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Though research on inclusive education makes up a considerable part of the special education research field, very few studies have explored how beliefs and ideas about inclusion and exclusion emerge in general media discourses of education and schooling. Using positioning theory as a theoretical framework, this paper explores public discourses on inclusionary/exclusionary schooling by analysing newspaper articles about a segregated type of school in Sweden for pupils with intellectual disability. Seventy-nine articles meeting the criteria for inclusion and published between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2018 were identified in the two national daily newspapers of Sweden. Four general storylines and associated positions were identified. The four storylines, together and in different ways, construct a rationale for a segregated school system based on notions such as equality, equity, justice, and democracy. We argue that this rationale is embedded within a discourse that we propose calling a discourse of 'segrequality'. Education plays an important role in the development of an inclusive society and inclusive education is a goal supported by many countries and their school systems. Even so, the percentage of pupils educated in segregated settings have increased in many countries in Europe. This article explores how Swedish news media portrays education for pupils with intellectual disability. The research found a dominant rationale where segregated educational settings are seen as essential. Four main narratives were identified. All of them, in different ways, argue for the importance of segregated education in order to give every child an education based on notions such as equality, equity, justice, and democracy. Researchers of inclusion are suggested to take a more active part in a public discussion of education as well as in policy-making on both national and local levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence-based information and communication technology (ICT) interventions to enhance school participation among students with special educational needs (SEN) are required. To evaluate the impact of an ICT intervention on school participation among upper secondary school students with special educational needs. Data on 300 students' assessments with the School Setting Interview (SSI), grades and school attendance were used in this quasi-experimental study, with a one-group pretest-posttest design. Descriptive and inferential statistics and effect size were used, as well as Rasch analysis to generate interval data on the students' ordinal SSI ratings. In the ICT intervention (median time eight hours), 54% of the students received a tablet, and software concerned with planning and structure was received by 85%. After the ICT intervention, a significant decrease in perceived need for adjustments in school activities was found on a group level and 30% of the students improved their school attendance. Students who benefitted the most from the ICT intervention had few adjustment needs in school activities and no special educational support at baseline. An ICT intervention is promising for improving school participation among upper secondary school students with SEN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vulnerability of gender nonconforming young people is all too well documented. Arguably, "trans issues" in schools are not restricted to transphobic comments, and need to be analyzed intersectionally. Guided by Lugones' discussion of the politics of purity read together with the analysis of cisnormativity, this article draws on interviews with Rakel, Robin and Mika, who were part of a larger study with 13 trans and nonbinary young people and young adults in Sweden, the first of its kind in Sweden. It engages their analyses of how schools and teachers express a desire for cisnormative purity in their interactions with gender nonconforming students. Normative whiteness and fat-phobia, as well as adultism and schools' reluctance in instituting nondiscrimination regulations and policy frameworks into appropriate, affirming and reliable practices, violently affect gender nonconforming young people just as much as schools' and teachers' poor knowledge about gender identities. In examining participants' negotiations with schools, this text reads both cisnormative oppression and gender nonnormative transgression as a condition of a specific moment in the Swedish political landscape marked by the simultaneousness of control and liberation, of imposed cisnormative purity and concurrent negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]