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Skolans nationella målsättning är att erbjuda alla elever en inkluderande skolgång med likvärdiga förutsättningar att uppnå målen för utbildningen och att utvecklas så långt som möjligt. Trots strävan efter en inkluderande skola kategoriserar och särskiljer det svenska utbildningssystemet elever med intellektuell funktionsnedsättning (IF). För elever som har IF finns en alternativ skolform: grundsärskola, som har en egen läroplan och kursplaner. Elever som har diagnosen lindrig IF (LIF) erbjuds möjlighet att påverka om de vill få sin utbildning i grundsärskolan eller i grundskolan. Det kan vara en utmaning för lärare att planera sin undervisning utifrån två olika läroplaner, läroplanen för grundsärskolan och läroplanen för grundskolan

Syftet med denna studie var att utforska undervisningssituationen för elever som har LIF i åldern 9-15 år, genom perspektivet från lärare i grundsärskolan och lärare i grundskolan.

Tjugotvå lärare (11 specialskollärare och 11 grundskollärare) intervjuades om deras erfarenheter och uppfattningar om undervisningssituationen i skolan för elever med LIF. Tematisk analys användes för att induktivt analysera data.

Resultatet i den här studien bygger på ett tidigare avhandlingsarbete, som fokuserade på undervisningssituationen för elever som har LIF. Lärare i grundsärskolan och lärare i grundskolan hade gemensamma och skilda erfarenheter och uppfattningar om hinder och möjligheter i undervisningen för elever med IF. Masterteman som sammanfattade kluster handlade om styrdokumentens krav och elevers förutsättningar, lärares val av innehåll och representationsformer och lärares arbete med sociala dimensioner.

The goal of the Swedish educational system is to offer all students a meaningful and equal education in an inclusive classroom environment. At the same time there are parallel school systems in Sweden, comprised by the Compulsory School for Students with Intellectual Disability (CSSID) and Compulsory School (CS). Students who are not able to achieve in accordance with syllabus of CS and who have an intellectual disability (ID) are eligible to receive education according to the CSSID syllabus. The decision of placement in either type of school rests on students’ parents. It can be assumed, therefore, that teachers are expected to offer education adjusted to each student’s individual needs.

The aim of the thesis is to deepen the knowledge about the educational situation of students with mild intellectual disability (MID) through the perspectives of teachers and parents. Teachers’ and parents’ experiences and perceptions are studied: parents offer their stories about their children’s educational situation over time, and teachers’ reason about their work in teaching situations with the target group. Furthermore, pedagogical evaluations are studied to look at how school difficulties in teaching situations are described.

The empirical data was collected in one municipality from the middle part of Sweden. The data constitutes of six interviews with parents of students with MID, and also 21 pedagogical evaluations of students with MID. Additionally, interviews were conducted with 21 teachers: eleven CS teachers and ten CSSID teachers.

All interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis and using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), and manifest contents analysis was used to analyze pedagogical evaluations. Theories used were Biesta’s theory on the dimensions of education, the three levels in education transitions by Griebel and Niesel, and the school didactic theory by Uljen.

The results show that the educational transitions and the educational situation around students with MID are complex. The transition from CS to CSSID means a readjustment for parents and they express the need for support from professionals in these transitions. Pedagogical evaluations contain individual-focused descriptions and focus to a lesser extent on teaching adaptations. Teachers in CS and CSSID outlined both common challenges in provision of support to all students but also described different prerequisites for it in the two school types. The results indicate that the teaching situation in both CSSID and the CS needs to be reviewed with regard to the school's organizational conditions to offer inclusive education.

