Browsing by Author "Hyle-Seisko, Sallamari"

Aim of the study. Nowadays, dyslexias are diagnosed more often compared to previous times due to advanced test methods. According to previous studies, dyslexic students are not often applying for higher education. The aim of this work was to define features that have made it possible for few dyslexic students to get in university despite the dyslexia and how dyslexic students could be integrated better into education system. In this study, it was determined, how the pathways of dyslexic students are composed, which resources of students had assisted them and how the agency of students had developed through school pathway. Further, the connection between resources and agency was investigated. The agency was investigated from the point of views of education history, prevailing environment and active agency. Resources were classified into practical resources, resources of meanings and symbols as well as resources of habits and practices. Used methods. The research data was collected by interviewing five Finnish dyslexic university students, who attended comprehensive school between years 1997 and 2011. Narrations, collected with interviews, included the school pathway from starting school to current period in university. Narrations were analyzed with holistic and thematic narrative research method. Results and conclusions. It was found that the education histories of students differed, though the pathways of students were mostly similar. In addition, the agencies of dyslexic students changed and developed through their pathways, especially the meaning and relation of different pieces of agencies varied. It was found that resources had dependency on the agency of students, since the increase in amount or volume of resources resulted in enhanced agency, and contrariwise. The students were able to turn their dyslexia into resource due to their strengthen self-esteem, pro-dyslexia, clear knowledge of their career as well as their strengths and weaknesses. As conclusions, quadripartite activity guide was formed in order to integrate dyslexic students into our education system. Dyslexia should be diagnosed as early as possible in order to provide students with required support already from the start of their pathways. Further, dyslexic students should also be encouraged to reveal their dyslexia in order to integrate them better into school society. Additionally, knowledge of dyslexia should be increased in every school stage in order to ease diagnosing of dyslexia and revealing of it, when the attitude towards dyslexia would be more positive. By increasing knowledge of dyslexia and its effects, pro-dyslexia could be enhanced. Finally, general action guides should be created as well as the relation of action guide and their actions in practice should be supervised and evaluated