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Under de senaste årtiondena har antalet barn, unga och också vuxna som får en neuropsykiatrisk diagnos ökat markant i Sverige. Inom skolan brukar neuropsykiatriska funktionsnedsättningar (NPF) ses som å ena sidan en psykiatrisk fråga, å andra sidan en social eller pedagogisk fråga. Ofta beskrivs det med utgångspunkt i ett utifrånperspektiv på NPF. Det är dock sällan som NPF lyfts som en normkritisk fråga om makt, eller ur ett inifrånperspektiv. I det här kapitlet tar vi avstamp i den framväxande internationella neurodiversitetsrörelsen, som leds av neuronormbrytare själva, och diskuterar hur ett neurodiversitetsperspektiv kan användas inom normkritisk pedagogik.

PURPOSE: In this paper, we explore and contrast the Swedish state and NGO arguments for initiating two changes in national educational degree objectives in Swedish teacher education: one regarding sex and cohabitation education, and the other regarding support for pupils with ʻneuropsychiatric difficultiesʼ such as autism and ADHD (here referred to as neurodivergent pupils).

APPROACH: Using critical policy analysis, we compare the arguments from the government as well as responding bodies for introducing the two objectives, with a focus on neurodivergent pupils.

RESULTS: Our findings suggest that discourses concerning sex and cohabitation education for all pupils and support for pupils with ʻneuropsychiatric difficultiesʼ respectively derive from different educational ideologies and reproduce different ideas about pupils as active citizens versus passive objects of interventions. The objective of sex and cohabitation education is framed within a norm critical discourse putting forward reflexivity and identity, and where pupils are active subjects to be involved in the process. In contrast, neurodivergence is framed within a deficit approach as neurobiological, individual impairment, and a special educational problem that should be managed by professionals. It is seen as a risk for school failure, where neurodivergent pupils are passive objects of professional discovery and support.

CONCLUSION: In a Swedish educational policy landscape, stressing the importance of educating pupils in line with ideas of children as right-bearers, our exploration illustrates how ʻall pupilsʼ versus neurodivergent pupils, within teacher education, are positioned as belonging to different categories of citizens: as active subjects of rights, versus passive subjects of care. This perception of neurodivergence, we argue, hampers progress towards embracing neurodivergence as a social category, and neurodivergent pupils as political subjects.

In this article, we explore experiences of support and self-management amongst young autistic adults in the context of vocational support interventions in Sweden. We analyse how young autistic men use different strategies to manage their vocational work and the support they need to maintain, achieve and sustain their work performance. Data consist of eleven interviews with 4 autistic young adult men in different work environments where vocational support interventions are implemented to different degrees. One finding concludes that the interviewees are affected by and try to adapt to neurotypical norms and expectations about working life and adulthood. Although individualised coping strategies can be helpful, it is important for employers and formal support persons to understand and acknowledge that individual emotional and problem-solving coping strategies are demanding and need to be combined with adaptations in the working environment. Another finding concludes how work managers act as gatekeeper in the vocational support system the young autistic men aspire to access and in which they need to manage their work performance. Thus, social workers must provide structured and well-coordinated formal work support by both involving the autistic clients’ employers, work managers and informal networks.

The aim of this paper is to analyse how Swedish grade three children are discursively positioned as pupils when they are taking national tests in mathematics and when they reflect on the testing situation afterwards. With support from theories about affective-discursive assemblages, we explore children's body language, emotions, and talk in light of the two overarching discourses that we believe frame the classroom: the 'testing discourse' and the 'development discourse'. Through the disciplinary power of these main discourses children struggle to conduct themselves in order to become recognized as intelligible subjects and 'ideal pupils'. The analysis, when taking into account how affects and discourses intertwine, shows that children can be in 'untroubled', 'troubled', or ambivalent subject positions.

This article examines the role of a civil society organisation that offers parental support to migrant parents with regard to meanings of parenthood and citizenship. It is based on the results of an action research study of a civil society organisation. The material consists of notes from participatory work in a local centre for children, youth and their parents, and of interviews with professionals, a project manager of the local organisation, and a public servant and a social worker who both work for the district council. Additional material is taken from notes of study visits to organisations working with the same target group. The results highlight four central themes. The first two themes, difficult parents in a precarious place and a place with a future?, revolves around parental needs in relation to place, the suburb. The third theme, civic parenting practices, focuses on parenting practices as civic practices. The fourth theme, gendering parent citizens, discusses the gendered meanings of the parent citizen as both an object and an agent of integration.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of studying among people with a neuropsychiatric disability who received support from a Supported Education (SEd) programme, and people who did not receive this support. The research employed a narrative approach, where 14 participants with a neuropsychiatric diagnosis were asked to write a short reflective narrative about their experience of studying, with/without support from a SEd intervention. The results show that the persons without support from the model relied on their family as their primary support, and that support from formal support providers was not available prior to receiving a formal diagnosis. Those who received services from SEd were generally satisfied with the support they received, and did not emphasise the family as support givers in the same way. The study points to the importance of developing neurodiverse spaces, which can serve as transitional environments and that can help supported education models adapt to the needs of this group.

Non-autistic people is frequently described as best positioned to provide support to autistic people. But what could autistic peer support, where the support actor is another person with autism, mean? The aim of this paper is to explore different meanings of development and peer support at an autistic-only work place in Sweden. The analyses in this paper is based on data from a field work among a group of autistic self-advocates in Sweden. The group is working together in a three-year autist led project aiming at supporting young adults with autism with life strategies and with peer-to-peer mentoring as well as educating employers about autistic abilities. In the group ideas of an alternative autistic development to be nurtured and supported by autistic peer support is brought forward. Support to autistic people has to be based on understandings on autistic functionality and ways of developing and learning. This includes support in executive function, formulating goals and future aspirations, support in to get to know your abilities, embrace and cherish your strengths and interests, and get to know your difficulties including strategies to manage them, without reinforcing a sense of failure.

The meaning of work is different for people in different social groups, and research exploring perceptions of meaningful work among adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) is scarce. The aim of this paper is to explore how narratives of satisfactory and meaningful future jobs are portrayed relative to two alternative discourses of work – the 'obligation to work' discourse, and the 'disability rights' discourse. This group of individuals are high functioning on the one hand, while at the same time holding legally-mandated special disability rights, an exploration of how this group reason about work-life and satisfactory jobs is particularly interesting. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden, seven young adults with HFA were followed, and 17 interviews were conducted. The main findings and conclusions are that jobs that are individually assessed to be ‘ideal’, are put aside in favor of jobs that are more compatible with general labor market demands, as long as enjoyment and meaningfulness can still be experienced.

In this article, we explore how young women in Sweden negotiate their gendered subject positions in relation to psychiatric diagnoses, particularly Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and the meanings of their own violent acts. The data consists of transcripts of face-to-face interviews with young women who have experienced using aggressive and violent acts. Given that the analysis is informed by ideas developed in discursive psychology, we identified the centrality of the concepts of responsibility and self-management. In this study responsibility is connected to gendered notions of passivity and activity. What we call the ordinary girl is neither too active nor too passive, and the extraordinary girl is either too active or too passive in the managing of herself. Similar to those of a troublesome past, the narratives of ADHD enable the understanding of an intelligible violent self, and therefore make female externalized violence what we describe as narrative-able.