This paper describes a qualitative study of upper-secondary students’ experiences of having dyslexia in the school environment. The purpose was to examine which positive and negative experiences they have had in school and how they experienced the support given. We also wanted to find out how they have felt about being diagnosed with dyslexia and whether/in what way the formal diagnosis changed their situation.

We conducted semi structured interviews with seven upper-secondary students with dyslexia, and through interpretative phenomenological analysis came up with three themes. The results show that through time and experience the students learn to understand themselves and their difficulties better, but that they need support in this process. The study also points to the importance of students with dyslexia getting support by teachers who have knowledge of the disability and can offer the right kind of support, but who also see the students as individuals. Lastly, we found that in the students’ experience the best learning situation was offered to them in a smaller context outside the regular classroom setting.

We draw three conclusions from our analysis: firstly, that it is important that teachers have a deep knowledge of dyslexia so as to individualize instruction. Secondly, that students need useful information about their disability on more than one occasion, and lastly, that mainstreaming isn’t always the best alternative for the student.

We would welcome more research om how students receive information about their dyslexia and more studies on how to best organize special needs education, especially from a student perspective.