My research interest is characterized by an interaction approach. Progress at school is demonstrated to be a result of an agreement of the student’s individual prerequisites and the environmental demands, taking into account his or her possibility to participate and exert influence on the school situation. This definition encourages studying how the gap between prerequisites and demands can be counteracted or even eliminated and in what way the school can prevent learning difficulties and disabilities, and support the students learning and development.
The projects often have a qualitative approach, since the studies mostly involve small and very heterogeneous groups of students. One aim of the studies has been to describe the perceptions of those interviewed, and to analyse and to understand the variation in relation to different environmental factors. A phenomenological view has influenced the choice of method; what those interviewed say is a consequence of how they define their world, and it is this process that is documented, described and analysed (Heimdahl Mattson, 1998)
Gaining and maintaining trust in this kind of studies is an on-going activity of the researcher. One way to achieve trust has been to establish reference groups with students, parents and professionals who follow and audit the research process in its different phases. Another way has been to let the respondents read their own transcribed interviews and give their viewpoints: make changes and additions. A quantitative research approach would lead away from this type of research subject participation.
The studies are mainly focused on questions concerning special needs education with the emphasis on exclusion and inclusion. Studying the schoolsituation for students that risk being marginalized has raised further general problems concerning goals, organization and teaching processes at school.
My research has in many respects focused on students’ and parents’ experiences and opinions of the school. This is
obvious from some of my works, consisting of interview studies both with students who have reading and writing difficulties/dyslexia and with their parents (Heimdahl Mattson, Fischbein and Roll-Pettersson, 2010; Heimdahl Mattson and Roll- Pettersson, 2007; Roll- Pettersson and Heimdahl Mattson, 2005). According to the results, reading and writing difficulties are usually not observed by the teachers until after several years in school and often as a consequence of strenuous efforts by the student’s family. To get access to any form of special education, the school often demands a diagnosis. Furthermore special education measures are to a great extent available only in segregated groups.
One conclusion of theses studies is that what the students find stigmatizing is not the diagnosis or the special educational support itself, but the excluding way of organizing it. Other conclusions are that the strong focus on national goals leads to ability grouping and segregated small groups, and that a large part of the resources of special education is absorbed into that organization. The teachers of the ordinary classes will thus be cut off from the possibility to develop their skills and this will be counterproductive for a school that aims to recognize variation and prevent exclusion.
According to my scientific results, the work of the school principals is most essential when it comes to preventing students´ marginalization and exclusion. This is demonstrated in a longitudinal study (Heimdahl Mattson and Malmgren Hansen, 2009). The conclusion of this study is that the principals who aimed at organizing their school’s work in effective team-teaching looked upon the special educator as a supervising and coordinating resource, a person who should help provide solutions that did not exclude students from the ordinary setting. The principals who did not think along these lines and did not see the student as a mainly collective responsibility preferred to put the special educator in small, more or less permanent, segregated groups.
For the last years I have continued to study including and excluding mechanisms at school in order to describe and characterize so-called inclusive schools i.e. schools that try to save and pedagogically use and stimulate heterogeneity and student variation and where participation and flexibility are lodestars. This has been in collaboration with the researcher Catharina Tjernberg, resulted in two studies Tjernberg & Heimdahl Mattson, (2014); Tjernberg & Heimdahl Mattson (2017) and, Tjernberg & Heimdahl Mattson (submitted). These have a praxisoriented approach and examine how reading and writing education can work successfully without being excluding. It also examines the professional development of successful teachers and relates it to theory and practice.
