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This study reviews the everyday life of special needs families during the Covid-19-pandemic. In special needs families at least one child has an increased need for services for their health, growth and/or development. Previous studies show that these services are an important resource and help in everyday life, as it is often built around taking care of the child. In previous studies special needs families have mainly been reviewed during normal conditions and the more recent studies conducted during the pandemic emphasize the perspective of authorities. The purpose of this study is to highlight the everyday life of special needs families during the Covid-19-pandemic and how services have been organized. This study applies qualitative methodology. The data was collected by semi-structured interviews. Seven mothers of special needs families took part in the interviews. The families were from across Finland. The family structures, children’s diagnoses and available resources varied within these families. Tran scripted data was analyzed with content analysis. The study shows that the everyday life of the families focused at home during the Covid-19-pandemic, which led to everyday life routines, free time and use of money changing. During the pandemic the families had to quickly rebuild their everyday life and its routines. Everyday life became more restricted as the routines focused at home. Parents' free time decreased as the children did not attend school or free-time activities. The meaning of home and its surroundings were highlighted because families were not able to spend their time together in shopping centers or restaurants. It became apparent that the realization of services varied between the families during the Covid-19-pandemic. During the pandemic the services were no longer considered safe due to the increased risk of infection, which led to some of the services coming to a halt and the implementation of special arrangements to other services. The decision of realization of the services was partly held by the service providers, while in some cases the families made the decision themselves to pause the service. The need for help in the families did not decrease and especially mothers had to answer this with their own work input. The families found the service system to be rigid and hoped for more flexibility from their service providers. That would mean considering the wishes of the family and the focusing on the best interest of the child.

Education arranged by activity areas is provided for pupils who cannot fulfill basic edu-cation syllabus even if the syllabus is adjusted. There are five activity areas: motor skills, communication skills, social skills, cognitive skills and day-to-day skills. Teaching arranged by activity areas can include content of instruction from individual subjects if the pupil has strengths in that subject. The arts are also often taught in education arranged by activity areas. The purpose of this study is to find out how the teaching of visual arts is organized in education arranged by activity areas and how the five activity areas are reflected in the teaching of visual arts. The study was carried out as an ethnographic case study. The data consists of notes from six observation sessions and an interview with a special class teacher. The analysis of the data was carried out as a data-driven and theory-guided content analysis. The visual arts education in education arranged by activity areas could be divided into four categories: spaces and structure, materials, tools and techniques, contents of teaching and role of adults. Lessons were mainly held in the classroom, but other facilities were also used. The structure of the lessons remained the same. The most common techniques used were various types of painting and sculpting. The content was based on the theme the class was studying at the time or on the visual arts as such and related to the holidays of the calendar year. The main content of the teaching were multi-sensory activities, encouraging creativity and self-expression, and the play and joy in the visual arts. Adults played a major role in the visual arts lessons, with the main tasks being giving guidance and assistance. The content of the five activity areas were reflected in the lessons. Motor skills were honed through training in fine and perceptual motor skills. In language and communication activity area, the focus was on nurturing self-expression, sharing common interests, and being present and focused. Social skills were practiced in the visual arts lessons themselves through shared activities. Waiting for a turn was also practiced. Day-to-day skills were practiced with an emphasis on cleaning and skills related to baking and cooking, such as measuring and mixing.

The framework for this study comes from Koster’s, Nakken’s, Pijl’s and van Houten’s (2009) theory of a child’s social participation in a peer group. According to Koster and the partners, social participation is built by four dimensions: child's social self-perception, acceptance by classmates, contacts/interactions and friendships/relationships. A lot of research has been conducted of social participation of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, but most of the researches are quantitative or have been examined through the adult perceptive. The aim of this study is to examine social participation of a disabled child from multifaceted perspective. In addition to this, the aim is to find out how the dimensions of contacts/interactions and acceptance by classmates are related to each other’s. This is a qualitative case study of a child with Down syndrome, who has been in a mainstream primary school class. The data of this study consists of a thematic interviews of the child herself and the persons who have been involved through her school path. In addition to this the data consists child’s writing book and a message book of a parent and school counselor from the 6th grade. The analysis was done using a deductive content analysis. The results suggested that the child’s social participation of the peer group had been incomplete. On the eyes of outsiders, the child’s social self-perception had been seen as positive, but the child’s own school satisfaction had been alternately positive and negative. The child didn’t have any actual friendships or two-way play during the primary school. During the school years she had participated a lot to classes activities and especially on these situations there had been strong support from the other classmates. In general, the child was a respected and accepted member by her classmates but the externality became relevant in occasional conflicts or on group work situations. Social participation is a key requirement for inclusion and it needs to be reached more so that the equality of every student can be advanced

