Carin Roos, professor of Special Education
Carin Roos hails from the Ängelholm area and trained as a preschool teacher at the teacher training college in Malmö. She encountered sign language early on and at the end of the 1970s she continued her education and qualified as a special needs teacher, with specialisation in hearing impairment and deafness.
She realised that little research had been done on many aspects of her work as a special needs teacher and she spent her evenings studying the area. She became particularly interested in the international definition of dyslexia and its relation to the reading and writing difficulties experienced by the deaf. Her studies eventually led to bachelor’s and master’s degrees in pedagogy at the University of Gothenburg. She became a doctoral student in the same subject at the same institution, and she completed her doctor’s degree in pedagogy in 2004.
After a few years at the special needs education department at Stockholm University, she was appointed senior lecturer at Karlstad University. Carin Roos’s research centres on four areas: the stages at which difficulties arise in reading and writing development; early interaction between parents and infants; the inclusion of children in rural areas; and the human right to language.
“We look for example at processes surrounding friends at school and Internet use. Usually the children who are excluded at school are also excluded online. Many others in this field focus in their research on technological and clinical aspects. However, through my research I want to promote the right of individuals to be treated on their own terms – we should recognise that all people have equal value and rights. Deaf children and children with hearing impairments need varied communicative relations.”
Carin Roos is a very active researcher and she is involved in various ongoing projects. One of them investigates the interaction between deaf parents and deaf infants. She is also applying for funding from NordForsk for an EU project that will involve Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and England in examining teachers’ learning on and promotion of inclusion processes for language minorities.
“In future, I also want to research the right of deaf children to interact on the same terms as hearing children. I want to look more closely at how deaf children who also suffer from other disabilities communicate. I have so much to do – I have to hurry up if I am to get all of this done!”
Carin fills her free time in various ways and prefers relaxing at home by gardening, being in nature and being close to animals. If the weather is fine she takes her motorcycle to work instead of the car.