfare team that solves problems connected to students' challenging behaviour and learning disorders. Four problem-solving discourses of the team are presented: 1)problem-centred, student-assessing discourse, 2)authoritarian social control discourse, 3)the reification discourse, and 4) segregative problem-solving discourse. The discourses are examined in the context of the school culture in relation to definition of problem situation, sense of community, social control, conception of learning, form of professionalism, and problem-solving strategy.
'Learning school' is reconstructed, where inclusion is promoted by enhancing the flexibility of the problem-solving and thus enhancing the possibility to deal with the individuality of every student in general education. To change traditional school into 'learning school', problem situations have to reframed and this requires a very difficult paradigmatic change from positivist beliefs into constructionist beliefs.
Introduction
The goal of school inclusion is to emphasize and meet the needs and rights of every student in age-appropriate heterogeneous group in a neighborhood school (see e.g. Thousand & Villa, 1990, p. 202; Lipsky & Gartner, 1996, p. 763; Thomas, Walker & Webb, 1998, pp. 3-25). Each student's individuality must be properly taken into consideration within regular education. Inclusion movement has to a growing extent moved from a more student-focused and teacher-focused view to take into account the quality of the broader learning environment. As McGregor and Vogelsberg (1998) put it
The fundamental practices and characteristics of our schools - the prevailing curriculum and instructional strategies as well as the roles, skills, and attitudes of teachers - must be examined as students with varying abilities are placed in general education classrooms. (...) It is the connection of efforts to include students with disabilities to the larger school, district and state level contexts that must be primary focus of the future as efforts to make schools more inclusive continue. (McGregor & Vogelsberg, 1998, pp. 16, 71.)
There is an urge among the pro-inclusionists to develop school organization and school community into a more flexible place where the individuality of every student could be cherished in heterogeneous groups. Inclusion has meant a very strong shift toward normalization: school organization should not be developed to only satisfy the needs of 'special education students' but to carry out the rights of all students (for instance, see Stainback, Stainback & Bunch, 1989). Inclusion thus demands a service system level change in beliefs from the biomedical-psychological model to the direction of the social model.
I examine the significance of school culture in dealing with student individuality by analyzing both 'traditional' and 'learning' school cultures and their possibilities in carrying out inclusion. In my dissertation (Naukkarinen, 1999) I studied the problem-solving strategies of one Finnish upper comprehensive school. This regular school had quite traditional ways of solving problems associated with the student behavior experienced as challenging. Based on the data, I constructed the model of the traditional school. I also reconstructed the learning school model, which differs from the traditional school with respect to the definition of problem situation, sense of community, social control, conception of learning, form of professionalism, and problem-solving strategy (Table 1). I argue that the learning school culture is able to face the challenge of inclusion far better than the traditional school culture is. This article is for a large part based on my dissertation.
Methodology
The dissertation data consist of interviews, written stories by the participants, videotapes of the student welfare team meetings, official documents, and open answers to a questionnaire. I gathered data from teachers, other school personnel, students, and students' parents. Except for the interviews, I gathered all data during one school year. I interviewed members of the student welfare team three and a half years later to supplement the data and to get information of how the problem-solving strategies had changed over the years. I analyzed the data inductively (see Bogdan & Biklen, 1992, pp. 153-183). The student welfare team meetings were analyzed using discourse analysis that focuses on social and cognitive processes of interaction (see Gee, Michaels & O'Connor, 1992).
I concentrate here on the analysis of the student welfare team (hereafter swt) meetings. The founding of a swt in school is voluntary, but most Finnish comprehensive schools have a swt. Though officially the purpose of the team is to take preventive action (Oppilashuoltokomitean mietinto, 1973; Jauhiainen, 1993), swt very often in a corrective manner handles problems associated with students' challenging behavior (behavior disorders and/or learning disorders). The team consists of the key members of the school staff: principal, vice principal, special education teacher, special education class teacher, study counsellor, school social worker, school nurse, teacher representative, and the representatives of the family guidance clinic and social services agency.
