THE SOCIAL PRACTICE OF READING AND WRITING INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS FOR INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED PUPILS

Во Шведска, школувањето на децата со наод и мислење за интелектуална попреченост е организирано во специјални училишта наречени сарсколани. Крајната цел на ова истражување е да се разгледа односот на наставниците кон општествената практика за наставата по читање и пишување во специјалните училишта. Затоа, 40 наставници од северна Шведска беа земени како примерок во емпириското истражување. Од наставниците беше побарано да пополнат прашалник. Еден од заклучоците е дека наставниците имаат различен однос кон општествената практика за наставата по читање и пишување. Според другите добиени заклучоци, пак, наставниците изјавуваат дека не практикуваат документирање на потешкотиите при читање и пишување. Исто така, практиката на водење документација е поврзана со стручната компетентност за подучување на вештините за читање и пишување. Истражувањето укажува дека описменувањето влијае на ставот на наставниците и на нивната практика за документирање. In Sweden, schooling for children who are regarded as intellectually disabled is organised in a special school, Särskolan. The overall aim of this article was to investigate the teachers’ attitudes towards the social practice of reading and writing instruction in Särskolan. Therefore, 40 teachers from Northern Sweden were sampled for the empirical study. The teachers were asked to fill out a questionnaire. One of the findings was that the teachers reported different attitudes towards the social practice of reading and writing instruction. Another finding was that the teachers reported they did not practice the documentation of reading and writing difficulties. Furthermore, the practice of documentation was associated with professional competence in reading and writing literacy. The study suggests that literacy education did have an effect on teachers’ attitudes towards their practice of documenting.

The ultimate goal of reading is to understand a written text.The development of reading with understanding takes a remarkable amount of instructional time and effort.Because reading comprehension is a complex process involving many subcomponent skills and abilities, the variability in comprehension outcomes has been linked to the differences that concern the reader, the text, and the factors related to the activity and the level of engagement (1, 2).However, the ability to read and comprehend a text is a prerequisite for full participation in modern society.People with intellectual disabilities should have the human right to be worthy and active citizens in a tolerant and open society (3).Sociologists (4) have suggested that reading and communicating about written texts might be understood as being part of a "social system".Thus, if a person does not have the keys that permit access to this system, it would imply that this person is outside of the system, or socially excluded (5).

Историски контекст A historical contextualization
Во 1842 година, шведскиот парламент го вовел четиригодишното основно училиште за деца, наречено "фолкскола" "народно школо".Сепак, не бил обезбеден пристап на сите деца до овој вид училиште.Парламентот сметал дека е важно да се одделат децата што можат да се образуваат од оние што не можат.Во овој временски период, критериумите за исклучување од образованието биле поарбитрарни во споредба со денешните стандарди.Оние што се сметале за "неспособни за образование" биле испраќани во институции или затворани дома (6).Ова, сепак, не било пример In 1842, the Swedish parliament introduced a four-year primary school for children called "Folkskola".However, not all children were provided access to Folkskola.The Parliament found it important to separate the children who seemed to be educable from those who were not.At this particular time, the criteria for exclusion from education was rather arbitrary, compared to today's standards.Those who were deemed "uneducable" were sent to institutions or confined to the home (6).This, however, was not unique in само во Шведска.Во другите земји "неспособните за образование", исто така биле оставани надвор од јавните училишта.Baynton (7) го претставува овој феномен повеќе како глобален отколку локален.Од 1968 година, на т.н."неспособни за образование" деца им било дозволено да посетуваат училишта во Шведска (6).Шведскиот училиштен систем ја проценил важноста на "Училиште за сите" и на начелата дека учениците со потешкотии во учењето имаат право целосно да партиципираат во одделенијата (8 Sweden.In other countries the "uneducable" were also kept out of the public schools.Baynton (7) illuminates that the phenomena was global rather than local.It was not until 1968 that the so-called "uneducable" children were allowed to attend school in Sweden (6).The Swedish school system stresses the importance of "A School for All" and postulates that students with learning difficulties have the right to participate fully in classes (8  12).Thus, it supports the deficit model of special education that attributes learning and behaviour problems to shortfalls that reside within students(13).The deficit model also exists in Särskolan.In a report, the Swedish Schools Inspectorate expressed their deep concern when they observed the very limited effort was made by Särskolan to provide instruction in reading comprehension for the students in the upper classes (14).The Swedish School Inspectorate found that most of the instruction was focused on the social, emotional, and ethical aspects of the curriculum.The findings are in accordance with what Berthén had highlighted three years earlier.Berthén (15) found that up-bringing and preparation dominated the activity.The safety of intellectually disabled students was perceived as an argument for not engaging in high aspirations and cognitively challenging instruction.However, this emphasis simultaneously implied low intellectual aspirations and a de-emphasis of traditional, basic skills in reading.Thus, it indicated that higher-order literacy skills required in the comprehension of connected meaningful texts were not available to them (12).In other words, students with intellectual disabilities would not be able to acquire the necessary literacy competence for full participation in societal and professional life.Consequently, Särskolan did not fulfil its societal responsibilities, since literacy is certainly the foundation upon which we must build well-being in our society.Not only is reading critical to learning all other subjects at school, but reading also enables people to enjoy the full benefits of citizenship.A good reading ability opens the door to better living conditions, improved health, and expanded opportunities (16).There are reasons to believe that the cognitive potential of diagnosed intellectually disabled students is often seriously underestimated and that the students may have a capacity to е сериозно потценет и дека учениците можеби имаат капацитет да го разберат пишаниот текст доколку им се даде соодветна стимулација и соодветни упатства (5, 17  14) also found a lack of documentation in the investigated schools.Documentation is important for identifying relevant problems of learning, caring, and development.Identifying relevant problems is necessary to produce relevant solutions (8).However, a few years have passed since the Swedish School Inspectorate report.Have things changed or is it much the same?Consequently, the overall aim of this article was to investigate the teachers' attitudes towards the social practice of reading and writing instruction in Särskolan.
The study draws upon organizational theory as a framework for analysing the results, since schools are organizations (21-23).However, the organizational theory is seldom applied to the field of special education and rehabilitation.Consequently, the theory may generate new insights.
The organizational theory has noted that schools are "loosely coupled systems" (24,25), or difficult to govern.The effect of loose coupling is that teachers gain autonomy and control over classroom instruction and can act as "street-level bureaucrats" then (26).Consequently, teachers can select what educational programmes (e.g.curriculums, tests, documentations, etc.) are to be implemented in the classroom.This is important because programmes are what structure the actions in an organizations (27).

