Browsing by Author "Elonen, Kiia"

This is a qualitative, phenomenological and hermeneutic research. The aim of this research is to study a nongraded primary education class during its pilot year from the perspective of social and individual learning. The aim of the research is to find out, how does nongradedness support social learning according to the experience of the teacher and students, and how does nongradedness support individual learning according to the experience of the teacher and students. I studied the class through observation and gathered my data by doing two theme interviews with the teacher and interviewing ten of the students. I analyzed my data following the guidelines of theory based content analysis and interpretations. In my reasearch I found out, that nongradedness supports both social and individual learning by using social and functional ways of teaching and studying. By combining two grades due to pedagogical purposes students are able to advance in their studies in an individualistic pace easily. In a nongraded classroom the teacher can easily individualise his or her teaching due to the spectrum of students and contents of things to learn made possible by combining two grades. The main focus in the classroom is on social learning.