Browsing by Author "Kaarto, Samu"

It is essential to listen and pay attention to the youth in matters that concern them. The right to be heard is written down in the UN’s Declaration of the Rights of the Child and Finnish national curriculum. However, the right to be heard is not wholly implemented at schools and this is especially true in the case of the young who attend special education. By listening the young more attentively could the school institution be better prepared to create school that can educate more diverse bodies of students and be more inclusive. School experiences correlate with educational decisions that the youth make and positive school experiences correlate with contentment with their lives. In addition, the experiences that the young have at school can be seen to be connected with the development of their identities that is one of the main developmental tasks in youth according to life-span theories. Identities can be studied using the narratives that people tell about themselves. The narratives that people create about themselves are part of their narrative identities through which people give meanings to their experiences in form of narratives. The purpose of this study is to examine what a ninth-grade student in special education tells about herself in her school narratives and examine how her narrative identity appears in the narratives. One ninth-grade student attending special education was interviewed for this study. The narratives that were formed in the interview were examined with narrative analysis through which a comprehensive narrative of the school experiences of the interviewed student were constructed. The narratives were also examined using analysis of the narratives with which core themes of the narratives were searched for and formed. The research showed that the narrative, that the interviewed student constructed, was a growth narrative of herself, in which she depicted her changing school motivation and behavior through comprehensive school. In the narratives her attitude towards the school was mainly negative because of her challenges with behavior and learning in primary school. However, her attitude changed completely when she moved to the upper levels of comprehensive school. The central themes in the narratives were growth, future, sports, and others as resources and impediments, through which she constructed meanings for her experiences. The narrative identity of the student appeared to be positive and her outlook for herself and for her future were optimistic which is reflected in the narratives of her overcoming the hardships at school. In the narratives the interviewed student found ways to maintain her well-being, for example, using sports and her family’s support. The narratives of the interviewed student mainly coincide with the statistics of the school experiences and future prospects of Finnish youth. Moreover, the experiences of the interviewed student agree with the results of previous research that showed that students in classroom special education were more content with special education classes than general education classes. According to the previous research the attitudes towards school deteriorated at the beginning of upper levels of comprehensive school that is completely the opposite what happened in the narratives of the interviewed student. Therefore, it is vital to listen to the young so that it is possible to prevent negative school experiences.