Abstracts - Earli

Taking account of learner diversity: some lessons from researchMel Ainscow, Manchester University, United KingdomThis paper will report on some aspects of a collaborative action research project involving teamsfrom 25 schools in England working with researchers in an attempt to understand how schools candevelop more inclusive ways of working. A common process of development emerged across theschools, which started with the disturbance of existing practices and was nurtured by a range ofinstitutional and external factors that included ideas about inclusion. The research revealed how, asa result of engaging with various forms of evidence, staff within some schools reconsidered theirassumptions and, as a result, were able to develop new ways of working. In some cases this led tosignificant changes in the way problems were defined and addressed. We saw these as examples ofthe way norms of teaching are socially negotiated within the everyday context of the schools. Inthis sense, they are evidence of how the culture of the workplace impacts upon how teachers seetheir work and, indeed, their students. This means that the development of more inclusiveapproaches does not arise from a mechanical process in which any one specific organizationalrestructuring, or the introduction of a particular set of techniques, generates increased levels ofparticipation. Rather, it requires processes of social learning within specific contexts. The national‘standards agenda’ was a major force shaping the directions taken by the schools. Whilst itconstrained inclusive development it also provided that development with a particular focus andled schools to consider issues that might otherwise have been overlooked. The paper will concludethat inclusive developments - albeit of a highly ambiguous nature - are possible even in apparentlyunpromising circumstances and that there may be specific ways in which these developments canbe supported.Developing learning potentials in an AD/HD-classroomEva Hjörne, Göteborg University, SwedenThe focus in this presentation concerns what happens when children are placed in a specialteaching group, that is, in an AD/HD-group. What kind of education is offered to the children?The research is ethnographic and based on participant observation, fieldnotes, document analysisand tape-recorded interviews within an ADHD-class. The issues explored in the study concernwhat pedagogical strategies, ways of communicating and organizing the school day, methods forexamining learning and so on, are established in this context and how are the identities of thechildren shaped through the practices? The analyses indicate that the pedagogical arrangementsconsidered suitable for the children classified in these manners consist of extremely wellstructured lessons where the form rather than the content become the main issue. The expressedgoal is to normalise the child to be able to participate in a regular class at a later point. One of thekey ambitions of the practices observed is that the pupils should be made aware of their identity asbeing deviant and of their belonging to the category ‘AD/HD-pupil’. The pupils should also learnto monitor their own behaviours and to filter what they do through their knowledge of what itimplies to be an AD/HD-pupil, i.e. they are trained in mastering their handicap. In some sense,they are learning how to be disabled in a normal setting.– 584 –