How do ‘kinds’ of knowledge and practices existing within schools contribute to
‘making up’ intellectually disabled pupils in relation to perspectives on inclusion?
This project departs from a micro-perspective on inclusion where the object of study is the
processes that take place within educational institutions and between actors in the classrooms
and other contexts at schools. Based on this, the dissertation aims to understand how
education contributes to ‘making up’ intellectually disabled pupils. Drawing on the theoretical
works of the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking, this project discusses how produced
knowledge, stereotypical assumptions, values, beliefs and so on that are implemented in the
category ‘intellectual disability’ affect organisational practices, which in turn interact with the
children classified as intellectually disabled and influence how they understand themselves
and their surroundings.
The dissertation consists of three articles that are based on empirical data gathered from three
pupils diagnosed with intellectual disability. The three informants are each devoted their own
article. Individually the articles discuss different issues and themes related to different
dimensions of inclusion, respectively: participation, fellowship, democracy and benefit. Based
on the mentioned perspectives on inclusion, the purpose of the articles is to discuss how
intellectual disability as a category affects the surroundings attitudes, practices, assumptions,
understandings and so on, which in turn provides certain descriptions from which the
classified pupils experience, behave and act.
The project argues that the beliefs and practices that pupils classified as intellectually disabled
are subjected to in school play a major role in regards to the kind of person it is possible for
them to be. When education is organised based on beliefs that intellectual disability refers to
pupils that deviate from others, the descriptions available for them to interact with will also be
of a deviant kind. On the other hand, if education provides descriptions related to high
expectations, ambitions and opportunities for all, the way in which it is possible to be a pupil
for children classified as intellectually disabled might thus resemble normalised descriptions
similar to those available to their peers. Just as interacting with perspectives that consider
intellectually disabled children as different or special might construct barriers relating to
normative standards of society, more socially oriented approaches to education might
contribute to deconstructing barriers for present and future participation
