Dr. philos Dóra S. Bjarnason
dora@khi.is
http://starfsfolk.khi.is/dora/
DRAFT
PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION
From the toolbox of theory: Which theoretical tools are useful for understanding
inclusive practice in Icelandic schools?1
Abstract
Inclusion in school and society has been the law in Iceland since the early 1980's, and school inclusion
is at the center of the national educational legal frame and policy. Diversity of the student population at
all school levels is growing as the society gets more complex -- in the economic, social and cultural
sense -- as globalisation affects all aspects of the formerly very homogeneous culture of the
Icelanders. A research team at the Iceland University of Education has, in cooperation with parent and
professional associations, conducted a comprehensive study of all Icelandic students labelled with
intellectual disabilities in our school system – from preschool to upper-secondary school, in segregated
and mainstream educational settings. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used. The
findings demonstrate both strengths and weaknesses in inclusive schooling practice with regard to
structural organization of schools, pedagogical practices, and the social relationships between disabled
and non disabled learners. For example schools at different school levels vary in their ability to
strengthen inclusive aspects of schooling and reduce or counteract exclusionary prosesses, depending
on their structure, staffs' views on students with special educational needs, and on how firmly the
schools and their staff believe in the ideas of "the normal" and "the deviant" as two distinct categories
of students. The paper will outline some examples of our findings and discuss theoretical tools that
assisted in the analysis and interpretations of the data. In addition to social constructionism, the
interpretive approach and a social relational model of disability, Bourdieu’s notions of cultural and
social capital and a post structuralist approach, and will be discussed in this context.
Introduction
Significant changes have occurred within Icelandic society in the last decades of the
20th century tied to globalisation and economic and social changes. Educational policy
and practice have also undergone changes, including a commitment to inclusive
education for all (see Johannesson 2006), but the schools still take reference from the
idea of the “normal” (Marinósson 2002).
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how data from new research into the education
of learners labelled with intellectual disabilities in general and special education
schools and at all school levels can be interpreted. The paper draws on three different
theoretical approaches as tools for the interpretation of qualitative and quantitative
data from a study of educational conditions of all Icelandic learners with intellectual
disability.
1
The paper is based on an earlier paper submitted by Bjarnason and Marinosson at the ECER
conference in Dublin in September 2005.
1
The paper is divided into four parts. It begins with brief definitions and explanation of
what I understand by “disability” and “disability studies” and how that can be related
to inclusive education in theory and practice. Second, it outlines a study carried out
by a team of researchers lead by professor Marinósson at the Icelandic University of
Education into the schooling of all Icelandic students with intellectual disability. The
study was initiated by a parent and professional association for people with
disabilities called Throskahjalp. The study is henceforth referred to as the
Throskahjálp Study (THS). Third, the main part of the paper will explore and discuss
how one might make sense of the evidence from the THS study using tools from
disability studies and social constructionism, Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital
and social capital, and poststructuralism. It is argued that by applying these
theoretical tools to the evidence, the research can provide better understanding and
practical insights into the complexities of inclusive education as practiced within the
modern Icelandic school system. Lastly the paper discusses the strengths and
weaknesses of applying these theoretical perspectives together and moves to a
conclusion.
Words and perspectives
What are (social) disability studies?
The term disability, as used here, means neither a disease nor damage to the human
body. On the contrary, it is a complicated and multidimensional socially constructed
concept. The meaning given to "disability" and "difference" may vary considerably
within a particular culture and its historic period (Kirkebæk, 1993), and between
cultures (Ingstad and Whyte, 1995). Its meaning is thus related to forms of social
organisations and domains in time and space. A social relational model of disability is
applied in this paper (Bjarnason 2004. Tössebro 2002, Gabel 2001). From that
perspective ”intellectual disability” is seen to be a social construct, relational,
situational and relative.
