Browsing by Author "Jokinen, Sara"

The city of Helsinki has decided to organize the instruction preparing for basic education for immigrants in 1st and 2nd grades by including the students in mainstream education classes. This is a new method in educational field in Finland and creates new challenges for education providers and teachers. Instruction preparing for basic education was previously organized in separate classes exclusively for immigrant students. In my thesis I researched teachers’ experiences teaching immigrant students in mainstream education classes because this point of view has not been widely researched before in Finland. This thesis presents experiences that were related to competence in immigrant teaching, satisfaction in accomplishing targets of learning and opinions on given resources. The research is a qualitative study and the material was collected by interviewing teachers who have experience of teaching immigrant students in the new inclusive classes. Interviewees were three comprehensive school teachers and they were all interviewed separately. Interviews were recorded and transcribed for further analysis. Teachers’ experiences in inclusive education were either mostly positive or mostly negative. Positive experiences included good experiences in competence as an immigrant students’ teacher and teachers were mostly satisfied in accomplishing the targets of learning. These teachers also thought that the inclusion method in immigrant education has turned out to be successful. Negative experiences were related to dissatisfaction in competence and in succeeding in targets of learning. All teachers were mostly satisfied with given resources but they thought they would have needed more learning materials and could have used more helping hands. As it is a new phenomenon, inclusion in education and teachers’ experiences of it should be researched more especially when developing new educational practices.