First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book describes the recent and current changes taking place in the small Nordic welfare state of Iceland. The author takes the reader into the school system, the movement to integrate students with special and psychological difficulties into general schools and the pattern of inclusive schooling where Iceland -- along with other Nordic countries -- has gone far. For those who are interested in the changes which have taken place in relation to disabled people this is a remarkable story that provides a wealth of data and insights from an author well placed in terms of her teaching, research and personal experiences. This book tells the story of Benedict (and that of his mother -- the author) and is the remarkable experience of a young man, typical in many ways but unusual in others. He does not speak, he suffers from insignificant impairments -- both intellectual and physical-and needs support twenty four hours a day. This is Benedict's and Dora's experience. Readers cannot fail to be moved, perhaps to tears, by this life story.

The 1980s were an important decade for educational inquiry. It was the moment of the “linguistic turn,” with its emphasis on the role of language as a constructor of reality, a structuring agent for institutions such as schools, and a medium for translating knowledge into elements of power for processes of social regulation. Drawing on the work and insights of educational researcher Thomas S. Popkewitz, this book shows how the linguistic turn provided an alternative to both mainline educational research grounded in the ideals of political liberalism and the effort of neo-Marxists to challenge liberal thinking in favor of a scholarship based on class conflict and economic determinism.

Examines emerging theoretical and methodological approaches to the field of sociology of education. These perspectives draw on notions of social justice, diversity, multiculturalism, and detracking.

The intellectual work of Michel Foucault has been an increasingly central component of social science in recent years. This is the first book to directly address the implication of Foucault's work for the field of education. This text, originally published in 1997, not only provides a critical examination of the significance of Foucauldian thought for education, but also discusses how Foucault’s theories are arrayed in the everyday life of schools.

While Iceland is the second largest inhabited island in Europe, with only 313,000 inhabitants in 2007, the Icelanders form one of the smallest independent nations in the world. Around two-thirds of the population lives in the capital, Reykjavík, and its suburbs, while the rest is spread around the inhabitable area of the country. Until fairly recently the Icelandic nation was unusually homogeneous, both in cultural and religious terms; in 1981, around 98 percent of the nation was born in Iceland and 96 percent belonged to the Lutheran state church or other Lutheran religious sects. In 2007, these numbers were down to 89 and 86 percent respectively, reflecting the rapidly growing multicultural nature of Icelandic society. The A to Z of Iceland traces Iceland's history and provides a compass for the direction the country is heading. This is done through its chronology, introductory essays, appendixes, map, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on important persons, places, events, and institutions and significant political, economic, social, and cultural aspects.

Abstracts of dissertations available on microfilm or as xerographic reproductions.

The reform of teacher education has been a focal point of state action in industrial countries since the early 1980s. Given this convergence of educational and governmental activity, the studies presented here are a significant departure from conventional discourse on reform, because they explore the ways that social regulation and political power operate through the processes of educational reform. This book considers the reform of teacher education to be an integral part of the larger system of social regulation that takes place in the arena of schooling. Reforms in teacher education involve complex sets of interactions among and within social institutions. These interactions help shape power relations and patterns of social regulation that operate through state, university, and school interactions. Nevertheless, the patterns that give direction and value to teacher education are not easily discerned in public discussions of educational change. Instead, many of the most important regulatory aspects of teacher education reform are partly obscured by a public discourse that focuses attention on formal responses to socioeconomic events, and that tends to divert critical attention away from the power that is exercised—and the interests that are served—during reform. This volume presents studies of reform in Australia, Finland, Iceland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Although these countries differ in their political and social histories, rates and levels of industrialization, and patterns of educational practice, there is a striking commonality in both the strategies that are employed to reform teacher education, and in the nature of social regulation that is a concomitant of reform.

This book presents a study of the perspectives and experiences of 36 disabled young adults, some of their parents, teachers and friends, on coming of age as a disabled person in Iceland. The young people of the study belong to the first generation of disabled children and youth to grow up with normalisation and inclusion in school and society as the law of the land. The aim is to describe, explore and interpret the social construction of disabled adulthood within culture and society, and to describe how inclusive and exclusionary processes within families, school and society, impact young disabled persons' claims to adulthood. The study is located within disability studies, and within a social constructivist, interpretative framework, involving interviews and document analysis. This volume focuses on the emergence of young disabled adulthood and on how families, general or segregated special education and special or generic support systems and relationships impact that process. The lesson learned form this book apply to the disabled everywhere.