Browsing by Author "Tuominen, Juulia"

During the last few decades, efforts have been made to advance the principle of inclusion in education. The Basic Education Act on support for learning and school attendance support entered into force in 2011. Before education was organized separately as general or special education. With the reform of the law, schools began to implement inclusion with the help of three-tiered support, and the forms of support were divided into general, enhanced and special support. With the three-tiered support, classroom teachers teach more and more diverse groups of students, and teachers must carry out teaching and support taking into account the individual needs of students. The aim of this thesis is to find out what kinds of experiences and views teachers have about inclusion and three-tiered support. This study was executed using qualitative methods. The research material was collected through semi-structured interviews. Seven class teachers were interviewed. The data was analyzed with material-oriented content analysis. The classroom teachers thought the principle of inclusion is good, but challenges were seen in its practical implementation. According to the interviewees, transferring a student from one level of support to the next is quite clear, but due to teachers’ autonomy, there are individual differences in the implementation of support. Diverse groups of pupils, lack of human resources, large class sizes and insufficient classroom teacher training were seen as challenges in teaching pupils in need of support. Smaller class sizes and increasing resources were seen as practical solutions to the challenges of inclusion and three -tiered support. Additionally, more resources for school attendance counsellors and special teachers would be needed in general education classes, so that the individual need of support of pupils could be taken into account. Finally, classroom teacher training should include more studies introducing special pedagogy, and working classroom teachers would need further training related to the needs of pupils’ support.