Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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10.1080/13603110600601034
TIED_A_160086.sgm
1360-3116
Original
Taylor
02006
00
annelise.arnesen@hio.no
Anne-LiseArnesen
000002006
and
&
Article
Francis
(print)/1464-5173
Francis
JournalLtd
of Inclusive
(online)
Education
The terrain of inclusion studies in discussed in this paper from the perspective of policy discourses
and teachers constructions on student diversity. We start by discussing the concept of inclusion
from normative and analystic perspectives. We then look at the kinds of discourses that can be found
in the Finnish and Norwegian curricula, as well as teachers interviews when they talk about their
students. On this basis we analyse how the patterns of diversity and inclusion are conceived and
constructed; the phenomenon of diversity, as it is formulated in policy documents and as it is
expressed in categories with which teachers operate and act upon in school; and, diversity in the
context of inclusive practices. We draw from ethnographic studies in Finnish and Norwegian
schools; both from mainstream and from special classes.
Introduction
This paper enters the terrain of inclusion studies from the perspective of policy
discourses and teachers constructions on student diversity. It explores, in particular,
ways of cultural reasoning that underpin articulation and narratives, and the practical
implications of these ideas on the ways in which schools differentiate and divide
students. We draw from studies focusing on citizenship, difference and marginality,
including policy document studies and ethnographic studies from the Finnish and
Norwegian schools; both from mainstream and from special education classes.1
The ethnographic perspective that we have adopted is informed by different
sources. The way that we contrast and reflect data from two different national contexts
is inspired by contextualized, cross-cultural and comparative ethnography in Helsinki
and London (Gordon et al., 2000). We also use ideas of Lindblad & Popkewitz (2003)
on comparative ethnography, stressing the importance of seeing the global in the local
(also Beach et al., 2003). Educational discourses on inclusion can be seen to travel
*Corresponding author. Oslo University College, PO Box 4, St Olavs plass, Oslo N-0130, Norway.
Email: annelise.arnesen@hio.no
ISSN 13603116 (print)/ISSN 14645173 (online)/07/01009714
2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13603110600601034
The focus in the present paper is on how inclusion is conceived and constructed in
a context of contradictory aims, values and discourses. In the following we focus on
both social practices and cultural categories people use that have significance for
inclusion and exclusion of individuals and groups in school. We look at the ways in
which diversity and inclusion are discussed in Finnish and Norwegian curricula, and
the ways which teachers make sense of inclusion and diversity. We pay particular
attention to the principles underpinning the conceptions of equality and social justice
that the accounts and practices reflect.
In our analysis we draw on ideas by Popkewitz & Lindblad (2000), who formulate
an understanding of inclusion/exclusion as effects of power placed within discourses
of governance, equity and knowledge (Popkewitz, 1998; Popkewitz & Lindblad,
2000). They argue that the politics of equity and inclusion may mask continued exclusion. What is implied, taken for granted, unnamed, will then embody the normative
centre/core against which deviance what discursively is articulated as children
with special needs, children with low self-esteem, children lacking in proper
language skills is constructed. Universalized concepts such as citizenship and
competence, represent certain norms for conduct. The language of success and failure
in school is a particular area of interest for understanding the interconnectedness of
inclusion and exclusion. Although, in continual transformations, norms of participation and behaviour can produce exclusions both through what is clearly defined and
what is more subtly effected by hidden categorization through social practice in school.
Inclusion from the equity perspective: diversity as a hidden categorization
Norway and Finland are Nordic welfare states in which equality and inclusiveness are
central values for educational policies. In both countries the comprehensive school
reforms in the late 1960s and 1970s introduced equal opportunities for participation,
and from the 1980s to the 1990s inclusion has been a predominant idea, with an
emphasis on pedagogical differentiation and adapted instruction instead of tracking.
Also a more general inclusive aim can be found behind the idea and practice of having
heterogeneous learning groups in which students are supposed to learn to get along
with different people. Both countries see education as a means for reducing inequality.
These ideas are maintained in the new school curricula in both countries. For
example, according to the new Finnish curricula, education as a whole should aim
towards developing communality based on equality and tolerance, alongside with
Policy discourses and social practices in Finnish and Norwegian schools 101
promoting individuality and self-respect (NBE, 2004, p. 36). The Norwegian curriculum (UFD, 1996) seems to have an even stronger emphasis on social community as
a requirement for learning, and inclusion as a core value is referred to throughout the
curriculum.