Keywords

inclusive education, transition, students with mild intellectual disability, interview, pedagogical evaluations, teachers, parents

In Sweden, the Compulsory School for Students with Intellectual Disabilites (CSSID) is currently experiencing political change, as this type of school is being renamed and is undergoing organisational changes. The inclusion of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) in schooling, and in general society, has been challenged and debated for decades; such debates are at the heart of some of these changes. In this study, we have systematically investigated the policy work (e.g. government reports and statements) preceding and governing the changes. Hence, the purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge on how policy documents inscribe meaning to the inclusion of children with ID. Results show that discourses on inclusion are connected to neoliberal values and practices, such as assessment, global comparison, and accountability. It has been suggested that this may have a profound and long-term effect on how children with ID are fabricated and hence, how the child with ID and their education can be understood in terms of being included in the idea of ‘all students’ in policy, and in addition, in practice.

Syftet med denna artikel, i den sista delen av modulen, är att presentera perspektiv på delaktighet, integrering och inkludering avseende begreppens innebörd och konsekvenser. Fokus ligger på hur delaktighet och inkludering kan hanteras i det praktiska pedagogiska arbetet och på betydelsen av att skapa skolorganisatoriska förutsättningar för lärare, elevassistenter och personal som medverkar i undervisning och deras arbete med att stödja samtliga elevers kunskapsutveckling.

Abstract title

Parents’ perspectives on pedagogical transitions and educational situations of students with MID

Introduction: The goal of the Swedish educational system is to offer all students a meaningful and equal education in an inclusive classroom environment. At the same time there are parallel school systems in Sweden, comprised by the Compulsory School for Students with Intellectual Disability (CSSID) and Compulsory School (CS).

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore parents’ perspectives about their children’s pedagogical transitions and educational situation over time.Method: The data constitutes of six interviews with parents of students with mild intellectual disability (MID). All interviews were inductively analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results: Three master themes were summarised: 1) Uncertainty and worries, 2) Process and interactions, and 3) The novel situation.

Implications: The transition from CS to CSSID requires a readjustment for parents and they express the need for support from professionals in these transitions. The change for the children could be to meet new knowledge requirements and for parents to find new forms of interaction between home and school. For children and parents the ability to face change was made visible, for example, trust in teachers was affected. In order to create a functioning everyday life, actors at different levels need to collaborate.

According to the Salamanca declaration and framework (UNESCO, 1994) each country should strive to establish an inclusive school where all children can be together in the same school system, in regular classrooms with a customized education in community with others. Despite all children's right to a meaningful and equivalent teaching, categorizations of children with disabilities still occur and in Sweden there is a low degree of inclusion in regular school for pupils with intellectual disabilities (Education, 2012). For these reasons, it is of importance to increase knowledge about and investigate how classroom environments can be inclusive and provide a challenging and meaningful education for all. This chapter discusses inclusive education for children with mild intellectual disability (MID) and how teachers can work to enable learning for all pupils in their classroom. Examples will be given from field notes of different teaching sessions in lower secondary school in Sweden.

Barn som har intellektuell funktionsnedsättning kan få sin undervisning i grundskolan, men läsa enligt grundsärskolans läroplan. Hur är det att göra övergångar mellan olika skolformer och olika skolor för barn som har intellektuell funktionsnedsättning? Hur kan det se ut för dessa barn i förskola och skolan innan utredning inför mottagande i särskola, under utredning och efter utredning? Detta kapitel diskuterar just dessa frågor och presenterar tre föräldraberättelser om sina barns skoltid.

Bakgrund: Undervisningen i den anpassade grund och gymnasieskolan kännetecknas av ettmångfacetterat kunskapsuppdrag. Det har skett stora förändringar under flera decennier isynen på den kunskap som elever med intellektuell funktionsnedsättning behöver. Denkomplexitet som finns i den anpassade skolans kunskapsuppdrag föranleder större behov avkompetensutveckling för personal som arbetar i dessa skolformer.

Syfte och frågeställningar: Syftet med projektet är att bidra med kunskap om hurundervisning för elever mottagna i anpassad grund- och gymnasieskola kanutvecklas/utformas i ett dialektiskt förhållande till lokala förutsättningar för att öka elevernasförutsättningar att nå skolformernas.

