Full Description
This book discusses the contested issue of how different kinds of special educational support in Norway, such as placement in special classes or use of teacher assistants, prepare Special Educational Need (SEN) students for further education and adult life. This is done by following former students categorized as having special educational needs for twenty years, from the start of the upper secondary school until their mid-thirties.
Different choices and the adjustments and active adaptations young people make throughout their lives is a recurring theme, focusing on education, work, family, mental health, and social networks. The authors in this volume analyze and critically discuss topics around competence attainment in upper secondary school and higher education, employment, public support in adult life, mental health, social exclusion and isolation, and data-mediated networks.
It concludes how the experiences from school time have affected the adaptation in later adulthood, and provides an answer to whether the assistive measures have benefits. What are the consequences in the short and long run? A central explanatory tension is between disabled students and disabling schools. We trace consequences - possibly non-intended - for the former SEN students due to the stigmatization effect of receiving special educational help in a vulnerable phase of life.
The authors interpret results within a framework of life course approaches and disability theories. The perspectives introduced in the book are of interest for researchers and academics in the social sciences, such as sociology, special education, and social work.
Contents
Chapter 1. Students with special educational needs and their life course - Introduction.- Chapter 2. Life course perspectives on adolescence and early adulthood.- Chapter 3. Some methodological challenges in longitudinal research on vulnerable youths.- Chapter 4. Disabled, vulnerable or functionally hindered? Deviations and normality between personal characteristics and context conditions.- Chapter 5. Deviations and normality - when the time dimension is included.- Chapter 6. From numbers to spoken words: Former SEN students in the transition to adulthood.- Chapter 7. Vulnerable young adults and their adaptation to working life.- Chapter 8. Risk of mental illness among former students with special educational needs.- Chapter 9. Work for life? Former students with special educational needs in the job market.- Chapter 10. Special classes and teaching assistants as support measures for students with special educational needs.- Chapter 11. Social inclusion - when the school lets go.-Chapter 12. Social inclusion: When 'social media' invades the life world.- Chapter 13. Internet-mediated relations—are they social? Challenges and discussion of the validity.- Chapter 14. Lessons from a longitudinal research project.- Appendix.
