Browsing by Author "Sahlberg, Cecilia"

The aim of this study is to get a deeper understanding for the kindergarten teachers experiences of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) in kindergartens. The focus of this study is on the usefulness, benefits and applicability of AAC methods in the kindergartens activities. It is interesting to see how the kindergarten teachers experience AAC methods as a support for learning language and communication, because of the fact that all children learn in different ways. The theoretical part is the foundation for the study. It gives an insight into the matter of the subject, and introduces the basic facts about children’s communication and language abilities. The qualitative study was done by interview technique. The group that was studied included three kindergarten teachers from three different kindergartens in Swedish-Finland. To get more diverse answers the study was done in kindergartens were the occurrence of ACC is more frequent than in most kindergartens. The interviews were recorded and transcribed to ease the process of analyzing. Meaning concentration was a suitable analyzing method because the amount of gained material was large. The result indicates that the three kindergarten teachers use AAC for different purposes. In contrary all the informants use the alternative methods as a support for the language and communication abilities of the children. In comparison with the theory can be stated that the kindergarten teachers use similar methods with those that are listed in the literature, but the black and white support pictures are seen to be outdated. The kindergarten teachers don´t see any downsides with using the AAC methods but they all don´t concur over if all the children benefit of the methods. This thesis gives a picture of how AAC methods can be used in practice, especially with children between the ages of three and six. There´s near to no practical advice in the literature about AAC and this thesis can therefore be useful for later studies.