"Just something I can do!" : Inclusive education and school experience of disabled children in Scotland, Sweden and Iceland.

• Main Author: Hreidarsdóttir, Gudny Maria
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för samhälls- och livsvetenskaper 2012
• Subjects: Inclusive education; disabled children; participation; schools; Dundee; Iceland
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-15803

Abstract This research is about inclusive education in three classes and the experience of a disabled child in the class. The aim was to find out what the factors were that created an inclusive/exclusive class from the perspective of the class teacher and the disabled child. For this I visited one class in Dundee in Scotland, one class in Reykjavik in Iceland and one class in a small community in Värmland in Sweden. The approach used to get this information were qualitative methods in the tradition of an ethnographic case study because the focus was on the culture in three different classes. I used ethnography as a way to go about conducting the research and collected data with participant observation and deep interviews in all three schools. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The results indicate that it is complicated to say precisely what inclusive education is. I used the models of disability and frames of inclusive education developed from the literature to put a focus on the results of the data. And these paradigms are on three levels; the child level, the teachers or class level and the school authorities’ or policy level. A matrix was developed to better have an overview of the results. From the three cases one can presume that one of the factors that enhance inclusive education is the teachers thinking and ideology about inclusive education and thereby are the responsible people in a disabled child education and schooling. Both in the case of Scotland and Iceland the class teacher did not take this responsibility and that resulted as a barrier for these disabled children´s participation in class. Another result is about the understanding significant persons had regarding these disabled children´s communication and attempts to connect or relate to others in the everyday life at school. When their impairment regarding how they communicate and relate to others was regarded this promoted their participation and inclusive education.