Implementing the policy of inclusion in Iceland: Teachers’ views and proposals for action

Abstract

Inclusive education is a prominent feature of Icelandic educational policy. However, an external audit by the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (2017) revealed that even though the policy is clear, administrators and practitioners within the school system lack clarity about the concept of inclusion and a deeper understanding of what constitutes inclusive practices in schools.

One of seven main recommendations of the audit is to “Ensure that all stakeholders understand inclusive education as the basis for high-quality education for all learners”, and, to that end, organise “national and local-level dialogue about the kind of schools and learning communities that stakeholders want and the best ways to achieve/develop those” (p. 16). To respond to this recommendation, 23 meetings were held across Iceland to discuss the advancement of education for all, organised by a task force assigned by the Ministry of Education and Culture. Representatives of preschools, primary and secondary schools, leisure services, parents, municipal school services, social services and health care from all Icelandic municipalities were invited to the meetings. At the meetings, participants worked on projects in groups of six to eight. Each group was asked to agree on the ten most important actions to promote education for all and to prioritize them as a pyramid so that the most important action would come first, then two in second place, three in third, and so on. Each group’s pyramid was then analysed in order to form a single pyramid reflecting the common conclusion of the groups.

The aim of this paper is twofold: The first aim is to present the findings from the 23 meetings based on the analysis described above. The conclusions contain three themes: 1) External framework, cooperation and education; 2) attitudes, support, policy and vision; 3) students, learning, and teaching. The first theme focused on reviewing the guidelines of the Municipalities Equalization Fund so that the allocation of funds would be independent of diagnoses and in order to increase the time and scope for professional development of teachers, especially in preschools. There were calls for more flexible curricula and timetables and for a more diverse internal organization, as well as ensuring equal access to services regardless of residence, strengthening team teaching in schools and creating a learning community by increasing teacher collaboration and interdisciplinary collaboration within the school, as well as cooperation between staff and management. In the second theme, it was thought that changing the attitudes of everyone in the school community was a prerequisite for increased positivity towards education for all, that expectations and attitudes towards students needed to be characterized by a mindset of growth and development, that school services needed to be holistic and diverse, and that the work of those who provide them needed to be better coordinated. Furthermore, there were calls for a formal process to implement the policy of education for all through an action plan, clear procedures, evaluation, and a follow-up. In the third theme, participants focused on meeting the different needs of all students in school and ensuring that they received suitable assignments; special mention was made of children of foreign origin, precocious students and children with mental health problems. The groups considered it important to develop practices in schools with purposeful reflection at work, diversity, flexibility, and the search for solutions. They considered it important to increase the number of professional teachers and other experts in the schools, to strengthen the pedagogical leadership of education for all, with managers at the forefront, and to support both managers and teachers in their leadership roles.

Secondly, the paper aims to present the authors’ proposals for promoting education for all in Iceland. The proposals are based on the aforementioned findings from the meetings and underpinned by the results of the external audit of the European Agency (2017) and the knowledge base of inclusion and professional learning communities to create the conditions for improving practice. Furthermore, an ecosystem model of the education system is employed to identify the responsibility of each level and establish a vision of shared responsibility across the levels. The student is the common denominator in all the proposals, whose common goal is to fulfil the objectives of the Icelandic education policy on education for all. This common goal is followed by proposals in six sections: 1) teacher education and career development, 2) learning communities, 3) working conditions in schools, 4) evaluation of schoolwork, 5) school services and 6) the interplay of systems and the utilization of resources