Students negotiating the borders between general and special education classes: an ethnographic and participatory research study

ABSTRACT

Although Finnish basic education is based on inclusion, 37% of students receiving special support still study in either separate schools or separate classes in comprehensive schools. In this study we explore how policies of inclusion are implemented in a school with separated special educational needs (SEN) and general education (GE) classes. More specifically we conducted a two-year ethnographic study focusing particularly on exclusion and the sense of belonging in a lower secondary school (students aged 13–16) in the capital region of Finland. During the fieldwork, several students attending the SEN-class expressed an interest in changing from the SEN-class to a GE-class, or in breaking the borders between SEN and GE classes in other ways. As part of the negotiations with the school, students who criticised the GE- and SEN-class division were offered an opportunity to transfer to GE-classes but in the end, all of them wanted to stay in the SEN-class. In this investigation, we focus on the students’ reasoning and the teachers’ reactions when students negotiate the borders between SEN and GE-classes. In this study we found a clash between integration and inclusive thinking.     

Medical and Nursing Students' Development of Conceptions of Science during Three Years of Studies in Higher Education

This article is a presentation of current research on pupils’ experiences in encounters with their classmates in school. The starting point is the narratives of Loffa, a 25‐year‐old nursery teacher, telling us about her school experiences. She gives a picture of herself as a quiet and well‐behaved schoolgirl, and she talks about things such as the limited space she and a group of her classmates had in their classroom, about how they were regarded as ‘nerds’ by the other pupils and therefore had little to say in what went on in their classroom. Seen in the light of the political, social and historical context of the vision of a ‘school for all’ and of the principle of a ‘complex social environment’ this can be interpreted as one version of the specific expression in Lotta ‘s class of the built‐in conflicts of the comprehensive school, the conflicts between groups with different intellectual traditions and needs.     

Biology and Health Education

The Health Promoting Schools in Europe initiatives have highlighted the importance of health education in schools. Although health education is inter-disciplinary, biology teachers have an important role in teaching about health and in the formation of policy. Health education needs therefore to be part of initial teacher education programmes for those who are preparing to teach biology in secondary schools. Student teachers in England and Sweden have been involved in a pilot study that is investigating two aspects of teaching health education. The first element of the study has used questionnaires and small group discussions to explore biology student teachers’ perceptions of teaching about health as part of biology. In the second phase student teachers have been investigating secondary pupils’ understanding about aspects of health. In this paper we report on the initial findings and consider the implications of these results for the teaching of biology in secondary schools.