Browsing by Subject "tehostettu tuki"
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(2019)Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract Objectives. The aim of the study was to describe, analyze and interpret the transition process and the practices of pre-school children in pre-primary education for those with intensified or special support, as reported by parents. The theoretical framework of the thesis consisted of documents on early childhood education, pre-primary and basic education, including educational equality, three-step support and multi-professional co-operation, as well as earlier studies on transition. The research wanted to find out 1) How the transition phase is structured in the reports of the parents of children with special support 2) What are the challenges of the transition phase 3) What are the factors that make up a successful transition. According to previous studies, transitional practices are variable and highlight the challenges of data transmission and the lack of parental involvement. The aim of the study was to highlight the factors involved in the transition process and possibly create new insights into how the transition could be further developed to enable successful school start children in need of special support. Methods. The research was qualitative and the research material consisted of interviews with parents of children in need of support. There were four interviews and a total of seven interviewees. The interviews were conducted as structured theme interviews that were recorded and transcribed. As a method of analyzing the research data, qualitative content analysis based on data was used. Results and conclusions. According to the results of the research, the transition processes were consistent from time to time, and the transition phase included a separate transfer meeting in all cases. The structure of the multidisciplinary co-operation network varied depending on the case. The results of the study showed, that the biggest challenge of the transition was the transfer of knowledge between different people and institutions. The variety of parental roles and emotions in the transition process proved to be diverse. The success of the transition phase was influenced by the involvement of the first class teacher in the transfer meeting, the activity and participation of the parents, and the experience of how the needs of the child's special support are taken into account in the transition process.
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(2023)Every year children with intensified or special support transition to school. Usually, these children transition to general education classes. According to previous studies the transition between preschool and primary education is a significant moment for all children which affects future school success. Also, according to previous studies collaboration between teachers during the transition is important for the successful transition. For the children with special needs the transition often appears to be more challenging than to others, so they need special attention during the transition. The purpose of this master’s thesis was to examine the collaboration between preschool teachers and primary school teachers when children with special needs transition from preschool to first grade. The aim of this study is to find out what views and experiences preschool teachers and primary school teachers have about collaboration in the transition phase of children with intensified or special support. The research data was collected by interviewing eights teachers and using theme interviews. The data consisted of interviews with four preschool teachers and with four primary school teachers. This study was a qualitative study, and it was based on phenomenography. The interviews were analyzed using content analysis. According to the results the teachers implemented collaboration differently. However, the collaboration often increased when a child with special needs transitioned to school, in which case the teachers held an information transition meeting. The visit to school was the second most used form of collaboration. The teachers recognized the importance of collaboration for the teacher, the child with special needs and the child’s family. The desire and activity of the teachers, resources, instructions, management support and the physical location of the preschool and primary school were significant factors that influenced the implementation of the collaboration. Collaboration was usually implemented rarely, and its implementation varied between teachers and cities. The varying implementation of collaboration sets children with special needs in an unequal position during the school transition.
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(2020)The aim of this study was to find out how the municipalities are applied the three-tiered support model in their own ECEC (early childhood education and care) plans and what means general, intensified and special support in ECEC. In addition, the aim was to find out if or not the municipalities provide support in the same way or if there are differences between them. Previous studies on three-tier support in early childhood education have not been conducted, so this study provides new insights into the provision of three-tier support in kindergartens. The subject of the study is very topical. Three-tier support is also likely to be introduced in early childhood education in the next few years, so knowledge of its implementation is needed to prepare fluent support for early childhood education. This study is qualitative and the data is used from the municipalities ECEC plans. These ECEC plans included three-tiered support, or detailed general, intensified, and special support. Ten municipalities of different sizes from all over Finland where examined in this study. The data was analyzed using content analysis and approached using an abductive approach. The data was analyzed using the Atlas software, which supported the coding and classification of the data. The results of the study showed that the municipalities had applied the three-tiered support model in different ways, but there was a high degree of consistency in general. The levels of support were set very similarly by the municipalities and most of the differences were found in the definitions of special support. There are differences as well as similarities between municipal plans at different levels of support. Differences between municipalities were found in the practice of intensified and special support. The differences in general support were minor. In the case of intensified support, differences were mainly found only in the recording of support. In the case of special support, differences were found in the recording for the support, the eligibility criteria, the decision on the special support and organizing environment. According to findings of this research, it appears that there are differences in the implementation of three-tier support in early childhood education, especially in special support. Municipalities may have followed the example on three-tier support models for pre- and / or basic education, and this is reflected in coherence between levels of general and intensified support. Differences between municipalities in the level of special support may lead to inequalities when accessing the support. More precise entries in the Early Childhood Education Act and in the grounds of the ECEC plan are needed to ensure that the support is distributed uniformly throughout the country. In particular, special support needs a common line on when a child is entitled to special support, where the support is recorded and who makes the decision on the special support.
