Browsing by Subject "experiences"
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(2017)Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a condition that affects social interaction, communication and behavior. Since effective communication and interaction is a prerequisite for learning, the use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) methods has been considered necessary in study environments. The education professionals' perspectives and attitudes towards the use of AAC methods have been linked to the extent to which they support the development of communication skills of their pupils using communication aids. The purpose of this study is to describe the experiences of autism classroom teachers and classroom assistants in the use of AAC methods. This topic is examined based on the benefits and challenges that autism education professionals associate with the use of communication aids, the number of factors contributing to the successful use of the AAC methods as well as the development of the students' communication skills. In this study nine education professionals who worked in autism education classrooms and school's afternoon activities in Helsinki were interviewed. The interviews were conducted as semi-structured individual interviews, which discussed the use of AAC methods for students with ASD. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed by using inductive thematic analysis approach. Finally, the themes of each research question were compared with each other. Based on the results of this study, AAC methods are particularly useful not only for communication between students and education professionals, but also for the students' ability to express themselves, to develop better social skills and to become more independent in their everyday lives. The challenges of using AAC methods related to usability factors, students' developmental abnormalities, education professionals' practices and various resource issues. Professional co-operation, motivation, favorable usability factors of the AAC methods, and factors related to the activities and roles of education professionals were seen to influence the successful use of the AAC methods and to improve the students' communication skills. In addition, the interviewees strongly emphasized the importance of students' spontaneous communication and speech development in the motivation and work satisfaction of education professionals. The autism classroom teachers' and classroom assistants' experiences in the use of AAC methods emphasize the importance of training and multiprofessional co-operation in support of the use of communication aids and development of students' communication skills. Based on the results of this study, the speech therapists' counseling activities can be regarded as significant for the development and maintenance of the education professionals' AAC skills and for constituting positive attitudes related to the use of AAC methods. This study highlights the importance of further research focusing particularly on more specific identification of challenges related to the use of AAC methods in autism classroom education.
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(2013)Street children´s life situations have received a lot of attention both in the media and in research in the recent years. In the literature street children are often defined as being under the age of 18. In this thesis, the focus group is the street youth, meaning the adolescents and young adults who either live full-time in the streets or are otherwise strongly connected with the street life. The research interest was to study how poverty is present in the lives of the street youth, and how their experiences of poverty in the streets and their own agency change when they grow older. A further interest was to find out how street life enables transition into adult roles in the society. The theoretical background of the thesis consists of introducing the discussion of structure and agency in social sciences as a way to understand the social life, then introducing the relevant concepts of poverty and social exclusion. Poverty in this thesis is understood in its widest sense, as Amartya Sen has defined it: deprivations of basic capacities that a person has to live the kind of life he or she has a reason to value. Also, the contemporary research on street children is introduced, where the agency perspective has gained space. The thesis also takes a look at some situational factors of the case study country Zambia, which affect the lives of the country’s vulnerable children and youth. This thesis is an ethnographic research consisting of two field work periods in Zambia’s capital city Lusaka. These field work periods took place in July-August 2011 and 2012 in an organization working with street children and youth. The informants were a heterogeneous group of street youth, aged between 14 and 28 and connected to the street life from different positions. The data consists of field notes and 33 recorded interviews with the informants. The results show that most of the street youth expressed reluctance towards their current life in the streets with little prospects for change. Income-wise their poverty seemed to vary, but the money was spent to meet one’s instant needs. Poverty was further expressed in terms of experienced public disrespect and vulnerability to violence and abuse by other street youth as well as police authorities. It also meant remoteness and mistrust in one’s social relationships. Poverty in the streets caused dependency of substances leading to decreased ability to take care of oneself as well as violent behavior. Growing older in the streets seemed to bring increased feelings of wasted years and frustration in one’s life situation, which was in contrast to adult roles in the society. Prolonged street life brought a risk of adopting illegal means and violent and harmful conduct. However, this was not necessarily so, and some of the youth had taken distance to the street life abandoned many of their earlier street behaviors. As chances for employment were small, they were, however, still stuck in the streets to earn living.
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(2011)Aims: The recent conversations about disappearing family meals, mental problems of the youngsters and family meals' protective effect on youngsters problems have been the base of this study. The main aim of this study is to find out, what kind of position family meals do have in the youngsters' lives. Study questions are: 1. What kind of conceptions youngsters have of family meals? 2. What kind of hands-on experience youngsters have about family meals? 3. How youngsters feel family meals on a emotional level? a. Are meals positive moments with the family or do they just limit timetables? b. Do the youngsters need family meals if they do not have those in their families? Why? Why not? Methods: The data was collected using stimulated recall -interviews and basic themed interviews. The data was collected from thirteen 8th graders from Pirkanmaa and Kanta-Häme. The interviews were analyzed with the qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions: The youngsters' concepts of the meals and the family meals were quite traditional, assuming that those are warm, varied and eaten with company. The situation of the family meals was good and those were eaten nearly every day in the most of the families. The youngsters thought that the family meals were important social moments with the family and they were able to talk about important things with the family during the meals. They also felt that the daily eating rhythm was good and they did not felt that the meals would have been somehow restrictive. Even so that the pupils felt the family meals were important, the pupil whose family did not eat family meals did not long those meals. He felt that he was able to share his thoughts and experiences also in other ways. It is important that youngsters have this channel of communication.
Now showing items 1-3 of 3