Disability studies grow out of a paradigm that rejects the basic epistemology of
positivist empiricism that objective facts can be clearly distinguished from values. By
deconstructing the fact/value distinction of social phenomena we unravel the position
that we humans create everything to do with how we structure our world, including
our perspective on disability or educational practices. We do not discover that world
based on objective facts (Ferguson and Ferguson 1992). Further, I agree with
Gallagher who reminds us, that the way we understand disability as a social
phenomena is a moral and not a scientific choice (Gallagher 2004).
Disability studies have a broad and diverse base in the practical experiences of
disabled people, and in diverse academic fields such as history, sociology, cultural
studies, literature theory, law, public policy, and ethics. As disability studies have
taken shape in the last decades of the 20th century, the so called British “social model
of disability” has been at its centre (Oliver 1990). Several theoretical stances can be
located within a broad social model of disability and more are added each year
(Gabel, 2001). Two such stances stand out: (1) the British social model is an
emancipatory neo-marxist, structuralist materialist stance, that makes a distinction
between impairment of the body and disability, the latter being seen as a social
product (Oliver & Barnes, 1998; Shakespeare & Watson, 1995); and (2) a social
constructionist approach that views all interpretations of bodily, intellectual or
behaviour variations as a theory-laden, socio-cultural phenomena (see Bjarnason,
2
2004). Each of these two stances contains a variety of different theoretical
perspectives and definitions (Altman 2001; Gabel 2001). What unites disability
studies is thus neither one coherent academic field, nor a body of theory but the claim
that the field and its work should be emancipating for and relevant to the practical
interests and experiences of disabled people.
What is inclusive education?
Iceland adopted the vision of the Salamanca Statement and framework for Action on
Special Educational Needs in 1994 (Salamanca yfirlýsing, 1995). It is characterised
by humanistic and democratic values, child centred pedagogy, diversity as the norm,
quality education for all children and on technical and administrative arrangements to
deliver education according to the needs of individual learners (see Jóhannesson
2006). The terms inclusive schooling and inclusive education are anchored in the
Salamanca Statement and vision. As an international policy document, the Salamanca
statement provides a foundation for national and local education policy, along with
other international and national education policy documents, but derives its practical
meaning from relevant cultural context.
The term inclusive education is not easy to define. The term has been given a
number of different meanings: As an alternative response to special needs in school or
classroom; as a perspective representing a shift in paradigms within education; as a
theory that research can be based upon; as an administrative educational and school
system; and as a political aim or ideology, based on ethical values (Lunt and Norwich
1999). Inclusive education is probably most widely used as a descriptive concept due
to its general adoption in education policies. Thus its meaning varies from one
country and culture to another (see Vislie, 2003). Often in public talk it is used to
express a moralistic vision and /or the placement of disabled learners in general
education schools, sometimes also called integration (Jóhannesson 2006).
As a descriptor, the term is of little use to educational researchers. If applied critically
(see Barton 1999,) and grounded in disability studies scholarship it becomes a
powerful analytical tool (Allan 1999 and 2003). As such it lends itself to unpicking
organisational structures and educational practices within our schools and educational
systems that result in segregation, inequality and exclusion and to identifying
inclusive pedagogical practices and organisational structures (Skidmore 1996,
Ainscow 1995, Tetler 2000, Marinósson 2002).
A useful way of thinking about inclusive education impacting real changes and
affecting the education and democratic participation of each and every learner is
captured by Dianne Ferguson’s definition of inclusive education as:
“a process meshing together general and special education reform
initiatives and strategies in order to achieve a unified system of public
education that incorporates all children and youth as active, fully
participating members of the school community; that views diversity as
the norm; and that maintains a high quality education for each student
by assuring meaningful curricular, effective teaching, and necessary
support” (Ferguson 2006).
The term refers to educational processes and goals. The processes are both inclusive
and exclusionary, embedded in the organization of schools and school cultures,
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affecting all learners and the school community of staff and students. Inclusive
education in this sense calls for teaching and learning in mixed ability, heterogeneous
student groups, and for systemic change at the administrative level (see Booth and
Ainscow, 2002).