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(2018)The new Curriculum for Basic Education (2016) suggests that all stages of three-tiered support (general, intensified and special support) are based on the need for additional student support as well as learning and progress assessments. Teachers' assessment of the pupil's progress and the necessary support measures are thus central to the provision of enhanced support. This study also examines whether teachers differ in their assessment methods and whether these approaches are connected to the basics of enhanced support, specifically to the principle of close school, the effectiveness of enhanced support in everyday life, knowledge of enhanced support schemes, and identification of the different phases of three-tiered support. Previous studies by teachers have shown that they experience inclusive education as negative. (Murto, Naukkarinen & Saloviitta 2001, pp. 86-95). Studies have found that there is a need for teacher training concerning attitudes, knowledge and skills (European Center for the Development of Special Needs Education, 2012, pp. 5-7). The questionnaire was conducted with the teachers of third and sixth grade classrooms in the City of Vantaa (N=174) in the spring of 2016, using the "Leaning Lesson" classroom teachers' questionnaire. There were various statements about enhanced support and one open question about evaluation. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used in the study. The lessons from the "Learning Lesson" questionnaire about the principles of enhanced support and the effectiveness of support used the Likert scale, and these claims were compared using the SPSS software. The answers are compared to the Curriculum (2016) and the Basic Education Act. Teachers were asked how they evaluated enhanced support for pupils' learning and progress during the semester and academic year. Responses were categorized qualitatively with content analysis and a variety of assessment methods were used. 24.5% of the respondents assessed the enhanced support of the pupil diversely and consistently in accordance to the curriculum. This versatile assessment group was most positively concerned with the implementation of an inclusive atmosphere or the use of various support measures and the recognition of different levels of support. However, almost 42% of the respondents assessed intensified support for the pupil at least once a year, in writing. This group of respondents was the most negatively inclined toward inclusive schools. The results suggest that the pursuit of multi-faceted assessment has a positive relationship to attitudes towards enhanced support and inclusive practices. Implementation of the close school principle requires training, consistent assessment methods and, for example, use of inclusive practices.
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(2010)The educational reform, launched in Finland in 2008, concerns the implementation of the Special Education Strategy (Opetusministeriö 2007) under an improvement initiative called Kelpo. One of the main proposed alterations of the Strategy relates to the support system of comprehensive school pupils. The existed two-level model (general and special support) is to be altered by the new three-level model (general, intensified and special support). There are 233 municipalities involved nationwide in the Kelpo initiative, each of which has a municipal coordinator as a national delegate. The Centre for Educational Assessment [the Centre] at the University of Helsinki, led by Professor Jarkko Hautamäki, carries out the developmental assessment of the initiative's developmental process. As a part of that assessment the Centre interviewed 151 municipal coordinators in November 2008. This thesis considers the Kelpo initiative from Michael Fullan's change theory's aspect. The aim is to identify the change theoretical factors in the speech of the municipal coordinators interviewed by the Centre, and to constitute a view of what the crucial factors in the reform implementation process are. The appearance of the change theoretical factors, in the coordinators' speech, and the meaning of these appearances are being considered from the change process point of view. The Centre collected the data by interviewing the municipal coordinators (n=151) in small groups of 4-11 people. The interview method was based on Vesala and Rantanen's (2007) qualitative attitude survey method which was adapted and evolved for the Centre's developmental assessment by Hilasvuori. The method of the analysis was a qualitative theory-based content analysis, processed using the Atlas.ti software. The theoretical frame of reference was grounded on Fullan's change theory and the analysis was based on three change theoretical categories: implementation, cooperation and perspectives in the change process. The analysis of the interview data revealed spoken expressions in the coordinators' speech which were either positively or negatively related to the theoretical categories. On the grounds of these change theoretical relations the existence of the change process was observed. The crucial factors of reform implementation were found, and the conclusion is that the encounter of the new reform-based and already existing strategies in school produces interface challenges. These challenges are particularly confronted in the context of the implementation of the new three-level support model. The interface challenges are classified as follows: conceptual, method-based, action-based and belief-based challenges.
