Browsing by Subject "Inklusiivinen varhaiskasvatus"

Objectives. The objective of the study is to find out the quality of the involvement of children with special needs in inclusive day-care group activities. The realization of participation is examined from the perspective of involvement, because by measuring involvement, information of a child’s needs and the quality of early childhood education can be obtained. Involvement is examined to obtain information of the factors that raise or lower the involvement of a child with special needs and also to find out what factors of the instructing adult’s activities affect the involvement to group activities. The hypothesis of the study is that the participation of children with special needs appears differently when early childhood special education teacher is not present in the group. Methods. The data was collected by videotaping three children with special needs in two different inclusive day-care groups in Helsinki. The whole recorded data was approximately 2 hours. The video material was observed, and the involvement of children was measured by using LIS-YC measuring scale specially designed to observe involvement. The study was conducted with qualitative and quantitative principles. The analysis method used was theory-based content analysis. Results. The results of the study show that the involvement of children with special needs who require support was highest when early childhood special education teacher lead the group activi-ties. During the leading of an early childhood education teacher, the involvement was slightly lower, but still almost as high as with the leading of an early childhood special education teacher. Only during leading of a childminder, the involvement to group activities was significantly lower. A clear connection between the activities of the adults to the involvement to group activities was recognised. Sensitive encounter, activities that actively participate the child and activities happen-ing in the zone of proximal development raised the involvement to group activities the most. Correspondingly, not responding to child’s initiatives, activities that participate the child too little, as well as too hard or too easy activities compared to the child’s skill level lowered the involve-ment. As a conclusion, the engagement of children with special needs is very dependent on the adult’s way of acting and the content of activities. The realisation of participation seems to also be connected to the adult’s educational background.