Abstract
This paper airs the experiences of eighteen students with special educational needs completing their studies at a Finnish vocational institution, which has a mandate to provide intensive special support for the students. It contributes to the national and international discussion of education’s purposes and elaborates on students’ descriptions. The study frames a research question: To what extent are Biesta’s domains of good education—qualification, socialization, and subjectification—audible in the narratives of Finland’s VET special educational needs students? The paper adopts a narrative approach and uses narrative positioning analysis as a methodical tool to drill down into the themes produced in deductive content analysis. According to our analysis, subjectification and socialization were the most important domains of VET. The qualification domain of education did not appear as professional self-confidence in students’ narratives, but it served as subjectification and socialization. VET must be an inclusive process that provides all students with the opportunity to become balanced and civilized citizens and assist them in entering the world. To this end, instead of emphasizing measurable outcomes such as qualifications and employment rates, more attention should be paid on the social and subjective domains of VET.
Highlights
This paper brings into the spotlight the students graduating from the Finnish Vocational Education and Training (VET) system after providing them with intensive special support
It is relevant to consider the process of VET from the students’ perspective because young people with special educational needs often face difficulties when stepping into the primary labor market and continuing education and training [1,2,3,4]
Vocational institutions having a mandate to provide intensive special support had offered the participating students an extremely important opportunity to study, to be like any other young person, to belong to a student community and to blaze one’s trail to the labor market. These vocational institutions have worked as an important bridge-builder between the student and the world
Summary
This paper brings into the spotlight the students graduating from the Finnish Vocational Education and Training (VET) system after providing them with intensive special support. It reports on their experiences of the education they received. According to Billet [5], it is necessary to understand students’ needs and aspirations and to engage their energy as learners, to moderate unrealistic expectations, and to assist them to mediate learning experiences in vocational education effectively. It is worth considering to what extent schools, who are experiencing tougher and more consequential accountability structures purporting to improve teaching and learning, have a genuine interest in how students with special educational needs feel about schooling [6,7]. Do efforts that have focused on measurements and quality assurance improve educational policy and practice [8,9,10,11]? That is, does anyone know what makes education good, rather than what makes it merely effective or efficient [10,12]
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