Browsing by Subject "erilaiset oppilaat"

The aim of this study is to view textile handcraft teachers' ways of using differentiation in their teaching process and unfold how they're relating to differentiation in their teaching. Tomlinson & Imbeau (2010) presented a model of differentiation in classroom context, which consists of four parts: learning environment, curriculum, teaching and evaluation. I started building my own research on the basis of their theory, and in this study I am going to sort out how the handcraft teachers are taking different kinds of students into consideration on these four areas of classroom differentiation. When exploring the teachers' attitudes towards differentiation I'm basing my study on the view of Tomlinson (1995), according to which differentiation is beneficial not only for students, but also for teachers. My study is considered as a qualitative case study. As subjects I had six female primary school handcraft teachers who took part to my study. I interviewed them with the method of semi-structured theme interviews by using an interview frame I created specifically for this purpose (attachment 1). The collected material was analysed with the method of theory-bound content analysis. In every six interviews it indicated that handcraft teachers are doing their best to pay attention to different kinds of students in their teaching process and seeing differentiation as a positive challenge. Every one of the interviewees puts effort on supporting every students' individual progress and to produce experiences of success –each on their own way. It seems that the most variation is within how intensive and with which ways the differentiation is implemented. All the interviewees underlined the importance of encouraging and positive learning environment and every one of them name the experiences of success for students to be one of the most important aims of the classes. The consideration of different kinds of students clearly focuses on the process of teaching and work during the lessons, where the differentiation the teachers use seems to be varying and skilled. The least tools the teachers seem to have for differentiating their assessment, which they evaluate to be the most difficult area of differentiation.