The aim of this study was to investigate the development of children with special needs in the context of inclusive early childhood special education. In addition the other interest was to investigate the relationship between cognitive skills, behavioral and emotional skills and play behavior. The three research questions were: (1) How did the children´s cognitive and language skills, behavioral and emotional skills and play behavior develop over the course of one year? (2) How did the cognitive and language skills, behavioral and emotional skills and play behavior differ between the status groups? (3) What kind of relationship was there between the different skills? While little research has been done on the different settings of support in the Finnish early day care system, internationally several studies have been conducted about inclusive and exclusive special education. According to Rogow (1991) and Wong and Kasari (2012) children with special needs benefit social play with other kids without special needs. Previous research has highlighted the importance of play in children´s learning. Play is a way to learn cognitive and academic skills in early childhood (Bodrova, 2008). Data on 84 children attending inclusive day care in Helsinki was collected during 2016–2018. The children were supported in normal day care by an early childhood special needs teacher. The children’s special educational needs were divided into status groups: language disorder, self-regulation difficulties and severe disabilities. The data consisted of assessments of cognitive and language skills (Nepsy, WPPSI-III), behavioral and emotional skills (PreBers) and play behavior (PPBS) conducted by early childhood special education teachers. The data was analyzed by quantitative methods. The development of children was analyzed by the repeated measures ANOVA and The Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Differences between status groups were analyzed by Kruskall–Wallis H test and Mann-Whitney U –test. The relationships between variables were analyzed by Spearman’s correlation. The cognitive skills, behavioral and emotional skills and play behavior development of children were statistically significant. The language skills development was not statistically significant. There were statistically significant differences between status groups in many variables. Relations between different skills were high and statistically significant. Social communication had high relation between play behavior and emotional regulation. Relation between social communication and play in the childhood should be taken into account in early childhood settings.

The aim of the study was looking into the free playtime of children with special needs in a daycare setting. Children were filmed during a free playtime in a one integrated daycare group. Videos were analyzed by transana by using a BOR-form that observes the interactions between children. There were five main themes that cape up: the meaningfulness of actions, ways of communicating, role of the adult, role of the child with special needs in the group and the effect of the playmates. The play and actions of children with special needs seemed to be meaningful most of the times. There were group play as well as playing alone. The children with special need were divided in to two groups: children who spoke and those who didn't. It was easier for speakers to get in to a group play and maintain the play with others. The play was more complex when played with a friend or a child without special needs. Adults reinforced the actions and worked as an interpreter of children with special needs. It was hard for the children who needed constant help from the adult, to have an influential part in a play. The children with special need were more of the followers than the influencers in a play. Over all the actions and behavior of the children without the special needs seemed to have important influence to the actions and behavior of the children with special needs. The role of the adult were to inforce the communication between the children.

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract The interest towards the subject of the study awakened because the field of student councelling is in major changes in Finland due to the most recent changes in the law enforcement regarding student councelling and transferring information from the basic education to secondary education. In this study that was put into practice as a qualitative research the articulated phase of basic and secondary education is inspected from the perspective of the student counselling of a pupil with special needs and the transfer of information. Six student counsellors of basic education were interviewed for the study with a structured interview. The data of the study consisted of those interviews. The data of the study was analyzed by theming the research results. It was discovered that there is no overestimating the importance of the articulated phase of basic and secondary education. The student counselor of a pupil with special needs requires getting familiar with the individual needs in education of the pupil and getting familiar with questions of the health of the pupil or other aspects in pupil’s life that may affect the choice of vocation. The student counsellors do a lot of multiprofessional cooperation with the special education teachers and student counsellors of secondary education. Pointing out facts regarding to pupil’s education and other aspects that can affect the choice of vocation was important but the student counsellors also pointed out that supporting the student and their self-image was important as well as encouraging the student. The importance of coopetaring with the pupil’s guarding was also brought up in regards of pondering the choice of vocation and also in regards of getting the permission to transfer information. The discoveries of the study also pointed out that the obligation to maintain secrecy complicates transferring information between basic and secondary education and it needs changes. It was discovered in the study that more coherent courses of action are needed in regarding transferring information throughout the whole country of Finland.

The target phenomenon of the study is the experiences of adoptive parenting and family life by those parents who has a child adopted from South Africa. The object of interest is the adoptive parenthood and the experience of the adoptive family's everyday life. In Finland the interest about international adoption is great. As a contact country, South Africa has steadily raised interest. My goal in this study together with the wide theory of adoptions and adoptive parents' personal experiences is to serve those parents who are considering participate to international adoption process and especially thinking to adopt a child from South Africa. The frame of reference of this research is qualitative and theory guiding. The theoretical background examines the nature of the adoption process, the various stages of the process, as well as jurisprudence and ethics through the process as part of the protection of children. The approach in this study is a narrative. I gathered the research data by writing quest for the adoptive parents. The data consists the total of the six subjective reports written by six adoptive parents whose children where born in South Africa. The study revealed how the adoption is a very strongly legal process which is closely linked to the authorities' actions. During the process of adoption, the adoptive applicants are required to make a number of informed choices. During this process related to every party – both children and parents – there are always present the changes, losses, and hopes. While examining and comparing the data it became clear how an adoptive parenting is pretty much the same as a biological parenthood. Despite this, the adoptive parenting is always at the same a time different and special. The challenges of the spectrum appears to be mostly: adoptive children with special needs and responding to those special needs, attachment relationship and sometimes in different ways racist encounters.