The THS Study
Schooling is compulsory for all Icelandic children from the age of 6-16. Most children
attend preschool for 3-5 years before entering school. Preschool is non-compulsory
but the preschool level is formally a part of the educational system. Upper secondary
education is also non-compulsory but most students chose to continue their schooling
for up to 4 years. All these schools are by law ( lög um leikskóla 1994, lög um
grunnskóla 1995, lög um framhaldsskóla 1996) expected to include learners with
intellectual disabilities. Disabled students are placed in general classes at the
preschool and mostly at the early compulsory school level, but as more academic
subjects are introduced, there is a tendency to move learners with special needs out of
the general classroom learning environment either part time or full time (Marinósson
2002). Many general education schools at the compulsory school level use resource
rooms and a few special units remain at the compulsory education level. Three
special schools are in the compulsory education system, two for children with
significant intellectual or multi disabilities and one for learners diagnosed with
behavioural problems. At the upper secondary school level special classes are
opperated for students with intellectual disabilities, but many of those students also
make some use of the general classes, school facilities and student community events.
A research team at the Iceland University of Education has from 2002 to 2006 in
cooperation with a parent- and professional association, conducted a comprehensive
study of all Icelandic students labelled with intellectual disabilities in our school
system -- from preschool to upper-secondary school, in segregated and general
educational settings. The team was asked to: (1) Inquire into parents’, staffs’ and
principals’ attitudes and expectations concerning learning and social participation of
students with intellectual disabilities in classrooms and school communities; (2) to
study how learners with intellectual disability are admitted to schools; (3). how their
education is structured and where they are taught; and (4) how relevant information
was shared between important players within their learning environment including
between home and school.
The broad purpose of the THS study is to gain better understanding of how current
educational policy is carried out with regard to these learners and to identify how the
government, local municipalities and schools can work for improved inclusion and
reduced exclusion of this group of learners from general education schools and school
communities.
Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect the data. The qualitative
part of the study (part A.) entailed observations, interviews with staff and some
parents, and document analysis in eight schools -- two schools at each school level
from preschool to upper secondary and two special schools. This part was carried out
in order to gain a deeper understanding of how parents and professionals perceive the
education and social participation of learners with intellectual disabilities, and of the
4
schools as workplaces for disasbled learners and staff. Reports were written and these
were then used to generate questions for the quantitative research phase.
Some of the findings that emerged from the qualitative part of the study (Part A.) are
summarised as follows:
Exclusionary processes and hindrances on the road to inclusive education were:
o A belief in specialists and an emphasis on ”what is wrong” with the
child.
o An unclear understanding of key ideas (e.g. what is disability).
o Parents do not participate in the school work and school community.
o The idea that a school is a normal place.
Inclusive processes supporting inclusive education:
o Learners with intellectual disabilities are welcomed in most schools
o Teachers are willing to support the learning and advancement of their
students
o A high teacher and disabled student ratio.
o The school culture is generally based on care and support for its
learners.
Dilemmas and problems.
o The group of learners with intellectual disabilities is not specifically
identified in schools (see lög um leikskóla 1994, lög um grunnskóla
1995)
o The implementation of the inclusive educational policy is
contradictory.
o Parents and school staff have different understandings of both policy
and practice.
o The gap between students with intellectual disability and general
students gets wider with age.
The research team also found that the parents legal right to chose a school for their
disabled child is not honoured by all schools. Many parents have to struggle to get
their child’s special needs acknowledged. Finances and other resources for learners
with special needs were uneavenly distributed. The schools have problems with
supporting social interaction between labeled and non labeled learners, and often
without realising it, actively hinder such interaction through the structuring of
teaching and learning and of social events. Teachers plan and teach but the teacher
aides spend the most time with the disabled students. Finally, parents have little
influence in the schools.
These findings are no suprise to scholars in the area of inclusive education. Similar
strengths and weeknesses of inclusive school practice and structures are well
documented in the international reserch literature ( See for example Vislie, 2003).