Организациски ресурси Organizational resources
Повеќето ученици во основното и средното образование во Шведска се тестираат за потешкотии во читањето и пишувањето (33).Most students in primary and secondary education in Sweden are screened for reading and writing difficulties (33).If reading and writing difficulties are found and the students are at risk of not fulfilling the goals of the curriculum, then, by law, schools are obligated to provide special support for the students (33).Until relatively recently, the identification of discrepancies between the child's IQ and their attainment in literacy was a key part of the diagnostic process.Over the last two decades, however, there has been a growing reaction against the use of IQ in determining dyslexia, largely because poor readers whose reading skills are discrepant from their IQ cannot be adequately differentiated from poor readers whose reading skills are not discrepant from their IQ (34,35).
In a previous study in western Sweden, we found that there was no screening for reading and writing difficulties in Särskolan (5 out a snowball sample.The questionnaire was distributed personally to a number of principals who administered the questionnaire to the teachers.The total number of participants was N= 45.Five completed surveys were omitted, as the participants were either principals or administrators.Consequently, the final number of surveys analysed was N=40. The vast majority of the participants were females (N=36) while men were in the minority (N=4), a distribution that does reflect the sample population.
The results section will first present the closed response items (see Table 1).Second, the findings from the open-ended responses are presented in the form of excerpts and frequencies.

Формално образование Formal education
Истражувачите покажаа дека постои позитивна врска меѓу професионалниот развој на наставниците и постигнувањата во описменувањето на учениците (36).Researchers have demonstrated that there is a positive relationship between teacher's professional development and student's literacy achievement (36).Out of the 40 participants, 31 had worked 10 years or more in Särskolan (m=19.5)and six between 5-10 years.They teach both emerging literacy and writing (primary grade skills) and content literacy and writing (secondary grades).More than half of them had completed a second cycle course or study programmes in special needs education and in additional competence in reading and writing literacy.Half of them were also satisfied with this additional competence in literacy and believed themselves to have expertise.
Табела 1: Одговори (проценти).Случаи што недостасуваат (фреквенции) document their students' reading and writing difficulties.Collaboration within and across professional categories is very important in special education, but as many as 37.5% do not know whether their colleagues document reading and writing difficulties.Moreover, almost half of the teachers think they have enough resources for follow-up reading instruction.About half of the teachers responded that they had sufficient competence in the area of reading and writing.In the following sections, the teachers' answers to the open-ended questions in the questionnaire will be reported.