I analyzed five meetings. The shortest meeting lasted 48 mins and the longest lasted an hour and 18 minutes. Altogether I had five hours of video material. The meeting data were triangulized with other data (ab. 1000 pages) to ensure the trustworthiness of the findings (see Denzin, 1978, pp. 295-304; Lincoln & Guba, 1985, pp. 289-331; Kvale 1989). I also had three member checks with the principal.
My theoretical orientation is constructionist. Challenging behavior is a subjective concept originating from the meanings given to certain behaviors. The concept is created and maintained by the members of the school community in their interactions, mainly via the use of language. (See Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1991; Gergen, 1985; Burr, 1995.) Definition of the situation (Thomas & Thomas, 1932) is crucial: the way school staff defines the problem situation, has a drastic effect on the form of action the staff takes to solve the problem.
Four traditional discourses of the student welfare team I will present four swt discourses that I have named problem-centered student-assessing discourse, authoritarian social control discourse, reification discourse, and segregative discourse. "I think the problem lies in Ilkka": Problem-centered student-assessing discourse
The meetings consist mainly of corrective action, preventive action is rare. Swt is problem-centered and deals with students' truancy, classroom disturbance, learning disorders, and breaking of the school rules. The problem situations are defined as dependent on student's characteristics and action. The discussion about a student usually repeats the following themes: 1)briefing of the situation, 2)the description of the student's characteristics and action, 3)reporting of what has been done so far to solve the problem, 4)reporting of what the staff has decided to do about the problem but hasn't done yet, 5)discussion of what should be done about the problem in the future, and 6)drawing conclusions/not drawing conclusions.
Discussion usually starts with somebody briefing the rest of the team about the student case. He/she describes the student mainly in negative terms: Seppo is "childish", Mikko is "stubborn", Pia is "strong-willed and has a temper", Kaisa is "a pathological liar", etc. The members clearly bring up more student weaknesses than strengths in the discussion. They describe the students with words like "lazy", "odd", "bullying", "grumpy", "selfish", "dishonest", "really irritating", and "smart-aleck".
Swt also describes student's actions mainly negatively. Briefing in Pia's case is a good example.
VICE PRINCIPAL Ulla: (...) [talking to social service agency representative] could you take a message to the social services, that this Pia (...) Makinen...well I don't know if her Mom has contacted you (...) that she would really like to come to your agency to talk about Pia's case, because there are difficulties at home and here in school...she won't take care of her duties here either...she sits in detention and she is truant and things like that...(...) [her attendance) is pretty irregular and then she also has a whole lot of bullying behavior and such...
The discussion often centers around the student's negative development: Seppo's lying has become worse, Pia's report card numbers have gone constantly downward, Heikki "has got a negative brand compared to last year", Eila "has skipped school so immensely lately that grades go down terribly".
The evaluation of the learning environment, i.e. school's rules, curricula, instruction methods, and problem-solving strategies, is almost non-existent. Since swt does not focus on the learning environment, its problem-solving efforts get restricted to what it can change without changing the learning environment much. What follows is that problem-solving focuses on assessing and changing the student.
Swt also defines the situation as originating from a problem outside the school. They pinpoint the significance of parenting flaws, the problematic organizational structure of elementary school, and the poor work done by the outside units, such as psychiatric ward, family center, youth home, and correctional center.
"Maybe Pia still is under our control": Authoritarian social control discourse
Swt's common problem-solving strategy is to increase the authoritarian social control over the student. The students do not have much say in social control and usually are passive objects of it. For instance, swt suggests surprise control to make the boys obey the rules concerning hallway behavior.
PRINCIPAL Pena: ...we could together with Mara [=male special class teacher for the 'maladjusted students' (=a term in the Finnish legislation)] work this out so that we could do surprise controls every now and then and see if the boys take seriously your [=Mara's] talk. (...) ...let's control a little, say, the rest of the week.