Metod: Inom ramen för projektet deltar 170 lärare i forsknings- och utvecklingsinsats. Somen del av insatsen formulerar lärare egna frågeställningar kring deras undervisning i syfte attfrämja deras elevers lärande, delaktighet och utveckling. Studien bygger på läraresdokumentation av deras utvecklingsprocess med utgångspunkt i de didaktiska situationer somlärare iscensätter samt deras reflektion över dessa situationer i det pedagogiska mötet medderas elever. Lärares dokumentation analyseras utifrån teorier och didaktik och modellen förden didaktiska triangeln med sina tre komponenter elev, lärare ochinnehåll/undervisningsstoff som alltid förkommer i undervisning.

Resultat: Preliminära resultat visar att lärare att lärare i sin professionsutveckling tilldelar storvikt till att främja sociala relationer och kommunikation, att uppmuntra eleverssjälvständighet och delaktighet och att underlätta för deras elever i att göra självständiga val,att främja elevers språkutveckling. Studien identifierar också den komplexitet som föreligger irelationen mellan de didaktiska situationer som iscensätts och det som sker i det pedagogiskamötet med eleverna i olika skolkontexter.Diskussion: Resultat diskuteras i relation till det mångfacetterade kunskapsuppdrag somkännetecknar utbildning i anpassad skola. Dessutom problematiseras komplexitet i läraresdidaktiska val i relation till centrala didaktiska frågor.

Compulsory School for Students with Intellectual Disabilities (CSSID) in Sweden is undergoing extensive policy change with the overall argument of promoting inclusive education. Core is a guarantee regarding support measures to enable achievement, which is in turn connected to increased national assessment and the implementation of a revised curriculum (Ministry of education, 2021). In this change, increased equity and quality have been stated as motives. At the same time, equity and quality has shown to be challenged in the Nordic education systems (Frønes et al., 2020). The political will and enhancement of assessment in education is a phenomenon troughout Europe, often with the incentive to reform education deriving from international comparisons of knowledge, as PISA for example.Through the shifting governing of CSSID, towards assessment, discourses of normality and of assessment joins forces and pushes ACS toward the discourse on learning, knowledge and assessment of the mainstream compulsory school (Andersson et al, 2023; Bagger, 2022; Bagger & Östlund, 2021).). This is an example on how neoliberal values are embedded in today’s schooling and inclusion, equity, and quality are often approached as being promoted by comparison and competition (Blossing et al., 2014; Harvey, 2005; Smith, 2016; 2018; Yang Hansen and Gustafsson, 2016). This phenomenon has also appeared in other contexts and has been criticized by researchers who emphasize that quality of life, equity and self-determination need to be focused to a greater extent. Something that can be achieved by considering inclusion as an ethical responsibility that school and society have, rather than reducing inclusion to neoliberal values that include knowledge assessment, competition, comparison, and freedom of choice (Brossard Børhaug & Reindal, 2018). In relation to this, Waitoller (2020) discusses the force of accumulation, which refers to the identification and sorting of students as able or not. Furthermore, learners’ identity is within the realm of assessment often linked to the ideal of the neoliberal human being. Whenever this ideal is not met, due to individuals having deficits, it is seen as a threat to economic progress (Ball, 2013). We claim that these circumstances especially impact students ASC and is reinforced during assessment.The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge on national assessment for compulsory students with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) in Sweden. For the current paper, we have developed the method for selection and analysis and have focused on two governmental investigations to do so. Furthermore, we will put the results in relation to global and traveling discourses on assessment of knowledge and students with ID and discuss the outcome in relation to New Public Management and how policy mediates meaning (see Ball, 2013; 2017). In prolongation, we will analyze policy as well as the national assessment material itself and how these together constructs students’ knowledge, the student with ID as a learner and the assessment itself.

