Browsing by Subject "early childhood special education"

Positive pedagogy has grown as an area of interest in the educational field during the last few years. Enthusiasm towards the topic comes from the urge to improve pedagogical methods in which a child’s involvement and experience of well-being could be increased within the whirlpool of a constantly more diverse and hectic society. Positive pedagogy has been examined in daycare and schools as well as in working life in Finland and new intervention models to increase well-being are being developed constantly. The topic has provoked discussion and interest widely, also in the field of special education but research within the field has so far been scarce. This research directs towards early childhood special education. By interviewing early childhood special education teachers I found out how significant they thought positive pedagogy was in the early childhood education of children with special needs. I chose five early childhood special education teachers from the Helsinki metropolitan area to participate in the research based on recommendations. The special education teachers worked either as the teacher of an integrated special needs group or as a special education teacher in a normal group of children co-operating with a preschool or kindergarten teacher. The material was collected during November and December of 2016 by using themed inter-views. Material based content analysis was used to construe the interviews. Based on the results, the participating teachers believed positive pedagogy to be a highly significant pedagogical procedure for supporting the development and education of children with special needs. Pedagogy concentrating on positivity and a child’s specialties was seen to have a positive impact on the self-esteem of a child and the formation of peer relation-ships. It was also seen to help an already starting social exclusion from turning into a nega-tive spiral and enable positive progression instead. Positive pedagogy appeared more as a perception of humanity and a view on education or an attitude than as a separate pedagogi-cal method or model.