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(2018)Objectives. In 2011, Finland has reformed learning and schooling support which is divided to three steps: general, intensified and special support. Based on students' equal rights, every student should have the same opportunity to learn and learning support. The purpose of this Master's thesis is to find out how much there are students in intensified and special support in last school year in different regions based on Learning to Learn Assessment in 2017. Students in intensified and special support in this dataset are compared to Finnish official statistics of learning and schooling support needing students. Finally, the aim is to find out if there are regional differences in how the provision of intensified and special support has changed from 2012 to 2017. Based on earlier researches, students' equal rights seem not to be fulfilled and there are regional differences in support systems. Methods. Learning to Learn Assessment were executed in spring 2012 and 2017. There were 7 779 9th graders in 2012 and 9 241 in 2017 in that Assessment from different regions. Actual sample of this thesis was 6 383(2012) and 7 563(2017) because some students' information of their support status was missing. Data from official statistics from fall 2011 and 2016 were used as well. Regional comparisons were done by independent sample t-test separately to both forms of support. The change from 2012 to 2017 was analyzed with Repeated measures ANOVA and non-parametric Wilcoxon test. School-level changes were analyzed by Paired Samples t-test. Results and conclusions. There were regional differences in intensified and special support. Most support was provided in Northern Savonia and least in Satakunta. Especially Satakunta differed statistically significantly from other regions in both forms of support in the learning to learn data. As the difference was not as large in the official statistics, it seems that students with support needs were divided unevenly between schools there. Results indicated that learning and schooling support system does not meet up its goals. Learning to Learn Assessment sample were alike with Finnish official statistics for intensified support's part. For special support's part, there were differences between those samples. This will be explained by lacking special schools and special classes in Assessment sample. In some regions, transform in support groups from 2012 to 2017 were major but transforms weren't statistically different. On the other hand, transform in intensified support differs statistically on school level.
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(2018)Goals. In the special education strategy, the support given to pupils was divided into three stages; general, intensified and special support. The three-tiered support was introduced at the end of year 2011. This study examines what goals are set for the children, with what pedagogical solutions are the children supported and how the progress is evaluated based on learning plans for intensified support. Child´s participation has been emphasized in both pre-primary and basic education curricula. In this study I also want to research how child´s participation can be seen in the pedagogical solutions of intensified support. Methods. The material for the study included documents concerning intensified support for children born in a medium-sized city in 2008 during both pre-primary education and the autumn of the first grade. The material consisted of pedagogical assessments (pre-primary education 60 pieces, first grade 16 pieces) and learning plans for intensified support (pre-primary education 69 pieces, first grade 51 pieces). The planning sections of the learning plans for intensified support (need for support, goals, means and evaluation) were categorized using content analysis. Child´s participation was also researched based on references in the pedagogical solutions (means in the forms) using content analysis. Results and conclusions. The pre-primary documents had varying criteria for starting intensified support. The pre-primary and first grade teachers had differing opinions on what the purpose of the plans was. A part of the plans was mainly filled out to transfer information between teachers and they used broad terms and the text was scarce. The pupils’ goals had been copied word for word to several children’s plans. There were uncompleted documents still in December in the first grade. Intensified support was focused in large measure at developing linguistic and mathematical skills. The child was mainly described as an object of actions by adults in the means of the learning plans, i.e. pedagogical solutions. The child was described as an independent agent in only 0,41% of the references made in the learning plans. Evaluation of the plans mainly consisted of observations in the everyday life.
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(2020)The objective of this thesis is to examine, if the number of pupils receiving intensified support and special support has connection on the learning motivation of academically gifted pupils and pupils with above average reasoning abilities, and whether there are differences between these groups. In addition, the effect of gender on learning motivation was studied. The MetrOP material collected in 2011 and 2014 has been used as material for the thesis. In 2011 the answers were collected from pupils in the 7th grade, and in 2014 from pupils in the 9th grade. The pupils were from the 14 municipalities of the Helsinki metropolitan region. The sample set are pupils (N=5353), who were in classes, where there was data available on both intensified and special support pupils. In the thesis there is comparison on the differences between the learning motivation of academically gifted pupils (N=260), and pupils with above average reasoning abilities (N=281). This comparison was made by dividing the pupils in groups, where either there were no pupils requiring support (group 1), there were two or fewer pupils requiring support (group 2), or there were more than two pupils requiring support (group 3). The differences in learning motivation was compared by one way variance analysis using eleven different motivational variables. The effect of the number of intensified and special support pupils on the learning motivation of gifted pupils was studied separately. According to the results of the thesis, over half of the academically gifted pupils, and pupils with above average reasoning abilities were from classes that had no pupils requiring support on them. The number of pupils requiring support had a correlation on the learning motivation of both academically gifted pupils, and pupils with above average learning abilities. Especially in group 2 there were negative connections to pupils in group 1. The pupils in group 2 were more avoidance oriented, ego-oriented, performance oriented and believed more in chance and natural abilities in results when compared with pupils from group 1. The number of pupils requiring intensified support had a connection to the learning motivation of gifted pupils. There was no such correlation between the number of pupils requiring special support and learning motivation of gifted pupils. Gender had a measurable effect in learning motivation, where males were more susceptible to changes in the gender structure than females. The results are interesting, as the number of pupils requiring intensified support had an effect, but the number of pupils requiring special support had no effect on learning motivation. As a point of future research, it would be interesting to look into the effect of education level of parents on the learning motivation of pupils.
Now showing items 1-8 of 8