Browsing by Author "Virva-Auvinen, Elisa"

The purpose of this research is to describe ways to prevent social exclusion at school. This research was executed as a systematic literature review. The model of social exclusion as a process by Jahnukainen (2001) was used as a theoretical framework in this research. This model recognizes school dropout as one of the stages of social exclusion which is why this research focuses on preventing social exclusion by increasing school attachment. Social exclusion is a subject that has been researched widely but there exists no common definition of what social exclusion is. Youngsters have not been researched as much as young adults and usually research concentrates on those who are deeper in the process of social exclusion. The aim of this research was to find scientific publications about how to prevent social exclusion before the process has even begun. The research material included five scientific articles about teenagers’ social exclusion and school dropout. Three of the articles included social exclusion intervention models executed at school grounds. The other two articles handled social exclusion prevention through school attachment. The material was searched from Ebscohost database by using different combinations of the following terms: social exclusion, social inclusion, secondary school, adolescents, prevention, intervention, program, students, teachers, preventing in schools, school dropout, preventing school dropout, school failure. This research showed that the factors that influence school attachment have many connections with preventing social exclusion. Especially school’s atmosphere, school grounds, co-operation between school, home and society, sense of belonging to school, family background and teachers’ attitudes and well-being had an impact on school attachment. Three ways of preventing social exclusion came up from the research material: different teaching practices, supporting teachers and taking the student’s whole life into consideration. Especially teachers were given many different roles in social exclusion prevention. Teachers were seen as objects, instruments and collaborators in social exclusion prevention.