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Sweden is internationally regarded as an inclusive educational system. This study explores how teacher education programmes in Sweden have been organised as regards inclusive education (IE). Specifically, the study examines how teacher candidates and staff perceive teacher pre-service training for IE in terms of its curriculum and pedagogical practices towards students. The question was explored through a case-study of a large, well-respected university in Sweden, using semi-structured interviews and group-discussions with teacher candidates and staff members, and document analyses. The study revealed that the university makes several purposeful efforts to prepare its teacher candidates to practise IE, e.g. all teacher education programmes have a specific course on inclusion, while this content is also infused into several other courses. Nonetheless, the study also demonstrates that teacher candidates lack a deeper understanding of relationship between special education and inclusion, which can probably be attributed to the wider socio-political context dominated by the special education narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study the implementation of cooperation directed learning of peer tutoring in elementary general inclusive physical education (GPE) setting in three elementary city schools in Sweden was studied. The purpose was to assess the impact of peer tutoring on the interaction behaviours between students with and without disabilities in GPE. A design of multiple case study with elementary school age students with moderate disabilities (n = 4) was used. Peer tutors (n = 37) were students without disabilities who voluntary participated in a peer tutor training programme. The programme included the collaborative learning values, teaching instructions and communication skills served as the independent measure. Dependent measures were multiple interactions between students with and without disabilities. Data to the case studies were collected through a design of mixed methods, containing both quantitative and qualitative data. Totally 43 observation sessions of inclusive GPE settings were collected on videotapes and analysed using the Computerized Evaluation Protocol of Interactions in Physical Education (CEPI-PE). In addition, interviews with school personnel and children served as a complementary study outcome. The percentage of interactions between target students and peer tutors significantly increased (3.2–11.8%, respectively,p < .05) during peer tutor intervention. This study indicated that peer tutor arrangements can contribute the successful cooperation between students with and without disabilities in inclusive GPE in Swedish elementary school. All four students with moderate disabilities maintained high percentage of activities done independently throughout baseline and intervention phase (50.5 and 57.6%, accordingly). Qualitative data throughout field notes and interviews with school personnel and pupils confirmed a positive class climate change and improvement in peer relation culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Educational leaders have a comprehensive responsibility for how preschools and schools work with children in need of special educational support. The aim of this research is to study how educational leaders (a) explain why children have problems in schools, (b) consider how preschools/schools should help children in need of special support and (c) the role they believe that Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) should have in such work. Educational leaders (N =45) working in preschools and regular compulsory schools in a Swedish municipality responded (100%) to a questionnaire. According to the results of this study, this group seems to view difficulties in schools as being caused primarily by individual shortcomings. Educational leaders often advocate solutions that are closely linked to the work of special educators. The educational leaders believe SENCOs should work with supervising staff and focus on documentation and evaluations. Preschool leaders attribute children's need of special support to teachers more often than their colleagues in compulsory schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One important goal of Swedish educational policies is to integrate all pupils within regular education, irrespective of disability or difficulties in school, and to adjust education to individual needs. The aim of this paper was to explore how schools 'socially construct', i.e. identify and support, pupils with special educational needs. Another aim was to explore if there were any dominant patterns in the schools' procedures to differentiate pupils with such needs from 'normal' pupils, and how such patterns can be understood in a broader context of educational policies. Interviews were conducted with school personnel from two compulsory schools in a municipality in northern Sweden. We chose to use the grounded theory approach for analysing the interview data. The analysis indicated that there were three different patterns or models for identifying and supporting pupils with special educational needs: a pedagogical, a social or a medical model. Various professionals were involved in different ways in each model. Another finding was that school personnel did not find it easy to sort out and assess 'special educational needs', and that the identification of such needs were conditioned upon resources available for the schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a study on inclusive education in Sweden looking at the link between societal values and classroom practices in early childhood special education systems. The author discovered that policy and practice are not always in alignment for a multitude of reasons. Constraints of fiscal shortages, school orientation towards testing, cross-school comparisons and localized school control are some of the reasons offered for imperfect enactment of policy.