Browsing by Subject "osallisuus"

The purpose of this study was to elucidate the discourses of early childhood education staff enabling the participation of children with special education needs (SEN). The research questions were which interpretive repertoires can be identified in the reports describing the activities of early childhood education staff about children with SEN, what interpretive repertoires can be identified in the reports describing the own activities of early childhood education about enabling the participation of children with SEN in the reports. Previous research has shown that early childhood education staff play a key role in enabling participation. Methods. The study involved 28 volunteer early childhood professionals from different professional groups. The research request was presented in Facebook's groups for early childhood education professionals and on the researcher's own Facebook page. Participants were asked to write about a situation in which they had enabled the participation of a child in need of support. The writings were called reports. The research was based on social constructionism and the method was discourse analysis. The discourse analysis was used to interpret how the early childhood education staff talked about participation, children with SEN, and their own and other workers` subject positions. Results and conclusions. Various interpretive repertoires of children with special education needs could be identified in the reports of early childhood education staff. These were the repertoire of diagnosis, descriptive support, proportionality of challenges, neutral, supportive- interpretation repertoire. Repertoires of early childhood education staff about participation were partly tense. So, while describing ways to enable participation, they also describe other employees’ ways to enable participation which may be different. Strong repertoires of participation interpreted in early childhood education staff reports included the right to participation vs. exclusion, special pedagogy vs. non-use of special pedagogical methods, child-orientation vs. adult-orientation, multidimensionality vs. one-dimensionality. Children received different subject positions in these interpretive repertoires, which were the subject positions of the assisted vs. independent actor, the participant vs. the outsider, the successful vs. the unsuccessful. In conclusion, the need for continuing education of ECE- staff, which has emerged in previous studies, is still relevant. The multi-professional discussion on the involvement of early childhood education staff should increase in the daily life of early childhood education in order to better enable the equal participation of all children.