The school has detention system that has exact penalty rules. The "punishment book" (the name of the book gives away the authoritarianism of the school), the "absence book" (for the teacher), and the "absence card" (for the student's parents to sign) are the main means of discipline by which the school tries to keep students under control.
Sometimes swt controls students by suggesting that the student should be told that he/she could be moved to the 'special class for the maladjusted' (as the special class for school's challenging students is called). By letting the student know this alternative, swt predicts that the student will start behaving more properly in regular eduation. This can be seen as an ethical problem; using its power this way the staff does not necessarily follow the code of fair treatment with the student.
Swt focuses on such student behavior from which it can get information easily. Information comes to swt mainly through routine channels: from homeroom teacher, special education teacher, school social worker, discussions in the teacher's lounge during the break, teacher meetings, "punishment book", "absence book", and "absence card". Using these routine channels does not demand much planned collaboration between staff members or between staff and students or between home and school, which fits the loose coupledness (Weick, 1976) of the school.
Since the problem-solving in the most challenging student cases is for a large part based on increasing authoritarian social control, swt has not a whole lot of other means for problem-solving. When authoritarian social control fails, swt is rather helpless about what to do next and is tempted to use routine solutions.
"As with Heikki": reification discourse
Swt often talks about a student more as being a unit than an individual. The student's identity is reified: he/she is handled as a mere representative of a certain socially defined typification. The student is changed into a more or less impersonal object, or unit. (See Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1991, p. 108; Israel, 1974, pp. 294, 320-391.) Three themes emerge in reification discourse: 1)context-freedom, 2)favoring the student as a sufficiently passive object, and 3)treating the student as an administrative unit.
Context-freedom
Context-freedom prevents taking student's individuality sufficiently into consideration. Swt does not try to get a holistic picture of the context of the current problem case, but uses previous situations and student typifications to solve the situation. The knowledge base about the problem situation is not sufficient and the members are very often uncertain of the reliability of the information they have of the student. Words and phrases like "apparently", "probably", "I've heard", "I guess", "I´m pretty sure" reveal that there is not enough knowledge to decide upon the case. For instance, vice principal insists both that boys from the socially maladjusted class had been violent towards other students and that a boy named Visa had brought a pocket knife to school. After a short discussion in swt the truthfulness of both claims proves to be very debatable.
Swt uses stories and descriptions of the student in other contexts to solve the situation and do not go deeply into the current context. Sometimes a member tells a story of the student that strengthens his/her or swt's view of the case. For instance, Seppo is being suspected to be dishonest and somebody tells a story about Seppo's former dishonesty. In other words, first swt presents a picture of the student and then enforces the picture by telling a story that suits the picture.
Reference to the student's school career is another way of reifiying the student. When swt doesn't know enough about the case in hand, it brings up another similar situation from the student's school career that fits to the problem resolution model of swt. Once again, swt doesn't get to the context of the case in hand. For instance, swt argues that since Mikko has neglected school work for so many years and once was left behind in elementary school, you can't expect a whole lot from Mikko. It is also no use to place Mikko to another school, because this was tried once before and did not work out. Referring to student's former school career enforces certain picture of the student and certain solution to be implied. Reference to history also sometimes creates a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1968): since student's career seems to have been of a certain kind, swt talks itself into a certain solution.
Swt also uses stories and descriptions of other students from other contexts to solve the problem and does not go deeply into the context of the problem situation in hand. Reference to another student can be interpreted as a sign of taking the student more for a unit than an individual. The team makes a context-free reference to another student and the common denominator is that both are students. Otherwise the contexts usually differ considerably.
Swt tries to ease the problem-solving and make good decisions by remembering former student cases. This also lessens the need to base decisions on the detailed contextual information of the case under discussion.
