Abstract
Abstract
As the title implies this research is about Individual Educational plans and multiculturalism. It is a topic which is very interesting since as Rogoff(2003) suggests “with immigration, intermarriage and other demographic changes, often people today live with more than one culture”(p.329). This affects the society in many level, and often the place where multiculturalism is most obvious; is at school. Multicultural children in the schools in Norway are part of the regular school, and part of the regular school are also children with special needs. Children with special needs may also be multicultural children. This can become an issue when the teachers have to create individual educational plans(IEPs), since the plans are for the child with special needs to develop to the best of his/hers potential. In this research the question which was raised was how elementary teachers in Oslo account for the home culture of a child with special needs when they develop IEPs. The research focused on the socio-cultural theory(Bronfenbrenner,Vygotsky,Rogoff) and the curriculum relation model(Johnsen), both are insisting on the importance of culture for development of a child, with or without special needs. This was a study based on qualitative design with a single-case and the interview method as seen by Kvale(1996)was used. In the study the questions were open-ended, with 3 informants purposefully selected to take part in the study. From the responses that they gave, what became clear was that the informants had difficulties when it came to including the home culture in their IEPs and they all agreed that they did not receive the help that they required from the school or from the educational psychological services (EPS). Concluding we would assume that it is not common practice amongst teachers to include culture in the IEP but rather it depends on the individual teacher and in her/his experience with multiculturalism.