Carla is a 4-year-old girl who arrived from the Philippines and did not speak Norwegian. She spoke English as a second language. She had arrived at the kindergarten a few days before we did, we could therefore witness first-hand how she would fit in with the rest of the group. No explicit attempts seemed to be made to include Carla in the group during the different activities. During collective activities she was physically included in the group for example, in the occasional gathering on the carpet for a story. But because she did not understand the language, she did not really seem to be concerned with what was said. A similar disconnection could be witnessed during breakfast and lunchtime. While other kids talked together, she would …show more content…
When children are allowed to make decisions, they are more likely to be engaged, participate actively, feel valued and empowered (Hart, 2004). Her participation was further enhanced on one occasion when one of the staff members introduced her to another child, Martha who spoke English as well as Norwegian. The staff member, aiming to see through children’s lens, identified what both Carla and Martha find interesting. Empathy and trying to see the world from children’s viewpoint greatly contribute to students’ participation (Hart, 2004). Ainscow and Miles (2008) argue that teachers and their attitudes, values and actions play a central role in creating inclusive classrooms.
As inclusion and exclusion in education is linked with inclusion and exclusion in society, it is necessary to take students’ identity and family backgrounds into consideration in order to support their participation (Ainscow & Miles, 2008). Von Wright (2006) notes that pupils’ participation also depends on whether the teacher understands them. Interviews with staff showed that they were not aware of Carla’s native language nor have any information about her family background other than she moved to Norway from the …show more content…
Haug (2008, p.14) notes that in the Norwegian school system “social wellbeing is higher than substantial well-being, indicating problems connected to the teaching and learning content”. Haug (p.14) also finds that “subject achievements vary both within and between school classes”. This is particularly alarming in the light of results showing that “pupils with another mother tongue than Norwegian systematically achieve less than those with Norwegian background” (Haug, 2008, p.14). The same applies for pupils with parents with low cultural capital. It has long-term as well as short-term consequences. In the case of Carla, it could be argued that she is in the early stages of her schooling and that it would probably not significantly affect the rest of her life, but it seems that the implications of a focus primarily on social inclusion could be far-reaching. The prominence of free-play in preschool gives emphasis to the well-being and socialization of the children to the detriment of substantial inclusion. Without offering an infrastructure of planned and guided activities to help balance the big difference in learning capacity, preschool sets the tone for sociocultural inequalities, amongst others, to be perpetuated. As we could see in the kindergarten involved in our study, some pupils were very enthusiastic about acquiring