Comparison of students also implies context-freedom and the insufficiency in taking of the student's individuality into consideration. The student's situation is talked about via the situations other students have been in. For instance, swt compares the students with respect to duration of absence from home, amount of school absence, and personality traits. Swt tries to understand student's situation by referring to one or two factors of the other student's situation and, once again, swt does not try to understand the student situation by gathering enough information of the student case itself. The student is not being assessed in relation of his/her situation but to the other student's situation. This reminds of the idea of normal distribution: swt wants to know where the student is along the Gaussian curve, which is not a very student-centered attitude.
There is a lot of classifying going on in the team. Swt often uses negative classifications: "those worst ones", "these restless ones", "our difficult ones", "student-at-risk", "child psychiatric case", "a potential student for the special class", "skipping girls", "terrible women" [about girls], "actress" [ironically], "pathological case", "child service case". This can be interpreted as follows. One member gives the student a label and with the help of the label the members classify the student as a stereotype, a representative of a certain group. This labeling has two kinds of consequences (Naukkarinen, 1999, p. 201). Firstly, the use of label helps swt to problem-solve: as the student has been identified to belong to a certain category, the team has something to grip on as it considers the solutions. This reflects one characteristic of the dual system of education: "eligibility [for educational services is] generally based on category affiliation" (Stainback et al., 1989, p. 24). The team does not, as the context-freedom in its action clearly implies, very much inclusively base "eligibility (...) on each student's individual learning needs" (ibid., p. 24). Secondly, context-free reference to student's situation gives swt the chance to apply a routine solution, because using certain rhetoric in the conversation leads to certain solutions. Very often the routine solution is the tightening of authoritarian social control.
The team creates and maintains mainly via the use of language certain classifications and typifications that lead to certain actions (see Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1991). All these context-free actions tend unintentionally prevent getting to know enough of the unique details of the situation and at the same time reify the student's identity by not treating him/her individualistically.
Favoring the student as a sufficiently passive object
Swt also favors the student as a sufficiently passive object. The team often handles the students as objects for its actions. Strong will, readiness to take responsibility and initiative are not always considered as good traits. "Skipping girls'" initiative in their own case is a genuine example.
"Skipping girls" and their mothers are coming to school to a meeting in which they plan to discuss girls' truancy problem with members of the school staff. Homeroom teacher describes to swt how the girls had wanted to have an effect on the contents of the meeting. KAISA's [=one of the skipping girls] HOMEROOM TEACHER Mirja: The most important question they asked was that who are the people coming [to the meeting]. Then they were demanding that Mr. Heikkinen [=male teacher with whom the girls have had disagreements] has to come and the principal has to come, too. And so they were sort of themselves stating their terms to what will take place in the meeting (special teacher nods and smiles to the principal). So they are very energetic and brisk...the whole bunch is [homeroom teacher has slight cynicism in her voice, underlines her words with nods and laughs shortly as she says 'the whole bunch']. [Vice principal nods, teacher representative gives a laugh, and the principal sneers in a wondering manner at girls' behavior]
The episode above illustrates the belief that students should be sufficiently passive objects and that their active role is not necessarily seen as a valuable sign of critical thinking but as an unwanted act. Problem-solving of the school is mostly teacher-centered and emphasizes authoritarian social control. Student's role as an active subject seems at times to collide with teacher-centeredness and authoritarianism.
Treating the student as an administrative unit
Sometimes swt speaks of the student as he/she were an administrative unit, i.e. swt does not talk about individual students but talks about how many "places" there are vacant in a group or about what amount to "enroll" students. Student identity is reified to "a place" or "an enrollment" and thus adminstrative policies are given a priority over the student's individuality. A good example of the rhetoric of "place" is the conversation swt has on the referral of the boy named Esa to the class of the maladjusted' in the school. So far Esa has been in special class on part-time basis.
- STUDY COUNSELLOR Eero [to special class teacher Mara]: How many do you have there?
- SPECIAL CLASS TEACHER Mara: Five and a half...I guess you can count Esa as a half. TEACHER
- REPRESENTATIVE Sanni [looking serious, but commenting with humor to Mara]: From 7e [=class] they would be coming to you, you know. Yes, they already counted that there are five places vacant. They could all come to you, you know.
