Nordic research on special needs education in upper secondary vocational education and training: a review

The purpose of this article is to describe and analyse the state of the art of research on special needs education (SNE) in the context of the Nordic countries’ vocational education and training (VET) systems during the period January 2010 to September 2018. Twenty studies remained after the search procedure and thematic analysis, 15 of which deal with the practice level and five with the organisation level. No studies were identified as belonging to the policy level. The following themes were found at the practice level: teachers’ work and role, teaching and learning, student transition and student dropout. Themes identified at the organisation level were changes to vocational policy documents and educational practices, and school organisation and its implementation. Finland dominates in terms of number of studies. Furthermore, the review shows that there were few studies in the area of SNE in VET. The results show that further studies are needed to acquire more knowledge about SNE in vocational education.