Pedagogical praxis – an example from special schools for pupils with moderate to severe learning difficulties

Abstract

This paper will present some findings from my ongoing work with my doctoral thesis. The study deals with questions about learning and socialization in special schools for pupils with moderate to severe learning difficulties. The overall aim is to study the interaction between pupils and teachers and describe the patterns, forms and content in their vocal- and non-vocal interaction in the classroom. A point of departure is that learning occurs in a social context and in collaboration with others, and the theoretical framework in the research is inspired by a socio-cultural perspective and an interactionistic perspective . My specific research questions are: • What kind of patterns appears in the interaction between pupils and teachers in the classroom? • What kind of learning- and socialization processes appears in the verbal- and non-verbal interaction between pupils and teachers? The design of the project is inspired by an ethnographic approach and is constructed as a classroom study. In all, three different classes participates in the study and the pupils in the classes go to the compulsory special school for the moderate to severely learning disabled (särskola/träningsskola), aged between 8 and 17 years.The empirical material is collected by participatory observations, by video recordings and by interviews with the teachers and the pupils. The video recordings are analyzed using techniques derived from what Scheff calls a part/whole analysis. The process of analyzing one of the classroom studies is in progress and the findings so far will be presented in the paper.