Sammendrag
Students with severe and multiple disabilities are, according to official Norwegian policies, to
be included in ordinary school settings. Yet usually their schooldays are organized differently
from those of their non-disabled peers. In this paper the authors aim (1) to identify how
embodied meaning unfolds when students with severe and multiple disabilities are fastened
in assistive technical devices and (2) to identify how staff respond when students make
gestures. Applying the phenomenological philosophy and the phenomenological methodology
the authors acknowledge movement as fundamental for the students’ possibilities to
express their perspective. Their empirical material describes how possibilities for making
gestures are severely limited when students are fastened in devices. To shed light on the
staff’s recognition and response as fundamental for interactions when students are under
embodied constraint, they have applied Goffman’s interactionism.