Theory and practice of «special support» between system and individual

Abstract: The main purpose of this work is to analyse how teachers perceive and deal withdiversity, where they put the limit between «normality» and «otherness», how theyrelate to the documentation proceeding from public institutions.Using an ethnographic methodology based on participant observation and semistructuredinterviews, I shall apply Pierre Bourdieu's theories about social reproductionand distinction to a high school in Skåne, with the purpose of better understanding thedifference between change and reconversion in dealing with «otherness» in the form of«learning disabilities».This study aims at better understanding how «otherness», «diversity», and «plurality»are categorized, hierarchically organized, considered as «distortions», «defects»,«syndromes» to be cured, when instead they could actually constitute means toovercome the ancestral «fear of the other», the rejection of «complexity» and to fill theperceived gap between theory and practice, between the «school of diversity andplurality» and the school of «kunskapsmål», «performance», «driven-ness», bothpresent in the current Läroplan (LPF-94) and likely to be found in the new one.Finally, this analysis tries to point at the necessity to question the unquestionable. Thatis, to question the values that are considered to be established for good and foreverybody, understanding them as historical products, not as philosophical a priori. Farfrom being historical invariables, those values and principles are the result of actualpolitical fights, even of revolutions, and of debates occurred for centuries or evenmillennia. School has been focusing on having them internalised and naturalised,instead of developing adequate instruments to let them be critically understood,reflected upon, talked about, and of course experienced in their many contexts.The study's main result lies in individuating the structural and individual factors thatallow the teachers to deal with «otherness» and «diversity» as a problem instead as aresource, underlining the symbolic violence implicit in the process of naturalisation ofvalues and principles.