- SPECIAL CLASS TEACHER Mara: 7e?
- TEACHER REPRESENTATIVE Sanni: Yes.
- SPECIAL CLASS TEACHER Mara: So they really would be coming?
- TEACHER REPRESENTATIVE Sanni [ironically]: Yes, they would with joy be coming to you, you know.
Above the team handles students as numbered units. At least some of the students have been socialized into the administrative special education referral rhetoric since they are able to count the vacant special class places.
The handling of the student as an administrative unit is evident in the unofficial, flexible referral procedure between the school and the "city special school for the maladjusted". The student is officially enrolled to regular education, but unofficially attends special school. This procedure only demands parents' consent, whereas official referral process would demand in addition statements from psychologist and homeroom teacher. The unofficial placement can be thought of both positively and negatively. It saves school staff from tiring bureaucracy and might make it possible to get the student to the support services faster. On the other hand, unofficial placement can mean that the student is thought of more as a unit than an individual, because the staff do not necessarily have to go as deep into the student's situation as it would have to in the official referral process. One negative side of unofficial placement concerns the ethics of it all: how can the school assure that student's rights are properly honored, if the assessment of the situation before referral is not extensive enough?
"Is he really at all a student for our school?": Segregative discourse
There is much discussion in swt about moving the challengingly behaving student to special education either temporarily (e.g., acute removal from the classroom) or permanently (e.g., special class placement). Integrative problem-solving is rather scarce. It is a common argument that for the student there has to be another kind of learning environment instead of regular education. Swt recommends change of the study group or removal from the classroom to special education or other support services. Below there are two examples of this attitude.
Three themes emerge in the segregative problem-solving discourse: (1)the demand for homogenous grouping, (2)special class as a vent, and (3)from the crossing of the segregation treshold to permanent segregation.
The demand for homogenous grouping
In the team there is a demand for homogenous grouping of the students. Student's "need for attention" and "special position" in regular education are often seen negatively. This can be interpreted so that in swt's opinion a group should be homogenous enough so that instruction could be delivered well enough. The student should not cross the threshold of homogeneity or he/she will be removed from the heterogeneous group. This attitude is chrystallized in the comment about a boy student: "Shouldn't we also test his knowledge level and intelligence level to know if he's really at all a student for our school?".
Swt takes Mikko to be so different from the other students that the school can not deal with his individuality in homogenous regular education group. Swt defines the situation as Mikko's problem and not being a problem with the learning environment. As a consequence, swt recommends special class for Mikko.
Special class as a vent
School's special class for maladjusted students is physically, but not much functionally or socially integrated to regular education. Special class is kind of an add-on vent (see Skrtic, 1991, p. 167; also see Meyer & Rowan, 1977; 1978): it lessens the pressure to take individuality into consideration in a regular group. For instance, if it is difficult to get the student to the class for learning disordered students, swt may support the decision to place the student temporarily in the class of the maladjusted. Thus, special class is a subsitute placement for the student as long as a better place has been found for him/her. Placement to the class of the maladjusted also many times is the wanted solution by swt even though a whole lot of alternative solutions have not been discussed yet.
The team admits that school's special class for the maladjusted is not a place from which the student easily can return to regular education.
From the crossing of the segregation treshold to permanent segregation
In the team's conversation there sometimes comes up some kind of a segregation treshold, which is achieved when swt acquires enough ínformation of the student's situation having become difficult enough and/or the situation having been bad long enough. As segregation treshold has been achieved, segregation pressure gets harder. Having hard enough segregation pressure, swt tacitly announces a segregation reservation: 'if the student's behavior does not get better, the student will be removed from the heterogeneous group'.
