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Research topic: Our aim is to compare special teacher education curricula in two Nordic countries, look do they have inclusive elements and reflect the results with other countries.

Theoretical framework: General education seems to need special education to support pupils, although we live in the era of inclusion (European Agency for Special Needs and InclusiveEducation, 2016). In order to have these special educators, every country has an own system ofeducating them. It seems that the content and study time as well as requirements to students variesfrom country to country. In a study done by Darling, Dukes & Hall (2016), four universals werefound, namely: a) policy, b) practice, c) pedagogy, and d) teacher preparation/co-curricularactivities. Together 51% could be categorized into the last one, teacher preparation/co-curricularactivities, which included general learning activities used to teach/train teachers how to instructstudents as well as varied aspects of field experience and its critical role in the preparation of specialteachers. The smallest was policy (4%), with topics like bridging the gap between training and practice.

Methodological design: In our study, we compared Finnish and Swedish special teacher education(STE) curriculum, meaning here the one year Finnish or 1,5year Swedish STE for qualified teachers.We looked at the internet based curricula of all six Finnish and seven Swedish universities offeringthis education. We did a content and text analysis to the curricula.

Expected Findings: We found common topics as well as country specific issues. Both countries’STE includes a lot of core professional skills and knowledge, like the basic national documents andsupport systems with individual education plans and teachers’ responsibilities. The Swedish specialteacher students can choose between five specialization options, while the Finnish STE is a combodegree. There is no organized and supervised teaching practice in Sweden, but it is central n Finland.However, we also noticed that there could be global demands for STE. Like human universals, therecould be special education universals. One common issue is globalization, which should discussed inSTE. Another might be various learning difficulties. However, also the neoliberal education policymight have some effects on the goals of inclusion. The universals as well as the new educationalpolicy are discussed.

Relevance to Nordic educational research: While the Nordic countries have rather similareducational requirement to pupils at school, also the requirements for teacher education and in thiscase STE, could be similar at least to a certain point. In order to create an optimal STE in cooperationwith neighbor countries, curriculum related issues differences need to be discussed

References:

Darling, S. M.; Dukes, C.; Hall, K. (2016). What Unites Us All: Establishing Special EducationTeacher Education Universals. Teacher Education and Special Education, 39(3), 209-219.

European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education. (2016). Leap forward for inclusion.Retrieved from https://www.european-agency.org/news/directors-blog/leap-forward-for-inclusion