However the qualitative approach gave the researchers a clearer understanding of the
perspectives of key staff working with students with intellectual disabilities in
schools, those of some of their parents, and of the working conditions of disabled
learners and their teachers and helpers in our schools. The evidence informed the
5
design of the quantitative part (part B ) of the THS study. The main questions for that
part were:




How many students with intellectual disability are there in the Icelandic
schools and how are they distributed between school levels?
What characterises the education they are given; in what settings are they
taught and is their teaching and learning structured?
How well do educational policy and practice coincide? How does the practice
in different schools compare and how does practice compare for schools at
different school levels? How can differences between policy and practice, and
within practice from one school or school level to another be explained?
What makes effective education for learners with intellectual disability in
general schools?
Questionaires were developed and in 2005 these were sent out to all general education
schools in Iceland that included learners with intellectual disabilities; from preschool
to the upper secondary school level. Questionaires were also sent to two special
schools, and to 650 parents of children and youth with intellectual disabilities who
had previously expressed their willingness to participate in the study. Principals,
teachers and staff working directly with learners with intellectual disabilities were
asked to answer the questionaires sent to the schools2.
This part, part B of the THS study provided a sea of data to be analyzed and
interpreted. For the quantitative data analysis we created tables with detailed
information about ”factual” answers comparing and contrasting them within and
between categories of schools, staff, and parents.
The part B data provides unique information about attitudes and practices related to
the education of learners with intellectual disabilities in the Icelandic educational
system. It highlights certain strengths and weaknesses both in the segregated special
education facilities and in the inclusive schooling practice -- for example, on
structural factors of schools, pedagogical practices, and the social relationships (or
rather the lack of such relationships) between older disabled and non disabled
learners. The evidence suggests that schools at different school levels vary in their
ability to strengthen inclusive aspects of schooling and in diminishing or
counteracting exclusionary processes, depending on their structure, staffs' views on
students with special educational needs, and how firmly the school staff believe in the
ideas of "the normal" and "the deviant" as two distinct categories of students. The
evidence also points to the fact that the gap widens socially between disabled and non
disabled students with age and more academic emphasis at the upper levels of
schools. Again little of the data based on the survey surprised us, except maybe how
very different the parents’ perspectives and the school staffs’ perspectives were on
what went on in the schools and how the social and educational needs of the
intellectually disabled learners were met there.
2
Replies came from 209 schools that included students with intellectual disabilities; 80 preschools,
109 general education compulsory schools, 2 special schools and 18 upper secondary schools.
However from 650 parents who had accepted to participate only 367 returned the questionnaires.
6
From the point of view of Icelandic teachers, parents and policy makers, I believe that
much of the information gathered can be valuable. It can help school staff and parents
make decisions and inform educational policy. This is useful, at least in the short run
while the data is relatively new and if it is used as a basis for decision-making and
change.
From the point of view of inclusive education research scholarship, however, my
reaction to these findings is less enthusiastic. Can this evidence, for example, help us
gain a deeper understanding of what happens to learners with intellectual disabilities
in Icelandic schools, or why the inclusive educational policy legitimated by the law is
not as effective in practice as it is intended to be, or why it is reported that learners
with intellectual disabilities have few friends and why the gap between them and
other learners widens as they get older?
Equipped with the interpretivist paradigm (see for example Ferguson and Ferguson
1995) I want to probe further and ask what does all this really mean? How can I make
sense of this evidence beyond the lesson learnt that the Icelandic inclusive school
policy and practice has many of the similar strengths, weaknesses and problems as do
similar schools and school systems elsewhere in their struggle towards inclusive
education?
Three theoretical perspectives
Next, the paper looks very briefly at three theoretical perspectives that are useful for
exploring this data further. These are: social constructionism, aspects of Bourdieou’s
social theory of culture, and poststructuralism; and how these may be applied to the
THS data. They have in common that they are based within interpretivist sociology
and thus Webers’ Versthen, and lend themselves to qualitative inquiry.