The aim of this master's thesis is to examine the formation of special in the speech of teachers. The theoretical framework is based on the stance that people try to make sense of the world by perspective of normal. However, to be normal is possible only if something is deviant from it. When it comes to schools, these lines between normal and deviant have been seen to be linked to the relation of mainstream education and special-education. The interest of this study is to analyse, how the special is formed in the speech of teachers when there is more and more students in special education and when the official direction is to bring mainstream education and special-education together by constructing teaching of all students in the same classroom. The research data is formed by interviewing special- and class-/subject-teachers. The interviews were constructed as groups, one included special -teachers and the other one class-/subject-teachers. There where total of seven interviewees. The interviews followed the rules of theme interview. I have analyzed the data by using discourse analysis. According to my results the special were formed as maladjustment, certain problems, imperfection and change. The lines between normal and special operated on the other hand between all students and on the other hand the lines were situated only between certain students, them being the students in the special education class and the students in the mainstream class. When it comes to the consequence of special it was the situation of the student that were concerned. The conclusions of this research suggest the persistence of some categories in schools and the place as an essential component for defining the lines between normal and special. Worth noticing is also the ways that showed the possibility of negotiation.

The aim of this study is to view textile handcraft teachers' ways of using differentiation in their teaching process and unfold how they're relating to differentiation in their teaching. Tomlinson & Imbeau (2010) presented a model of differentiation in classroom context, which consists of four parts: learning environment, curriculum, teaching and evaluation. I started building my own research on the basis of their theory, and in this study I am going to sort out how the handcraft teachers are taking different kinds of students into consideration on these four areas of classroom differentiation. When exploring the teachers' attitudes towards differentiation I'm basing my study on the view of Tomlinson (1995), according to which differentiation is beneficial not only for students, but also for teachers. My study is considered as a qualitative case study. As subjects I had six female primary school handcraft teachers who took part to my study. I interviewed them with the method of semi-structured theme interviews by using an interview frame I created specifically for this purpose (attachment 1). The collected material was analysed with the method of theory-bound content analysis. In every six interviews it indicated that handcraft teachers are doing their best to pay attention to different kinds of students in their teaching process and seeing differentiation as a positive challenge. Every one of the interviewees puts effort on supporting every students' individual progress and to produce experiences of success –each on their own way. It seems that the most variation is within how intensive and with which ways the differentiation is implemented. All the interviewees underlined the importance of encouraging and positive learning environment and every one of them name the experiences of success for students to be one of the most important aims of the classes. The consideration of different kinds of students clearly focuses on the process of teaching and work during the lessons, where the differentiation the teachers use seems to be varying and skilled. The least tools the teachers seem to have for differentiating their assessment, which they evaluate to be the most difficult area of differentiation.

Objectives Earlier studies have shown that preschoolers and elementary school –aged children do not properly understand the connection between 2D-geometry and 3D-space. Traditional theory on the development of children's geometrical thinking focuses mainly on the recognition and categorizing of shapes and objects and deductive skills. This can be seen in math curricula. The objective of this study is to produce more knowledge about children's geometrical thinking and its development and the core systems of geometry that underlie it. One objective is also to examine the Finnish math curricula in light of our test results and what we know about the two core systems of geometry. Methods The study was conducted on 73 children from preschoolers to 4th-graders, of whom 37 were boys, and 36 were girls. This study is a case study, in which children took part in two separate tests. The first test was done on paper, and it measured the children's understanding of 2D-geometry. The other test was a map-test, in which the children had to walk a simple route, which consisted of a single turn, according to a map. In other words the children had to change a 2D-angle into a turn in space. The correlation between children's performances in the two tests was also under analysis. The study methods were a mix of qualitative and quantitative approach. The map-test was party analyzed through theory-based content analysis, and the quantitative approaches to studying different connections between results in the tests included Spearman's rho and Kruskall-Wallis test among others. Results and conclusions The results were in line with earlier theory on the core systems of geometry. In general, the older the children were, the better they performed in the two tests. Distinct individual differences were found in each age group of the test. The correlation between performances in the two tests was lower than expected and only poor performance in the 2D-test clearly resulted in poor performance in the map test. The results of this study point towards the conclusion that the core systems of geometry, their properties, and the development of their integration should be better recognized throughout the mathematics curricula in preschool and elementary school.