Browsing by Author "Soppela, Johanna"

The purpose of this study was to describe what an invention project is like in a class of students with special needs. Special attention was paid to the division of labor and how the support of teachers and other group members appears during the project and how students participate in the project. In addition to this, the study wanted to find out how socio-emotional challenges show up during the invention process. The subject group was a 7th-grade special education class where six out of eight students participated. The pupils took part in a community-based invention project that combined different subjects and utilized invention pedagogy at the Helsinki Metropolitan Area's primary school. The project is part of the Growing mind research project. The study is an ethnographic case study in nature, in which material was collected by several different methods. The research material used was small group process diaries, group interviews, researcher observation material and e-mails, which teachers used to keep in touch between project sessions, and special classroom teacher interviews. The collected material was analyzed by qualitative content analysis and formed into a narrative. The invention project was, in the opinion of the students and the special class teacher, a project in which they would be happy to participate again. The course of the invention project was different in its linearity compared to the general education classes. Students got more motivated as the project progressed. The division of labor between the groups was done according to interests and some of the students worked more independently during the project. Each of them participated in the project in their own way. The socio-emotional challenges were visible at the beginning of the process, but as the process progressed, all the students overcame their challenges. The invention project groups were guided more than what they usually are in the general education classroom. The members of the small groups gave each other social support during the project. Students were instructed to aim for compromises and all those involved in the groups sought to work together and unity within the groups. The results suggest that an invention project, which includes observable features of nonlinear learning is suitable for a group of students with different interests and students with different levels of technological skills. The importance of this research culminates in the development of pedagogical models that support different learners and their role in a community learning process.