Respecifying uncertainty in pupil health team collaboration: The morality of interpreting pupils’ school problems

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe article examines professionals’ displays of uncertainty in their reports of pupils’ school problems during Swedish Pupil Health Team (PHT) meetings. PHT-meetings reflect an effort to address pupils’ problems through multi-professional teamwork, involving, e.g. counsellors, nurses, and special education teachers. Barriers to such collaboration have been attributed to professionals’ difficulties to understand one another because they operate within differing discourses. Using discursive psychology to analyse audio-recorded meetings, we found that the PHT-professionals used vagueness as a resource. By reporting pupils’ problems while displaying uncertainty about their causes, professionals could imply a morally delicate interpretation and distribute responsibility for this interpretation. Thus, the problem reports can be seen as designedly vague, working to involve recipients in a potentially problematic explanation. Based on this respecification of uncertainty as a discursive construction, we argue that at stake in PHT-meetings is not so much professionals’ differing discourses as the moral accountability of interpretation.