Including students with special educational needs in Physical Education: An analysis of the current Finnish National Core Curriculum

Autor(en)

Christopher Mihajlovic, Stefan Meier

Abstrakt

The present article draws attention to the latest curriculum reform in Finland, which came into effect in August 2016 and promoted a shift towards a competency-based curriculum which highlights diversity as a positive resource. The main aim of this study was to gain insights into the understanding of ‘inclusion’ within the context of PE policy in Finland and particularly focuses on the inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN). This research focuses on PE, because the subject is still shaped by underlying sentiments representing traditional values such as nationalism and given gender roles which seem to contrast with the conceptualization of inclusion. Therefore, the current Finnish NCC (of PE) has been qualitatively content analysed adopting a deductive-inductive approach. The findings demonstrate that the official documents build upon a broad understanding of inclusion and diversity, which is not only restricted to students with disabilities. However, the PE curricula provide few practical implications for teaching in diverse classes which may stem from inconsistency across the analysed documents in considering diversity issues. We conclude that the Finnish curriculum leaves room for teachers' pedagogical autonomy, but further research is needed to explore how it frames their possibilities to work inclusively in practice.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Sport- und Bewegungswissenschaft, Institut für Lehrer*innenbildung

Journal

The Curriculum Journal

Band

33

Seiten

279-296

Anzahl der Seiten

18

ISSN

0958-5176

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.156

Publikationsdatum

06-2022

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

503034 Inklusive Pädagogik, 503028 Sportpädagogik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Education

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 4 – Hochwertige Bildung

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/45e706e7-c8dd-4b19-9db0-e3e4fa74fbac