Browsing by Subject "Avainsanat - Nyckelord sitoutuneisuus"

The aim of this study was to examine what is involvement of preschoolers with special needs during co-teaching of a special education teacher and a teacher in preschool. The aim was also to find out what kind of teacher's teaching methods help children to be more involved during teaching in presschool. The theoretical background of the study is based on learning as a socio-cultural phenomenon (Vygotsky 1978) and Laevers and Hautamäki's (1997) notion that involvement is a human trait that can be identified by e.g. concentration and perseverance. The characteristics of involvement include e.g. intrinsic motivation, enchantment, inclusion, openness to stimuli, intensity of experience, deep satisfaction and a strong sense of physical and mental energy. (Laevers & Hautamäki 1997.) In the theoretical background, learning in a peer group and especially adults and the interaction between adult and child as a factor in the learning environment were examined. This study was qualitative in nature. The study focused on three children with special needs in pre-school education and their involvement. The children were observed by videotaping them during preschool time in kindergarten. Video footage was collected during 6 different days from 9 a.m. to noon. Approximately eight hours of video material was recorded. Qualitative analysis of the material is based on the evaluation of episodes delimited from video material using the LIS-YC method (Laevers & Hautamäki 1997) and on the analysis of transcribed episodes. The results of this study show that, on average, the involvement of children with special needs is low. Co-teaching appeared to improve children’s involvement. In this study, teacher guidance influenced children’s involvement; above all, the ways in which the teacher was guiding the children were significant. In this study, children’s individual differences in involvement were seen during both single-teacher and teacher-specialty education teacher simultaneous teaching. The teacher’s sensitivity to noticing these differences in children was important for high involvement.