How special educational needs co‐ordinators use their body, school environments and ethics to create and maintain agency in Swedish upper secondary school

Abstract This study explores the methods and strategies SENCOs use to fulfil their remit. Three aspects of the SENCO's everyday worklife are highlighted: (i) embodying the SENCO role; (ii) the use of school environments; and (iii) professional ethos. These aspects are studied using a lifeworld phenomenological approach that focusses on lived experiences, which are understood as socially and temporally mediated and bound to a specific regional environment. We conducted a hermeneutical analysis of empirical material from semi‐structured lifeworld interviews and open‐ended diaries. To fulfil their remit, the participants employed many methods and strategies that involved their bodies and school environments; these were often guided by an implicit professional ethos. Moreover, the SENCOs, moving between theoretically dichotomic perspectives, took a pragmatic approach, responding to the immediate needs of their students. This practicality suggests that SENCOs are sensitive to students' needs irrespective of whether the provisions are viewed as categorical or relational. The results suggest that empathy and the wherewithal to stand up for and defend students' and teachers' rights are central existential aspects for SENCOs. Further research using theoretical approaches empathetic to existential aspects of professions, such as phenomenology, could provide a better understanding of the human condition among in‐school professionals.