This paper is focusing on pupils with special needs in a small teaching group in upper secondary school. In Sweden the ambition is to create an inclusive school accommodating all students, and caring also for individual students who requires special support to be able to participate in school. The Swedish Curriculum for the Non-Compulsory School System (Lpf 94), The Salamanca Declaration (UNESCO, 2001) as well as the UN Standard Rules on the Equalisation of Opportunities for Disabled Persons (United Nations, 1993) are all based on an included ideology in relation to students and their right to an equal education, as well as on the attitude that the teaching approach should promote inclusion.

This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a small special needs teaching group based on the neuropsychiatric diagnosis of Asperger`s syndrome. In this paper, the theoretical point of departure is taken in a situated learning perspective (Lave & Wenger, 1991). From this perspective learning is not a separate process, related to individual performance, within the individual himself, but an ongoing process, between people (Lave & Wenger, 1991): What kinds of learning are taken place in this practice? What do the students say about exclusion and inclusion? How does teacher do to make the pupils participants in their own learning and the school as whole? This study will probably create new knowledge about teaching and learning, from the pupil with special needs and their point of view. Furthermore, it will also clarify how the learning environment is created for this group of student. This has an impact on the students’ behaviour and their experiences, and how the teaching is organised, and the purpose of the teaching