Browsing by Author "Mustonen, Jenniriina"

Aims. The aim of this qualitative study was to find out what information the special education students' IEPs' (Individual Educational Plan) includes about different activity areas. The activity areas are based on the National Curricula for basic education and they are motor skills, language and communication, social skills, skills in daily functions and cognitive skills. The aim of the study was to find out what other information the IEPs' includes. The study also aimed to find out what information IEPs' includes about multi-professional cooperation and the different responsibility that they share. Even though, the aim of the IEP is to ensure that the right special support is given to the student, there are also concerns about the documents. Earlier research shows for example that the information that has been written to IEPs mainly describes the problems and the challenges that the student has. The goals that have been written to the documents are often general and not measurable. Methods. The research data consist 20 IEPs that has been written to the children with special needs. The data of the research was collected earlier to the use of Special Education Research of the University of Helsinki. The IEPs were written to the students that are in need of the special support and who are studying by the activity areas. The data was analysed by using the qualitative text content analysis and discourse analysis. Results and conclusions. Based on the research, when the data was analysed by the activity areas the IEPs contained mainly information about students' cognitive skills. The discourse analysis showed that the information about activity areas were mainly positive, but there was also negative information concerning the activity areas. The information that were not about the activity areas were for example about student's hobbies, integration, student's self-esteem, motivation and studying environment. The results showed that the other information in the IEPs were mainly neutral. In the IEPs there were all in all 21 different multi-professional cooperation mentioned, but in the documents there were no more information about how the cooperation was organized.