While parents' role in schools has attracted growing attention in educational research, very few researchers have directed any interest to the role of parents in special education. In this paper, we focus upon the concept of partnership, relating our analyses of interviews with classroom teachers and parents to the notion of partnership as described and explored by different researchers. Our main focus is on how teachers describe and perceive their relation to parents, and how parents experience their relation to the school. Our analysis shows that the relationship between teachers and parents seems to contain some other features than those reflected in the existing literature on parents' role in education. To extract some of these features based on our data, we construct two roles: parents as 'implementers' and parents as 'clients', which we believe better captures the distinctive feature of the role of parents in special education. 'Implementer' implies parents being given responsibility for following up aims and measures set by the school, with very little possibility to influence how things are being done. 'Clients' occur when teachers see parents as part of their child's problem. Both roles place parents in a subordinate and powerless relationship with the school, as a result of a strong inequality of power between parents and schools. This inequality is caused, among other factors, by the socially defined power relationship between laypersons and professionals, and the stigma attached to special education which restrains parents from forming any collective resistance.
Sami people experience a wide range of challenges in their dealings with health and social services (Blix 2016). However, little is known so far about the circumstances for disabled people of a Sami background (Huuva 2014). Since previous research has shown that people with disabilities have poorer living conditions and fewer opportunities for social participation than the general population (Kittelsaa, Wik & Tøssebro 2015; Söderström & Tøssebro 2011), it would be reasonable to assume that disabled people of a Sami background may risk marginalisation along both dimensions or have a 'double disadvantage' (Wehmeyer 2007). Through narrative analysis of interviews with disabled Sami people, we discuss marginalisation processes faced by this category in their dealings with welfare services. We argue that research based on experiences from ethnic minorities are not sufficient analytical tools to understand the experiences of the Sami people. Rather than experiencing culturalisation (Fuentes 2015), disabled people of a Sami background still experience assimilation mechanisms when communicating with welfare services.
SAMMENDRAGDen sterke økningen det siste tiåret i andelen elever som mottar spesialundervisning står i sterk kontrast til en politisk satsning på inkludering og tilpasset opplaering i skolen. I denne artikkelen bruker vi en spørreundersøkelse blant grunnskolelaerere for å teste ulike forklaringer på økt forekomst av spesialundervisning. I artikkelen konkluderer vi med at forklaringene som får støtte i materialet dels dreier seg om forhold som den enkelte skole eller kommune ikke kan styre direkte, som økt rettighetsfokus i samfunnet, økt fokus på resultater, ressursmangel og laeringsutbytte i skolen. Det kan også forklare hvorfor tiltak som settes inn på skolenivå bare i begrenset grad synes å påvirke omfanget av spesialundervisning -og at andelen i noen tilfeller også vokser til tross for tiltakene.
The fact that post-socialist European Union (EU) countries are struggling with implementation of the EU's social inclusion policy is well known. But why is that so? Are the problems solely connected with how inclusion policies are enforced, or could it just as likely be the way policies are designed that creates challenges? This book explores experiences with inclusion policy implementation in seven different post-socialist EU countries. It focuses particularly on two groups of people in constant danger of social exclusion: people with Roma background and people with disabilities.So far, researchers have studied these issues primarily through policy analysis, and thus not provided knowledge on what actually happens in local contexts where welfare services are produced. This book sheds light on implementation processes at different levels, both at the policy level and in local welfare production. The picture painted here is one of complex and conflicting considerations First published 2020 by Routledge
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