The compulsory school includes all groups of pupils. The school is a workplace and a
meeting place for everyone. It is a place where pupils come together, learn from and live
with differences, regardless of where they live, their social backgrounds, their genders,
their religions, their ethnic origins, and their mental and physical abilities. The compulsory
school shall help pupils to develop their abilities by being, learning and working together.
The school thus helps to reduce social inequality and to develop a sense of community
between groups. In a multicultural society, education must promote equality between
pupils with different backgrounds and counteract discriminatory attitudes. (UFD, 1996,
p. 56)
The idea of a multicultural society and cultural diversities are celebrated in the
Norwegian (in the way it is presented above) as well as in the Finnish curricula. At
the same time, curricula in both countries are vague in terms of classifications of
students, especially when learning is discussed. Instead of classifications, the curricula is highlighting the nature of the pupil and her/his aptitude for learning in neutral
terms. Differing positions of the students, in relation to the contents and culture of
schooling, are rarely brought up.
This kind of lack of consideration for differences, implying hierarchies, can also be
found in some of the teacher interviews. The professional ethos of Finnish teachers,
for instance, is not to point to differences as social categories (Lahelma, 2004b; cf.
Gitz-Johansen, 2003 in relation to Danish teachers). In teacher interviews, social
class or social and cultural background were very seldom referred to in sociological
terms (Gordon et al., 2000).2 When the teachers were explicitly challenged to think
about differences by asking whether the school makes or emphasizes differences, it
turned out to be a difficult question that was not immediately answered but led to,
rather, much hesitation: I cannot say, It is very difficult for me to answer this question. When asked specifically, they might deny having seen any differences in this
respect, as a Finnish teacher of physical education argued:
I dont [know] about social background. I think, I havent noticed that they were visible in
any way. Or at least I havent kind of paid attention to it. The young people here, they
kind of take care of themselves, they are tidy and clean.
(interview with a Finnish teacher)
The above extract suggests that social background, for this teacher, is reflected in
students ability to take care of themselves. More generally, terms reflecting (good/
bad) home conditions were used: I mean, I dont mean affluence so much, but
whether parents care, argues another teacher. Accordingly, even if the teachers do
not regard the concept of social background as being suitable to describe their
students, the cultural connotations of tidiness, cleanliness or caring which can be
traced back to the ideal constructed on the basis of the middle-classed family model
(Burman, 1994; Mietola & Lappalainen, 2005) are present in their thinking.
Even if these kinds of problems, and the way students are positioned by these, were
spoken about in the interviews, the distinctions were more a fact taken for granted
than something to be taken into consideration in teaching and schooling. Social
distinctions were made based on students behaviour in the school, creating links
between the students academic activity in the classroom and their home background:
They just sit there and I cannot get a word out of them, I assume their passivity has to do
with their home background.
(interview with a Norwegian teacher)
Policy discourses and social practices in Finnish and Norwegian schools 103
differently (Arnesen, 2002, 2004). There is a common character in the descriptions:
the tendency to homogenize the majority of students and set up a division between
the majority and a minority that is special. These dimensions imply norms that may
construct some as different in ways that exclude them (Popkewitz, 1998; Arnesen,
2000).
Categories in use can be seen to constitute a way of reasoning by defining where to
focus the attention and what it is legitimate to speak about (e.g. learning difficulties),
and what is not (e.g. social class), and what kind of relations that are supposed to exist
between e.g. academic achievement, conduct and the home background.
Although teachers in our data seem to be kind of uneasy about using sociological
categories in their descriptions of students, these categories and the notions of
students that they invoke work subtly. What is not spoken of or named can be equally
forceful as a means for differentiation. When social categories are unspoken, their
social character how they are constructed in specific social contexts vanishes.
The most hidden of the unspoken categories and at the same time the most evident
category is the category of normal. This is the starting point for most of the categorizations, the normality against which the other categories are constructed and
against which the others become visible (Frankenberg, 1993). This is evident in the
following extract from a teacher interview:
Nafissa. As you can hear by her name, she is burdened by a foreign origin. It doesnt affect
her in any way other than her lack of Norwegian frames of Norwegian frames of reference. Besides that, there is nothing wrong with her intellectual capacity, and she is fluent
in Norwegian, and I think she understands everything.
(interview with a Norwegian teacher)
Just the one word here creates a border between the normal and that which is
defined outside that norm; to be of foreign origin is taken to be a burden by definition, because to be foreign is by definition to be an outsider. An outsider must
make efforts to be able to meet the expectations of what it means to be, in this case,
Norwegian.