Social constructionism
The overarching theoretical perspective for interpreting the evidence from the THS
study is derived from disability studies anchored in social constructionism. The
perspective is intended to help unravel how different players (parents, educators other
professionals, and unskilled aides) participating in the inquiry perceived what happens
to learners with intellectual disabilities within the Icelandic schools and why.
Social constructionism is about how meanings get constructed and negotiated in
social context. This theoretical perspective thereby challenges the central tenet of
positivism i.e. the fact/value distinction. It draws upon symbolic interactionism (the
Mead-Blumer tradition) and phenomenological sociology through the work of Berger
and Luckman (see Berger and Luckman 1966).
The social constructionist position focuses on social processes, intersubjectivity and
interaction. Human criteria for identifying action or events are highly circumscribed
by culture, history and the social context. From the social constructionist perspective
we are invited to consider critically the social origins of our taken for granted
assumptions about our perceived reality. Social constructionism does not consist of
one unified theoretical approach, but on basic assumptions that create “family
resemblance” amongst social constructionists (see Gergen 1994). They are what
7
social constructionists believe in and use for building the many different versions of
what has been labelled social constructionism. Gergen (1994) lists the following:
First, it insists that we take a critical stance towards our taken for granted ways of
understanding the world, including ourselves. Second, it argues that the ways in
which we understand the world, the categories and the concepts we use, are
historically and culturally specific. Third, social constructionism claims that people
construct knowledge of their world through daily interactions and in the course of the
processes of their every day life. Fourth, “language derives its significance in human
affairs from the way in which it functions within patterns of relationships”. Particular
forms of knowledge in any culture are seen to be social artefacts, amenable to change
(see for example Kirkebæk 2004).
The THS study data for example shows that parents and staff hold different
perspectives on what happens to learners with intellectual disabilities at school (for
example on how appropriate and relevant the teaching and learning is, how the learner
is achieving, who spends most time with the disabled learner in the classroom, but
also on issues like friendship, participation in school activities and on the learner’s use
of special services). By getting at the different perspectives: e.g. parents’ perspectives,
teachers’ perspectives at the same or different school levels, and those of teacher
aides, helps identifying dilemmas and tensions within the educational settings and
between schools and families.
Further, we gain a better understanding of how we construct intellectual disabilities,
including the diagnostic categories that provide access to resources and support. One
example is the narrow notion of individualism that, as Jóhannesson reminds us, “sees
special educational needs as “flaws” rather than desires (and) interests” and may
result in creating what Allan calls “the artefact of the included child, distinct and
separate from the rest” (Allan 2003 also quoted in Jóhannesson 2006:115). Such
understanding helps us move away from looking at disorders in the individual and
towards questioning the constructs of meaning making within schools and education
systems.
The THS data showed that both parents and school staff were concerned that learners
with intellectual disabilities had fewer friends than most non-labelled students and
that “the gap widened with age”. But loneliness and isolation is not a necessary
companion of the label “intellectual disability”. The social constructionist disability
perspective helps shift the focus from the medical deficit perspective to how the
organisation of teaching and learning is structured, and how these learners can be
included in expanding social networks of the school. Staff at a school, friends, peers
and family, can provide interpretive support across educational and social settings.
Thus learners with intellectual disabilities can be helped to access fully the symbolic
system of language and culture., By providing intellectually disabled learners with
necessary and sufficient age and culturally appropriate support to express and
interpret themselves we might not experience the “widening gap” and subsequent
isolation and loneliness now seen (see also Ferguson, P. 2002).
Thus it is argued that social constructionism will sharpen our understanding of how
the respective participants in the THS study perceive learners with intellectual
disabilities, their educational context and their school and social participation. Thus,
this lens helps broaden and deepen our understanding of the experiences of
8
intellectually disabled learners, their teachers, other school staff and parents, and
opens up for new positive improvements and solutions.
Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural and social capital
It is argued here that Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural and social capital (see Bourdieu
1990, see also Brody 1991) can help explore the exclusionary factors at work within
our educational system, pushing learners with intellectual disabilities to the wings of
the general school class and community or into special segregated services as they get
older (see also Marinósson 2002), despite both educational policy goals and the
positive caring attitudes that we found to prevail in schools. Further, Bourdieu’s
concepts help unravel the structures that make up our school system, its professional
practices, and how these legitimate the constructs of, what Allan called, “the artefact
of the included child, distinct and separate from the rest” and of what I will call “the
artefact of the flawed learner locked into segregated settings”. The perspective helps
us identify how the actors in the game are placed within their playing field and helps’
explain why, by looking at who has access to the in-group of friends and
acquaintances’ and other resources and who has not.
For Bourdieu, capital is always inherited from the past and continuously created and
recreated. Capital is a relational concept. One way to explain the concept is to
describe it as accumulated labour in a materialised form, embodied or immanent. His
key concepts of capital are symbolic capital, economic capital, cultural capital and
social capital. Symbolic capital is a very broad concept; representing whatever social
groups take to be valuable and treat as such. Cultural capital can be seen as a broad
subcategory of symbolic capital and in essence the opposite to economic capital
(Brody 1991:169). It can be embodied in persons, for example in a family name,
titles, form of playing the violin, the appreciation of art; and objectified for example
in art or fashion items, or institutionalised for example in certificates from prestigious
schools, university degrees, membership in valued clubs or organisations. Cultural
capital has grown out of the historic development of the art of writing and later
printing, and it is tied to the development of national institutions such as the
educational system. Cultural capital is located in cultural fields, the positions of
individuals or institutional actors who are defined by the distribution of capital and
the rules that govern this.
Cultural fields can be defined as:
A series of institutions, rules, rituals, conversations, categories, designations and
appointments which constitutes an objective hierarchy, and which produce and
authorise certain discourses and activities. But a field is also constituted by, or
out of, the conflict which is involved when groups or individuals attempt to
determine what constitutes capital within that field and how that capital is to be
distributed (Webb, Schirato and Danaher, 2002: pp. 21-22).
Everyday life consists of a collection of different fields, including school, leisure
activities, family patterns, and others. Individuals compete for power and status in
cultural fields by using capital. People have different access to capital and have not
equal opportunities to use it. (Bourdieu, 1990; Webb, Schirato and Danaher, 2002).
The concept of cultural capital implies that certain forms of knowledge are considered
more valuable than others. Those actors (persons or institutions) who have the most
9
power in a cultural field are also those who decide what constitutes as capital
(Bourdieu, 1990). For example: In the field of education, learners with intellectual
disabilities are the least likely of all to access, accumulate or reproduce cultural
capital or affect what is taken to be such capital in their learning environment. As
learners move through public schools, the schools present increasingly selective,
complex and competitive cultural fields, emphasising academic achievement and
social status. This is striven for through consumption e.g. of fashionable gadgets,
music, clothes, sports or leisure activities, or good examination grades, thus gradually
widening the socio-educational gap between learners with intellectual disabilities,
who do not keep up the contest and non-disabled learners, who do.
Social capital hinges on cultural capital in that it refers to resources grounded in
durable exchange based networks of people (Brody 1991). It is about “whom you
know” and “who knows you” as in having good connections, belonging to an old boys
network, having useful friends or relatives. For this reason the intellectually disabled
learners will (if nothing is done to counteract this) also have less and less access to
social capital. For learners with intellectual disabilities in the THS study,
friendlessness, isolation and exclusion becomes more firmly embodied and embedded
within networks, institutions and cultural fields of the educational system as time goes
by and the fields get more complex and more competitive.
Poststructuralism
Poststructuralistic perspectives can usefully be brought to the THS study data in order
to deconstruct meanings, patterns of legitimating principles, and hidden contradictions
and dilemmas within the text.
