Educacion
Responding to diversity and striving for excellence: The case of Finland
Hannu Savolainen
Published online: 6 November 2009 Ó UNESCO IBE 2009
Abstract The implementation of inclusive education has become an internationally accepted goal. In this process a substantial challenge is to simultaneously increase both equalityand quality in inclusive education. This article discusses ways of achieving this goal in light of recent research findings which indicate that it is possible to meet both goals at once. The findings of various studies on the Finnish comprehensive school reform, along with recent learning outcomes, support this conclusion. During the comprehensive school era, equality has increased, performancegaps have decreased, and student achievement has improved overall. Possible reasons for this are that Finnish educational policy development has not followed international mainstream trends and that flexible and extensive special education provisions have been built into our school system. Internationally acknowledged requirements for a good education are competent teachers and a school system’scommitment to take on the responsibility of educating children of all abilities. Keywords Inclusive education Á Special education Á Student performance
Introduction Discussions about inclusive education have moved through several phases and involved many different discourses (Dyson 1999). For example, arguments for both human rights and effectiveness have been used to justify it. Still, the conceptof inclusive education remains somewhat ambiguous; it can and is being used in different ways to serve different political purposes. Although an unequivocal definition might not be possible, a general international consensus exists that school systems should aim to be more inclusive (Mitchell 2005). One trend is clear in the discussion on inclusive education: whereas much of the earlier discussionoriginated from within the field of special education, today inclusive education is more widely understood and is not limited to including children with special needs and/ or disabilities (Mitchell 2005). Inclusive education is conceptualized more as an effort to
H. Savolainen (&) Department of Special Education, University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland e-mail: hsavola@joyx.joensuu.fi
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build school systems that welcome all children who are currently excluded from education. A primary objective in this effort is to minimize the structural, attitudinal, and pedagogical barriers to learning that today leave many groups of children outside of mainstream educational services. Who these excluded children are varies greatly across countries and educational systems.A major group excluded from education, especially in poorer countries, is children with disabilities, but many other groups attract attention in today’s inclusive educational policies, including girls, children in crisis, and the children of nomadic groups and cultural or ethnic minorities (UNESCO 2009). When inclusive education is understood as an overarching principle, its goals become parallelto those of UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA) process. In short, inclusive education aims at a good ‘‘school for all’’; this goal comes very close to the traditional Nordic interpretation of the direction in which schools and special education should be steered (Dahlgren 1984; Eklindh 1996). Worldwide, a major challenge in developing inclusive educational systems is for schools to manage the goalsof increasing access, responding to increased student diversity, and improving the quality of education, all of which are clearly stated goals of EFA. Thus the challenge is to simultaneously improve the equity or equality of both educational opportunities and learning outcomes. The general purpose of this article is to discuss whether and how this is possible. I approach this issue first by...
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