Specialpedagogisk verksamhet i svenska fristående glesbygdsskolor

The article is focused on special needs education in schools owned by independent school authorities in sparsely populated areas. The ten schools investigated are situated in seven municipalities in the four northernmost counties in Sweden. The aim is to investigate the solutions for the special needs education in these schools. The empirical data is constituted by a) the schools background gathered through a web inquiry, and b) the answers generated through a series of open questions that the same informants answered via e-mail. One informant per school has been selected for the study. The focus on special needs education is grounded in a relational view that is visualised when the informants, on one hand, described the pupils’ different needs and, on the other, on the importance of the entire learning environment for the pupil’s learning and development. The informants report the use of various pedagogical teaching methods, the flexible organisation of teaching, and the use of different tools for the purpose of reaching all pupils and supporting them in reaching set learning goals. Moreover, the headmasters in nine out of ten schools are both headmasters and active teachers themselves, which is seen as a sign for the quality of education in these schools.