Browsing by Subject "Inkluusio"

The framework for this study comes from Koster’s, Nakken’s, Pijl’s and van Houten’s (2009) theory of a child’s social participation in a peer group. According to Koster and the partners, social participation is built by four dimensions: child's social self-perception, acceptance by classmates, contacts/interactions and friendships/relationships. A lot of research has been conducted of social participation of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, but most of the researches are quantitative or have been examined through the adult perceptive. The aim of this study is to examine social participation of a disabled child from multifaceted perspective. In addition to this, the aim is to find out how the dimensions of contacts/interactions and acceptance by classmates are related to each other’s. This is a qualitative case study of a child with Down syndrome, who has been in a mainstream primary school class. The data of this study consists of a thematic interviews of the child herself and the persons who have been involved through her school path. In addition to this the data consists child’s writing book and a message book of a parent and school counselor from the 6th grade. The analysis was done using a deductive content analysis. The results suggested that the child’s social participation of the peer group had been incomplete. On the eyes of outsiders, the child’s social self-perception had been seen as positive, but the child’s own school satisfaction had been alternately positive and negative. The child didn’t have any actual friendships or two-way play during the primary school. During the school years she had participated a lot to classes activities and especially on these situations there had been strong support from the other classmates. In general, the child was a respected and accepted member by her classmates but the externality became relevant in occasional conflicts or on group work situations. Social participation is a key requirement for inclusion and it needs to be reached more so that the equality of every student can be advanced

This article-based master’s thesis describes and examines the debate around the comprehensive school through the concept of inclusion. The material was obtained from the opinion pieces, published in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in 2009-2019. The dissertation was inspired by the international MAPS (Mixed classes And Pedagogical Solutions) project, which explores the opportunities of schools to meet the challenge of inclusion from a societal perspective. The cornerstone of the dissertation was the Salamanca Statement signed in 1994, in which Finland made a commitment to improve the educational inclusion. The aim was to find out, how inclusive school is constructed in opinion pieces, how the views of different groups of writers differed from each other, and how the core of the idea of inclusion – human rights and dignity – were reflected in the writings. An essential - and also timely - topic of discussion for the dissertation was the three-tier support model that came into force in 2011, which took the comprehensive school into more inclusive direction. In total, 94 opinion pieces was analysed in this study, to increase under-standing of how inclusion is defined in public discussion. Based on the opinion pieces, the inclusion was strongly linked to the relationship between the special and general education. The school was described as a place where the resources available, as well as the resilience and adequacy of teachers, do not meet the challenge of inclusion. In the end, relatively little attention was paid to the core of the idea of inclusion, human rights and dignity. The most challenging barrier for implementing the inclusive school was the behavioral problems. Based on the research data, inclusion was not opposed as an endeavour, but it seems that there are no possibilities to implement it due the lack of resources. This seems to cause a backlash, that turns many thoughts to the opposite, an exclusive direction. To secure everyone’s learning, new ways of discipline are needed. Research article “Savings and non-compliance with international agreements. Inclusion discussion of comprehensive school at the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper opinion column in 2009-2019” is to be published in the NMI-Bulletin magazine in autumn 2020.

Co-teaching has become a common way of organizing teaching in recent years. Co-teaching is a method in which two equal teachers share responsibility for the planning, implementation and evaluation of the lesson. Co-teaching has been identified in previous studies as a viable means of teaching heterogeneous groups of students without the need for differentiated teaching solutions. The purpose of this case study is to find out how co-teaching in a Finnish teaching practice-school is implemented and what meanings teachers give to co-operation. Co-teaching is conceptualized as a combination of general education and special education in which teachers with different expertise work together to promote the inclusion of all students. The research is based on the idea of inclusion, the right of all children to study together in the same school with other children, regardless of their individual characteristics or disabilities. This case study was carried out using qualitative data collection and analysis methods. The research material was collected from a training school in Southern Finland during 2018. The focus of the study was on one special education teacher and two classroom teachers collaborating with the special education teacher. The material of the study was collected by interviewing the actors and by observing the practical work of the teachers. The interviews were conducted as semi-structured thematic interviews. The observation was carried out by videotaping co-teaching lessons. The research material was analyzed by means of theory-based content analysis. Co-teaching was carried out in the research school mainly by using the One teach, One assist model in which the special education teacher was the assisting one. The use of functional and diverse teaching methods, the structured structure of the lesson and the teachers' similar attitudes towards collaborative work were defined as aspects which promote teacher cooperation in this study. Cooperation and the ability of a special education teacher to bring their own expertise to co-teaching lessons were limited by negative attitudes towards co-teaching, teacher-led teaching methods, and the lack of joint planning time. The quality of co-teaching as a teaching method promoting inclusion must be further developed by strengthening teachers' knowledge of utilizing co-teaching methods. In particular, the transfer of special education teachers' expertise to co-teaching lessons should be promoted by encouraging special education teachers to become active actors in the planning, implementation and evaluation of co-teaching. In addition, co-teaching requires joint planning time included in teachers' working time, as well as training in the effective use of that time.