Poststructuralism is a powerful theoretical tool for deconstruction. It is a critique of
structuralism’s scientific pretensions, of truth, objectivity and progress, and it accepts
the position that language plays a central part in the construction of subjectivity and
social reality (Schwandt 2001). According to the self confessed poststructuralist
Anthony Giddens (1991) poststructuralism is constituted of the following principles:
1. Subjects, authors or speakers are irrelevant to the interpretation of texts.
2. Pantextualism –everything is a text – all texts are interrelated.
3. Meaning is unstable, never fixed, never determined, and never
representational.
4. Deconstructionism is a poststructuralistic strategy for reading texts that
unmasks the supposed truth, or meaning of text by undoing, reversing or
replacing taken for granted binary oppositions that structure texts.
Poststructuralist “arguments” by their very nature attempt to destabilise received
conceptions of science, order, society and self. This approach is useful for our effort
of picking apart educational policy and inclusionary rhetoric, the practice of
educational organisations and structures, but is less helpful in facilitating
reconstructions. However, the poststructuralist basic approach is in important ways in
direct conflict with the interpretive social constructionist approach of disability
studies described above. If we, for example, accept Gidden’s claims, then the
interpretivist effort of giving voice to individual experience and perspectives could be
taken as futile. Thus the poststructuralistic premise is contrary to the emancipatory
aspect of disability studies which aim for the empowerment of people with
disabilities.
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Yet I suggest that the focus and the very claims of the poststructuralistic approach can
be useful for the THS research. It provides tools for the deconstruction and critical
reflection on the experiences of disabled people in school and society. As many
disability scholars and disabled activists constantly remind us disabled people rarely
experience their full democratic rights as citizens. Peters (2003) reminds us for
example that:
“…poststructuralism criticizes the ways that modern liberal democracies
construct political identity on the basis of a series of binary oppositions
(e.g.,
we/them,
citizen/non-citizen,
responsible/irresponsible,
legitimate/illegitimate) which has the effect of excluding or "othering"
some groups of people.
“Othering”, is a significant part of exclusionary processes experienced by the
learners with intellectual disabilities as shown by the evidence from the THS study at
school and in society resulting in segregation and disempowerment. The
poststructuralist perspective moreover helps to deconstruct how boundaries are
socially constructed between “them” and “us”, and how they are maintained and
policed. This helps us unpick exclusionary processes within school and society.
The perspective is also useful when we are investigating power relations within the
educational field. Lee writes for example about the promise of poststructuralism in
educational research (Lee 1992) and maintains that:
[…] poststructuralism attempts to work productively with, rather than against,
the complexity of human existence. […] In particular, while offering a
theorization of power, poststructuralist investigative methods seek to avoid the
impression of a too-neat analysis of power - to avoid the impression that "the
story is too pretty to be true". (Foucault 1980, p.209).
Foulcault’s analysis of "power/knowledge" developed through his studies of
institutions such as the prison, the school and the mental hospital, and his exposure of
technologies of domination (Foulcault 1972, 1975) can also be fitted under the poststructural perspective and applied within disability studies and applied to the
deconstruction of neo-liberal educational policies and pedagogic practices.
Poststructuralism thus helps untangle power-relations and elements of social control
within educational systems and other controlling institutional context.
Discussion
The evidence from the THS study has implications for schooling of Icelandic learners
with intellectual disability as well as inclusive education in general. In the short run
some of the evidence from the study can be useful to policy makers, professionals and
to parents as stated above. But its main value, I think, is in the deeper and more
complex story it can tell about what happens to learners who are different in a system
that is based on a vision of “the normal as the moral”.