The crossing of the segregation treshold, segregation pressure, and segregation reservation altogether are somewhat analogous to the giving of a conditional sentence in court. The individual has been experienced by the community (school) as having behaved off the limits of the norms of the community. 'The sentence' is the segregation of the individual from the his/her fellow people to a place for the norm-breaking people (special class for the maladjusted). The rhetoric of swt also backs up court-analogy. Swt talks about how much "evidence" there is of negative behavior as the basis of the placement to special education: "so many cases have cumulated to the student" that he/she should be moved to special education. Helvi's [=girl student] case is a good example of segregation reservation.
"Softening up" is a clear sign of swt's segregation reservation concerning Helvi. If Helvi continues to behave badly and if the reserved segregation placement will be got, the aim is to move Helvi there as fast as possible.
Inclusion and the learning school culture
Swt actions and attitudes above can be interpreted as signs of the dual system of education: "students must fit regular education or be referred to special education" (Stainback et al., 1989, p. 24). This is culturally very understandable, because there still is a strong dual system tradition prevailing in the Finnish school system. Swt is not part of an inclusionary approach with a unified system of education, in which "regular education program is adjusted to meet all students' needs (ibid., p. 24) with certain organizational (support networks), procedural (collaborative consultation and teaming), and instructional (cooperative learning) components (Karagiannis, Stainback and Stainback, 1997, pp. 3-4).
The swt discourses show that the school is professional-centered. Professionals have the power to define the situations as students' problems and student or parent perspectives do not threaten that definition much (c.f. Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1991, p. 127). Authoritarian social control helps staff to maintain order in the loosely coupled school (see Weick, 1976) without having much collaboration. Adult-centeredness and loose coupledness together with bureaucratization of the school create reification, which contributes to the underdevelopment of student-centeredness (c.f. Israel, 1974, pp. 370-374). Staff does not get close to the individuality of each student but tends to remove the most challenging students from the heterogeneous group. This reflects the belief that student pathology is the cause of problems (see Skrtic, 1991; Rioux, 1997) and this belief gives support to dual system's urge to maintain segregative educational services.
The concepts of 'learning organization' and 'organizational learning' have emerged strongly in school development research during the 1990's. The concept of learning organization has many interpretations. School as a learning organization also has been called by many different names, e.g. 'thinking', 'creative', 'developing', 'synergetic' school, etc. (see Oldroyd, 1995). According to Argyris and Schon (1996), in the literature of 'the learning organization' there is an
underlying conception of a central ideal (...) [that] includes notions of organizational adaptability, flexibility, avoidance of stability traps, propensity to experiment, readiness to rethink means and ends, inquiry-orientation, realization of human potential for learning in the service of organizational purposes, and creation of organizational settings as contexts for human development. (Argyris & Schon, 1996, p. 180.)
The ideal of the learning organization resembles the ideal of inclusive school; flexible organizational structures and work practices encourage the efforts to adapt to the diversity of the student population.
Peter Senge's book The 5th Discipline has been an important contribution in the 1990's. Senge (1994, pp. 5-14) defines learning organization as consisting of systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning. The learning school reminds very much of Sengean learning organization. Systems thinking holds that if a school wants to learn, the emphasis must be placed on the continuous assessment of the learning environment as a whole, not merely on the assessment of the student. This is done with the support of the other four factors above. Enhancing personal mastery means striving for constant self-development in one's work. Mental models are "deeply ingrained assumptions, generalisations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action" (Senge, 1994, p. 8). In the traditional school and in the learning school mental models such as conception of learning, form of professionalism, and problem-solving strategy each have an effect on the ways school people deal with the students' individuality (see Table 1). Shared vision means that school people "hold a shared picture of the future (...) [they] seek to create" (Senge, 1994, p. 9). For instance, school people should have a shared vision of inclusion in order to commit themselves to developing an inclusive school. Team learning builds on a culture of dialogue in the school and on reflective skills to find out the strengths and weaknesses of team action (Senge, 1994, p. 10). For instance, in the procedural component of inclusion (Karagiannis et al., 1997) team learning is crucial.
