Browsing by Author "Kääriäinen, Noora"

An amendment was made to the Finnish Basic Education Act which now forms a three-tier model to the special education system. The purpose of this study was to find out what were the arguments behind the amendment and how were the special educational needs discussed as part of the amendment process. The international educational policy declarations have stated that every child has a right to study in a regular class in a regular school. Finland has also ratified this declaration. The purpose of the amendment is to direct schools to become more inclusive and to offer special education in a regular class and as soon as possible in order to avoid transfer into a special education class. The data of this study consisted of government proposal and the discussion about the amendment at the plenary session by members of the parliament. The data was read as a political speech which means speaking for or against something. The analysis was based on Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to be? approach which suggests that as a new policy is made it constitutes a problem. The aim of this approach is to locate the dominant discourses in political texts. The amendment was supported by arguing for the rights and advantages of both the pupils with special needs and other pupils, the need to diminish the stigma of special education as well as early intervention in order to prevent the accumulation of problems. Based on the analysis the need for special education seems to be multifaceted because special needs are seen to be caused by various reasons. The positions varied from individualistic to the inflexibility of structures and social practices and the perspective of worry and risks. The position changed between these three discourses and therefore it is clear that there is no dominant consensus of what the reasons for special needs are and hence the conceptions of how to organize special education vary.