I have argued elsewhere (see Bjarnason 2006) that disability studies provide parents,
teachers and special educators with emancipatory tools enabling them to view the
student, his or her strengths and weaknesses, in a broad social context (see also
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Barton, 1987; Touraine, 2000). Thus disability studies locate the challenge of
disability within our construction of the system of teaching and learning, the
organisational frame and the culture of the school, rather than within the individual
student with impairment. This poses challenge to teachers, especially special teachers
trained to work with individual students or small groups of students who all share a
disability label. Such labels are based on a medical diagnostic approach, which
defines individual needs and opens up access to additional resources. Marinósson
(2002) showed in a recent long term ethnographic study of one mainstream
compulsory school in Iceland, how the school was found to produce a variety of
special educational needs through the construction of students’ diversity. “Several
influencing factors were found to contribute to this practice, including the values of
acceptable behaviours, notions of the nature of knowledge, values supporting the
bureaucratic structure of the school and the professional interests of the teachers.
Counteracting factors were, for example principles of equality and rights of due
process. ” Instead of changing its organizational approach to teaching and learning,
this school was found to solve its dilemmas by sending students who were seen to
have learning, behavioural or other such “problems” to a special education provision
(Marinósson, 2002).
The inclusive school strives for the opposite. It attempts to merge the general and the
special education practice ”into one unified system, that incorporates all learners.
children and youth as active fully participating members of a school community; that
views diversity as the norm; and that ensures a high-quality education for each student
by providing meaningful curriculum, effective teaching, and necessary supports for
each student” (Ferguson, 1995, p. 286). Disability studies, it is argued, can provide
teachers, special teachers and schools with a useful perspective with which to view its
most vulnerable students, by shifting the focus away from students’ deficits,
incapacities and faults, to that of fully human children and youth with abilities, talent
and needs.
Most students of inclusive practices agree that, starting with the will to address the
challenge to include all learners, is necessary but not sufficient to ensure the desired
outcomes of equity and quality education for all (see for example Clark, Dyson,
Milward & Skidmore, 2001). The emancipatory perspective of disability studies, can
and does in our experience sharpen that will, and provide some insight into how and
what to try.
These perspectives and arguments can be brought fruitfully to the THS research and
the evidence that has provided through the qualitative and quantitative aspects of that
study. Thus with help of our theoretical tools we can delve deeper into the evidence at
hand and ask: What does it all mean? There is no one right answer and that is as it
should be in qualitative inquiry. But we can develop a new and deeper level of
understanding of structures and processes and meaning making, that we use to tell the
stories about our educational system and what happens to learners who are different in
school and in play.
The tools I have chosen to help me tell that story truthfully are a) Social
constructionism that focuses on the production of knowledge and on the construction
of social structure be it in the form of a community of learners, an institution or a
society. This perspective views education as the result of negotiated meanings,
implying that the present situation with respect to the participation of students with
12
intellectual disability in mainstream education is not to be taken as given but could be
otherwise.
b) Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural and social capital, that are relational and refer to
access and reproduction of power of access to cultural and social capital, on the
variety of the hierarchical cultural /social fields that construct the schools and their
implicit and explicit rules of the game that affect the accumulation, reproduction or
loss of such capital. Bourdieu’s conception can be brought to bear when we try to
understand how the exclusion of particular individuals or categories of actors with
dwindling cultural and social capital assets can be interpreted in light of broader
cultural fields of our society.
c) Poststructuralism that is about the deconstruction of language, a procedure
concerned to expose the workings of power. Poststructuralist theorists propose that
language - understood as discourse - functions to produce, and not merely to express,
social difference. It is this term 'difference' which is crucial to the notion of
deconstruction, for example in exposing the binary nature of thinking about disability
in terms of normality-abnormality. Thus the assumptions of poststructuralism
contribute to a critical and a cautionary perspective of education.
Concluding words
Social constructionism is a perspective that permeates our analysis of data on the
education of students with intellectual. Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural and social
capital help understand the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion of individual
actors, persons, institutions or systems, within the scheme of a much broader playing
field of competition, cooperation, status, class and power groups. Poststructuralism
offers a critical approach for the analysis of our data, for example in terms of power,
binary oppositions and othering. I conclude that these perspectives can and should be
brought to bear on data of this kind to help us understand schooling for learners with a
difference and from that derive lessons that transcend the example of the THS study.
13
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