Responding to Diversity at School

The variability of students is a never-ending challenge for our public schools if they want to aim to give "to each according to need" and receive "from each according to ability" In this intensive, long-term ethnographic study of one mainstream compulsory school in Iceland answers were sought to two main queries: How the school tackled the diversity of its students' needs and why it responded as it did. The school was found to produce diverse special educational needs and disabilities corresponding to the ethical values on which compulsory education is based and the context in which it functions. The school then managed these in a way that absolved it from having to re-think its ground rules or re-order its structure and routine. One of the conclusions was that the school was a moral institution where individuals were granted what they deserved rather than what they might need. Also that despite the educational aim of encouraging independent and critical thinking established norms were the criteria used to judge individuals. This process of moral evaluation was, however, shrouded in the dominant psycho-medical discourse, itself the product of the school's hybrid role...