Browsing by Author "Immonen, Waltteri"

The special education reform, has resulted in major changes in the job description of Finnish special education teachers. Also, distribution of resources to schools have changed. Previous researchers have found lack of resources in special education. Teachers also experience lack of time. To date, there have not been quantitative research about the matter of time specific to special education teachers.  I explored special education teachers experiences about challenges that connect to resources in this research. Opinions of special education teachers are interesting because they not only operate in the field but also have academic education. The aim of the study was to answer two questions: which resource challenges A teachers experience to be (1) most disturbing and (2) least disturbing (2).  The answers collected via electric questionaire, were from previous students from University of Helsinki whose major was special education. The participants were special education teachers in primary school. The questionnaire included many questions about resources. Answering scale were from 0-4. These answers were analysed by using quantitative methods. Also, questionnaire contained open questions. These answers I analysed using quantatative measures by themes related to resources.  According to the study the special education teachers experienced many different challenges.  The teachers often experienced lack of time. They were in hurry which left little time for planning the co-teaching. The teachers also worked after the working hours. Co-operating were also experienced challenging caused by lack of planning time.  Also, great challenge faced the system of special education. Amount of given support to pupils were too little. The teachers also found challenging the lack of special education classes. The size of special education classes was right. Experiences about human resources showed need for special education teachers and assistants. It was also hard to get substitute. The special education teachers didn’t see need for adding more regular teachers.