From this perspective, the categorizations and the policies of naming including
silencing differences seem to carry an understanding of equality as sameness. The
ideal of a comprehensive school in which everybody has the same opportunities
resides in the thinking of the following Finnish teacher: At least the comprehensive
school should not [make differences], because everybody has the same possibilities.
Through the hidden categorizations, teachers emphasize differences that are seen
as natural and self-evident: differences in competence,3 gender differences, ethnicity,
differences in characteristics, etc. The impact of these differences on school practices
or teaching are not often problematized though: equal opportunities is regarded as
equal worth and inclusiveness, particularity in the meaning of an equal right to
common school and tolerance towards those who are different. Accordingly, the
unified school system and claims of a common body of knowledge for all children
raise the issue of contradiction between equality as sameness and acknowledgement
of diversity and plurality (Seeberg, 2003).4
Policy discourses and social practices in Finnish and Norwegian schools 105
legitimated through the provision of individualized support to this student (Saloviita,
1998).6 This also means that equality is seen to follow from offering the best possibilities for every student to learn. Looked at in this way, equality cannot be evaluated
through comparing the educational opportunities of different categories of students,
but through evaluation of individual possibilities for learning and for acquiring qualifications achieved through education.
The aim of special education is to help and support a student, so that she/he has equal
opportunities to complete compulsory education according to her/his abilities together
with her/his peers.
(NBE, 2004, p. 27)
When talking about diversities in hierarchical terms, teachers tend to use categories
according to who they assess as being talented or strong and those who are
weaker. In a Finnish school from a middle class area, one teacher admits that
talented students are spurred, and another argued that in the class with a very good
student population, teaching goes with the rhythm of the 80% who are talented, and
the rest try to keep up. At a school in a working class area, teachers report that they
pay special attention to those who have difficulties. One teacher reflects that she often
finds herself following the rhythm of the weakest student, and feels that the others are
cast adrift. The Norwegian study suggests that, in contrast to statements in teacher
interviews, classroom observations demonstrate that teachers in mainstream classrooms seem to overestimate their time with the weak (Arnesen, 2002). In fact, there
are indications that those who are regarded as being talented, able and active, get
more of the teachers time and attention than those who are silent and considered as
being weak.
When the Finnish teachers were asked to reflect on whether the school makes
differences (see above), some of them expressed the view that differences are innate
differences in achievement, and thus something distinctly outside pedagogy and the
schools role:
Well, I dont know, I rather think that it is those who are poor achievers, they have
achieved poorly already before, so it is not necessarily the teacher who is to blame if she
does not get along with the student well, even such things also happen, certainly but
it is a fact that some are less talented.
(interview with a Finnish teacher)
Whereas the curriculum regards the universal student in terms of being (by nature)
active, with an ability to reflect critically, the teachers who are confronted with the
actual diversity of students, know otherwise. They may not make explicit distinctions or borders considering who are seen as insiders and outsiders. The mechanisms work subtly by norms embedded in central notions of pedagogy such as
intelligence, learning, self-esteem and conduct. The norms function to disqualify
certain children who do not fit the norms of the average (Popkewitz, 1998). Those
who fail to achieve according to the norms of normal development, seem to be at
risk of being marginalized or excluded.
Conclusions
Inclusion has become a global issue but, as has been demonstrated, the national policies adjustment in terms of stated intentions and implementation differ between
nations (Vlachou, 2004). Analyses of inclusion contribute by throwing light on the
nature of tensions, which exist between conflicting interests. Although the position of
inclusion and equality today has a sustained place in the comprehensive school and
the teachers value base, the educational rhetoric and reforms in both countries are
influenced by conservative restructuring of education and neo-liberal ideas, articulated as a movement toward greater freedom, student autonomy, and individual
responsibility for ones own learning (Beach et al., 2003). National policies for raising
standards, as determined by the aggregation of test and examination scores, seem to
contradict policies for celebrating diversity and inclusion while simultaneously
enhancing marginalization and exclusion (Dyson et al., 2003).
Our initial analysis of curricular documents in both countries suggests that individualization is increasingly emphasized. However, the countries differ slightly in the
ways policies of inclusion are embedded and the overall organization of mainstream
and special educational provisions are organized. In the Finnish documents (NBE,
2004) there is a less explicit emphasis on the heterogeneous mix of students within a
common social context and community than there is in the Norwegian curriculum.
Policy discourses and social practices in Finnish and Norwegian schools 107
Furthermore, discrimination is being addressed in terms of something that has to be
counteracted in the Norwegian curriculum (UFD, 1996).
