Browsing by Author "Sirén, Mari"

The aim of this study was to describe the social integration of Finnish school age children with special needs. The term social integration means children's friendships, relationships with classmates and friends, children's perception and acceptance by classmates and friends (Koster ym. 2009, 135). The purpose of this study was to build the model of social integration for Finnish children with special needs and also study different perspectives of social integration and factors effecting into those. Previous studies have shown that pupils with special needs are less popular, lonelier, less accepted and they have less friends in school (f. ex. Pijl ym. 2008, Szekeres 2014, Pijl & Skaalvik, 2010). On the other hand, it has been shown that pupil with special needs is as often a group member and is as often outsider as other children (Avramidis, 2010). The research was a quantitative survey study and the research data was collected with association how support guardian of children with special needs. 107 guardians took part in this study. The research data was analyzed by SPSS-computer program. Exploratory factor analysis, correlation and analysis of variance were used as analysis methods. The model of social integration was not completely in-line with previous studies. This study showed that friendships and interactions with friends, problems with peer relationships, acceptance by classmates, interaction with classmates during free time as well as loneliness and difference were major parts of the model of social integration. This study showed that children with special needs had some friends, they didn't have statistically significant problems with peer relationships and they are relatively well accepted by their classmates. Despite friendships and acceptance, the children with special needs didn't have so much interaction with classmates during free time and they felt loneliness and difference. Especially the children with special needs and with special support in school had challenges to create interaction with friends outside school. The children with behavioral challenges observed had more problem with peer relationships compared to the children with delays of development.