Methodolology and materialDrawing on Popkewitz (2014), Hacking (1999), and Foucault (1994), we understand "fabrication" as the simultaneous making up of and making sense of reality by attributing characteristics, hopes and prerequisites to students, their knowledge and assessment. Policies are then understood to inscribe meaning and condition the students with ID and their knowledge, thus fabricating certain types of students, knowledges, and assessment. This brings forth possibilities and limitations regarding who and what kind of students and knowledge can and should be in(ex)cluded, but also what assessment means in the context of national assessment in ACS.The Open data archive of the Swedish Parliament database (OpAL ) has been advocated to select governmental investigations connected to national assessment for students with ID. In addition, and at a later state, the national assessment material for the early schoolyears in mathematics, will also be analysed. For the study at hand, a discursive reading and analysis of how the student with ID and his/her knowledge is fabricated is performed alongside with the fabrication of national assessment. Two governmental investigations which lies in the heart of this was selected. These concern the evaluation of goal and targets in school (SOU 2007:28) and grading and assessment for representing students’ knowledge in CSSID (SOU 2020:43).The analysis was performed in a two step procedure and builds on a previous study on how policy document fabricated inclusion for students with ID (Andersson et al., 2023). Sections of texts that concerned assessment of knowledge and the student with ID in these two policy documents was selected. Thereafter, an exploratory and quantitative thematic analysis was performed and in which statements on the student, the student’s knowledge, and assessment, were collected into three themes (Creswell, 2007). The corpus of data was thereafter analyzed out from how inclusions, exclusions, categories, and labelling constructed and fabricated meaning on the students, the student’s knowledge, and assessment. This was explored and thereafter formulated in terms of what kind of students, knowledge and assessment was fabricated. Hence, we have systematically explored characteristics, hopes and prerequisites attributed to students, their knowledge and assessment and their interrelatedness (see Hacking 1999; Popkewitz 2012; Valero 2017).