From the point of view of inclusion as a political concept, it turns out being a
common value, a principle towards which our institutions should progress. The idea
is based on the notion of an ideal society in which none is an outsider, the harmonious functioning of relations between a diversity of people among which hierarchies
and divisions based on differences are erased.
This paper has identified two different stances to diversity and difference, and their
implications for how equality and justice in education are conceived. Equality and
inclusiveness are still strongly based on the idea of universal rights of all to receive
education of the same standards, offering them the same kind of opportunities to get
educational qualifications. Simultaneously, there are other discourses used, which
emphasize individualization, focusing on individual students, their capacities and
differing needs determined by differences, for example, in their academic abilities
(Mietola et al., 2005). In the curriculum this is embedded in a discourse of diversity
and inclusion underlining the rights for all to belong to a normal (heterogeneous)
social community.
In their talk, teachers seem to carry both of these viewpoints and move between
them: in line with the individualistic ethos of schooling, they hesitate to make strong
categorizations, and simultaneously differentiate on the basis of psychological
descriptions and identifications of different types of students. Teachers work in a situation in which the overall political commitments towards inclusive education collide
with other political aims, in combination with the practical challenges of handling
diversity faced by the teachers.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
The first of the Finnish studies, conducted by Lahelma and colleagues, is an ethnographic
research project in two secondary schools in Helsinki, with parallel studies in schools in
London (e.g. Gordon et al., 2000). The second Finnish study (conducted by Reetta Mietola)
is an ethnographic study of special education provision in one secondary school in the Helsinki
area. The Academy of Finland and the University of Helsinki have supported both studies.
The Norwegian studies, both conducted by Arnesen, include two ethnographic studies, a
research project in three secondary schools in Oslo (Arnesen, 2002, 2004) and a follow-up,
ongoing study (200206). The first was funded by Oslo University College; the second by The
Norwegian Research Council.
Social or ethnic backgrounds of students are not routinely used as categories in the evaluation
reports of the National Board of Education in Finland this is argued to be due to the attempt
to use discretion. Students achievements are predominantly compared only by location and
gender; therefore, there is more public debate about gender difference than about class difference in achievement (Lahelma, 2004a; Mietola et al., 2005).
In the most recent Norwegian school reforms, a particular emphasis is placed on competence,
which is defined in terms of effective and creative deployment of knowledge and skills in human
situations drawing on attitudes and values as well as on skills and knowledge. The rephrasing
of competence as an all-encompassing term is a decision taken in reference to OECD and EU
committee work to achieve a common understanding of competence across countries, for the
purpose of developing common indicators for evaluation of outcomes. This notion becomes a
4.
5.
6.
backdrop for assessing the individual as against the norm, the competent child (Arnesen,
2005). In a complex between the operation of such norms, assessment procedures and interpretation of the status of the school (e.g. by national tests and international assessment),
combined with the medias handling of what has been defined as a crisis, have influenced a
movement based on what is called quality of teaching which shall remedy what is wrong in
school and bridge the gap between those defined as competent and those who lack sufficient
competence. The tendency in Finland is the same, and through international comparisons
(PISA and others) the norms travel from one country to another.
This is about to change with the most recent reforms, which intend to give priority to the individual learner, individualization and adapted teaching in flexible and changing groups.
The needs for special provisions have traditionally been defined in terms of individual deficiencies, rather than external factors (Skrtic, 1995; Haug, 1999; Haug & Tssebro, 1998). Fulcher
(1989) suggests that deficiency discourse is based on a medical tradition that tends to individualize disabilities as attributes and professionalize them by making them parts of a persons
technical trouble (Allan, 1999).
For example, both the Norwegian and the Finnish national curricula are based on the idea of
one school for all, but while stating the shared targets and contents for education, it also
includes, in a separate section, that special education can be organized either as integrated or
in a special class if, as formulated in the Finnish curriculum, it is not possible for the students
to study in the context of other teaching or if it is not appropriate considering the development
of the student (NBE, 2004, p. 27).
Notes on contributors
Anne-Lise Arnesen is professor at the Faculty of Education, Oslo University College,
Norway, annelise.arnesen@lu.hio.no.
Reetta Mietola is researcher at the Department of Education, University of Helsinki,
Finland, reetta.mietola@helsinki.fi.
Elina Lahelma is professor at the Department of Education, University of Helsinki,
Finland, elina.lahelma@helsinki.fi.
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