Professional development in reading and writing literacy
Вкупно  You can always learn more because learning to read is a complex process. It would be nice with continuous second cycle courses and study programmes.In the responses above, a positive attitude towards further professional training in reading and writing is present.Most responses also seem to express a wish to be updated with the latest research.
writing problems with their colleagues, but fail to take action.Another question remains as to why schools do not cooperate with parents to any great extent.The dominant tendency in the answers is that talking about problems is "good enough" (37).Paradoxically, almost half of the respondents do not know how their colleagues practice documentation.The paradox of talk and action is apparent.Another paradox is that although teachers talk to one another about the problems, the talk almost never leads to any individual educational planning activities.Consequently, neither planning nor actions are practiced.
The responses indicate a high degree of organizational specialization.Instruction is conducted partly inside and partly outside the classroom. We have a special reading instructor and a class supervisor with expertise knowledge. Instruction takes place both inside and outside the classroom with a special instructor. I work with my students and they also work with a special educator with a second cycle course in reading and writing.From the perspective of organizational theory it is apparent that schools practice a high degree of organizational differentiation, hence students are grouped in various sub-groups.
the responses indicate that the practice of schooling is turbulent and messy at "the backstage".The remaining respondents reported that they either document or that their students are made accountable for documenting their reading and writing difficulties using logs.None of the responses mentioned screenings.The teachers wanted more testing materials to evaluate and document the students.The need for documentation has been illuminated by Svärd and Florin (9).The authors suggest that there is a need for support of teachers in Särskolan in order to construct individual education plans.

Критики од училишната инспекција
The critique of the school inspection Since the Swedish School inspectorate had criticized Särskolan, the authors were interested to find out whether the teachers agreed with this criticism.Two of the teachers had never heard about the critique from the school inspection.The rest of the responses are polarized.Half of the teachers agree with the critique and half of the teachers disagree with the critique. It is not true! Many students have a hard time just getting by and thus you cannot prioritize reading. I think that the critique is incorrect.The disagreements are legitimized with reference to (a) the preference for care, and (b) that their students are competent.The second social motive for legitimizing the practice is paradoxical.Most students are sent to Särskolan since they do not manage regular education and this has to do with their competence. Good.We need to improve!  Understand the criticism.It can be difficult to conduct in whole class.There are special help to get. Can understand it, especially concerning students with autism.There is so much to work with them.Things that student do not learn by themselves.The teachers who agree with the critique cite the lack of organizational resources as a reason for not documenting.However, the teachers ни да ги прифатат критиките, исто така наведуваат дека практиката за згрижување одзема многу од слободното време -"прво треба да се направат некои други работи".who are prone to accepting the critique also cite that the practice of care takes up too much of the time available-"there are other things to attend to first".
The teachers differ in their responses to the perception of adequate organizational resources to support students with reading and writing difficulties.Twenty percent of the teachers stated that there are not enough available resources for reading and writing instruction.Furthermore, the teachers differ in their responses to the perception of adequate organizational resources to follow-up reading and writing difficulties. There is not enough time.There are so much other things to do. We have difficulties making time for all the check-ups that we ought to do. Yes, if we get support from a speech pathologist. We have a close cooperation with the central support team and get the support we ask for. Need more knowledge about reading and writing technologies and resources for this purpose.Studies have shown that resources are crucial for improving schooling (38).The extent and the quality of school resources can have an important impact on the quality of classroom instruction.For example, the presence of a library or multimedia centre may be particularly relevant for developing reading literacy.
Табела 2: Корелација меѓу "Дали ги документирате потешкотиите на учениците во читање и пишување?"и "Дали вашето образование ви даде доволна стручна компетенција за подучување по читање и пишување?"A second conclusion of the present study is that several pupils do not receive the proper education they are entitled to, that is, they do not receive literacy instruction.Their teachers have low expectations on their ability to develop their reading and writing skills (15, 39, 40).Thus, norms and values limit the possible ways of the pupils' learning and development.Rhetoric falls short of practice when trying to explain pupils' failures with the deficiency of the individual and their functional impairment and when not considering the responsibility of the school as an organization.
Hence, schools can provide the necessary organizational resources for scaffolding the learning development and care of the pupils.However, if schools are to provide the necessary resources, then teachers have to identify the relevant problems, document them, and provide the relevant solutions.Such measures necessitates that Särskolan can break with the continuities (existing norms) of teaching.
Based on the qualitative data, a third conclusion is that there is a tension between the willingness to open up the school organization on one hand, and a defensiveness of the organization on the other hand.That is, there is a tension between preserving the norms of social practice in Särskolan and the willingness to learn and adapt to the critique aimed towards the organization.
The present study has some limitations.The sample size is small and the statistics are mostly descriptive.Thus, inferring generalizations to a whole population is not possible.Future studies are needed to explore a range of hypotheses: (a) to what extent is Särskolan willing to learn from the surrounding society?and (b) to what extent is Särskolan willing to make parents and students active participants in the decision-making process?Future studies should explore whether similar conditions prevail in other regions.A fair hypothesis would be that the social practice is not a regional phenomenon but a global educational phenomenon beyond national boundaries.