Recognition and Counter power

The aim of this study was to describe, explain and understand the importance of preschool and leisure pedagogy for special education. Knowledge was therefore generated concerning teacher’s reflection on three themes: 1) the view of knowledge, people and society, 2) special education as organisation, activity and content, 3) a gender perspective and its implication for their realisation of a professional practice. An analytical aim was to understand the content of the teachers’ reflection process in a critical social perspective. The group included 14 persons. The empirical material consists of eleven analysed group meetings, two sets of interviews with the participants, educational policy documents, archive material and two background interviews. The study is based on a participatory research approach and on democratic knowledge processes guided by critical social theory. The participants formulate the importance of sensory experiences, multiple forms of knowledge and on all people’s equal value. The qualification structure of the group includes overview as well as direct work with an interior and exterior organisation. The participants associate questions from the field with revealed opportunities and obstacles, relations, processes and contexts. The analysis shows that solely acceptance of the different child is not enough. Recognition precedes the appreciation of the unique and absolute Subject. The analysis by the group reveals a reproduction of subordination. The qualification structure of salaried employee and service production demands critical consciousness to avoid exploitation and control in a capitalist and market-oriented society. The double subordination of the group in the school world contains the power of recognising this partly as an opportunity for a counter power based on the justified participation on equal terms, partly as a counter power to the current tendency to split pedagogical and collective work on value issues