Conclusions, Expected OutcomesThe two governmental investigations are proceeding the current policy change to make national assessment mandatory in CSSID. The 13 years between them point towards policy traveling in a certain direction. In the investigation Goal and targets for learning in compulsory school, suggestion to new national assessment system (SOU 2007:28), the child was fabricated as not challenged and as recipient of care, as someone special and hard for schools to teach and finally, as challenged in meeting standards. In connection to this fabrication of the student, the students’ knowledge was fabricated as important to normalize as far as possible, as relative to students’ prerequisites and as absent in terms of possible goals to reach in the curricula. How then to assess the students’ knowledge and the meaning inscribed into assessment for these students was fabricated as voluntary, crucially absent, and also highly needed.When turning to the later governmental investigation Build, assess, grade - grades that better correspond to the students' knowledge (SOU 2020:43), this lack of assessment and need to normalise and make students’ knowledge visible has been enhanced. The student is then fabricated as having a right to documentation of their knowledge, but also being deprived this. Paradoxically enough, the student with ID is also fabricated as not having use of an exam or grading and fabricated as not talented enough. Furthermore, knowledge is in connection to this fabricated as needed to be situated in close perimeter to society and what goes on in the real world. The assessment of knowledge is fabricated as an exception or needing exceptions to work, as less important to these students and as making students disadvantaged, in the case of grading. Assessment is fabricated as not systematised, so even if it is done, it is not considered as valuable to collect nationally.Keywords: Compulsory School for Students with Intellectual Disabilities, Inclusion, National assessmentAndersson, A.-L., Bagger, A., & Lillvist, A. (2023). Looking through the kaleidoscope of inclusion in policy on students with intellectual disabilities. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2023.2273642Ball, S. J. (2013). Foucault, power, and education (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/https://doi-org.ezp.sub.su.se/10.4324/9780203078662Ball S. J. (2017). The Education Debate. third ed. The Policy Press.Bagger, A. (2022). Discourses on inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities in policy. In K. N. Andersen; V. Silva de Moraes Novais; B. T. & Ferreira da Silva (Eds.), Educação, cultura e inclusão: contextos internacionais e locais (pp. 27-45). Editora Appris Ltda.Bagger, A. & Östlund, D. (2021). Hållbar bedömning med elever som har intellektuell funktionsnedsättning: Vad, hur och varför? In J. Wåger & D.Östlund, (Eds.), Hållbart och meningsfullt lärande: Undervisning för elever med intellektuell funktionsnedsättning (pp. 223–244). Studentlitteratur AB.Blossing, U. & Söderström, Å. (2014). A school for every child in Sweden. In U. Blossing, G. Imsen, & L. Moss (Eds.), The Nordic Education Model. A school for all encounters neoliberal policy (pp. 17-34). Springer.Brossard Børhaug, F & Reindal, S.M (2018). Hvordan forstå inkludering som allmenpedagogisk prinsipp i en transhumanistisk (fram)tid? Utbildning & Demokrati, 27(1), 81Popkewitz, T. (2012). Numbers in grids of intelligibility: making sense of how educational truth is told. In H. Lauder, M. Young, H. Daniels, M. Balarin & J. Lowe, (Eds), Educating for the Knowledge Economy? Critical Perspectives (pp. 169-191). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.Foucault, Michel. (1994). The Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, 3, Power. London: Penguin.Frønes, S, T., Pettersen, A., Radišić, J., & Buchholtz, N. (2020). Equity, Equality and Diversity in the Nordic Model of Education (1st ed. 2020.). Springer International Publishing.Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Ministry of Education. (2021). Utbildningsutskottets betänkande, 2021/22:UbU27, Elevhälsa och stärkt utbildning för elever med intellektuell funktionsnedsättning. [Student health care and strengthened education for students with intellectual disabilities, Governmental proposed legislation].Popkewitz, T. (2014). Social Epistemology, the Reason of ‘Reason’ and the Curriculum Studies. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22: 1–18. doi:10.14507/epaa.v22n22.2014SOU 2007:28. Tydliga mål och kunskapskrav i grundskolan - Förslag till nytt mål- och uppföljningssystem [Goal and targets for learning in compulsory school, suggestion to new national assessment system, Governmental investigation].SOU 2020:43. Bygga, bedöma, betygssätta - betyg som bättre motsvarar elevernas kunskaper. [Build, assess, grade - grades that better correspond to the students' knowledge, Governmental investigation].Smith, W.C. (2016). An Introduction to the Global Testing Culture. In W.C Smith (Ed.), The Global Testing Culture: Shaping Educational Policy, Perceptions, and Practice (pp. 7–24). Oxford Symposium Books.Smith, W. C. (2018). The Banality of Numbers., edited by B. Hamre, A. Morin, C. Ydesen (Eds.), Testing and Inclusive Schooling: International Challenges and Opportunities (pp. 89–104). RoutledgeValero, P. (2017). Mathematics for All, Economic Growth, and the Making of the Citizen-Worker. In T. Popkewitz, J. Diaz, & C. Kirchgasler (Eds.), A Political Sociology of Educational Knowledge: Studies of Exclusions and Difference (pp. 117–132). Routledge.Waitoller, F. R. (2020). Why are we not more inclusive? An analysis of neoliberal inclusionism. In C. Boyle, J. Anderson, A. Page, & S. Mavropoulou (Eds.), Inclusive Education: Global Issues & Controversies (pp. 89-107). Sense Publishers.Yang Hansen, K., & J-E, Gustafsson. (2016). Causes of educational segregation in Sweden - school choice or residential segregation. Educational Research and Evaluation, 22(1-2), 23–44. doi:10.1080/13803611.2016.1178589

The purpose of the research and development program is to contribute knowledge about how teaching for students with intellectual disability following an adapted syllabus can be developed/designed in a dialectical relation to local conditions in order to increase students' progress to overall and syllabus-specified goals.