What disables a school to learn? In the traditional school culture (see Table 1), beliefs reflect positivism. For instance, there's the belief in one reality (e.g. via professional-dominated definition of the situation), and in the dualism separating the knower and the learner (e.g. via authoritarian teacher-centeredness). Behaviorism, technical rationalist professionalism and medicopsychological model focus on diagnosing the student and neglect critical reflection, which creates and maintains inflexible work practices. As the learning environment is left unassessed, the school does not learn from its problems but "shifts the burden" (see Senge, 1994, pp. 104-113) and places the demand of change on the student and/or removes the student from heterogeneous group. On the basis of the four discourses above, this is what happened in swt. The shifting of the burden thus creates 'special education students' and 'special educational services'. (Naukkarinen, 1998; 1999; 2000).
What enables a school to learn? What makes Senge's five disciplines tick in practice in the learning school? The learning school culture (Table 1) is student-centered and it reflects the constructionist view. Staff is aware of the significance of both the definition of the situation and reframing of the situation and that is why solitary and colleagual critical reflection is held very important. Staff members understand that they are themselves creating and maintaining 'reality' in the school and that they can re-create their 'reality' with their own actions. (Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1991; Senge, 1994; Naukkarinen, 1998; 1999; 2000.)
Table 1
The Traditional School And the Learning School (Adapted from Naukkarinen, 1999, pp. 243, 244)
| THE TRADITIONAL SCHOOL | THE LEARNING SCHOOL |
| problem situation defined as being the student's problem | problem situation defined as being a problem with the learning environment |
| weak sense of community | cooperative school |
| authoritarian social control | democratic social control |
| behavioristic conception of learning | constructivistic conception of learning |
| technical rationalist professionalism | critical reflective professionalism |
| student-diagnosing problem-solving(bio-medical and psychological models) | systems thinking in problem solving(social model) |
| beliefs reflect positivism | beliefs reflect constructionism |
| official goal is to deal with each student's individuality | official goal is to deal with each student's individuality |
In the learning school problem situations are reframed and seen as signs for a need of change in the learning environment. The school tries to learn from its daily difficulties. Reframing is essential in constructivistic conception of learning, critical reflective professionalism and systems thinking. (Watzlawick, Weakland & Fish, 1979, pp. 120-140; Schon, 1983; 1987; Selvini-Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin & Prata, 1985; Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Molnar & Lindquist, 1989, pp. 45-46; Russell & Munby, 1990; Rauste-von Wright & von Wright, 1994.) Dealing with each student's individuality in regular education becomes possible, because with the help of reflective reframing the learning environment is constantly developed to fit the diversity of the student population. Thus, social pathology of the learning environment is under scrutiny (see Skrtic,1991; Rioux, 1997).
The transactional nature of learning, professionalism and problem-solving in the learning school make it a cooperative one (see, for instance, Johnson & Johnson, 1989) with democratic social control. Constructivism and critical reflection promote student-centeredness and systems thinking enhances staff collaboration and collaboration between all parties involved. Therefore, it is possible in the learning school to create the organizational, procedural, and instructional components (see Karagiannis et al., 1997) of inclusion.
Conclusion
I have presented four discourses of a student welfare team of one Finnish upper comprehensive school. Based on the findings, I have introduced some of the characteristics of the traditional school and the learning school and analyzed their possibilities to face the challenge of inclusion.
The reframing of the problem situations requires profound changes in the beliefs from positivism to constructionism, so it is very hard for the traditional school to change (Naukkarinen, 1999, pp. 250-252). To make school inclusive, more than just the structural and philosophical changes above are needed. According to Fullan & Stiegelbauer (1991, 91) a school needs both support and pressure to develop. An inclusive school needs support from the municipality-level administration and pressure from legislation so that unified system of schooling (Stainback et al., 1989) could be created. Teacher education has to be developed accordingly. In-service training has to be carried out inside the school and for the most part be done by the staff. However, the most important thing is to stick to the inclusion philosophy, because defining school culture and one's work from the inclusionist perspective is the first step along the way to inclusion.
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