Samspelet mellan naturbaserade arbetssätt och specialpedagogik
En kritisk studie
AbstractThis essay aims to problematize and illuminate the connection between special-education and nature-based activities. With a theoretical ground that is based upon a sociocultural perspective I consider the information from the field. Through a qualitative and critical perspective I performed individual interviews with five pupils from the sixth school-year in the Swedish elementary-school. I also performed Focus-group interviews with two educators and three teachers in the same school-form. By a Hermeneutical working-method I have found out that the informants in my survey have a common experience that activities performed in nature has a positive effect on learning. Language, as a mediating tool is a positive factor of learning together with the inclusion of children in their regular school-groups. These factors are more frequently observed in nature-based activities and are perceived as essentials for learning and teaching by the informants. Why then are nature-based activities, in the world of the informants a low frequent experience? Two perspectives are forming the discourse on this field, the categorical and the relational paradigm. The categorical perspective is hegemonic and forms the activities of the school and the identity of the teachers and educators through discursive power. The teachers and the educators are more inclined to use reproductive teaching methods because of the discursive power in the field. This power urges them to in practice chose traditional, general methods rather than meeting the pupil in the zone of proximal development. Nature-based activities are a bridge that more likely can lead to a school formed in a more relational context. Nature-based activities are also in this context problematizing a categorical organization of the school. More fruitful effects of special-education can occur directly in the base-groups of the children through the use of nature-based working methods. Nature-based activities can therefore promote inclusion rather than exclusion of the individual.