This research focuses on Special Needs Education (SNE) in Kenyan Public Primary Schools: Exploring Government Policy and Teachers’ understandings. At a time when Kenya is introducing reforms with a view to addressing broad national objectives and providing universal primary education (UPE) after the massive enrolment increases arising from the free primary education declaration (FPE), it was important to establish teachers’ understandings on SEN. The study was undertaken in 27 primary schools in urban, municipal and rural parts of Kenya. A phenomenological qualitative approach was mainly used and data were collected from teachers through a survey comprising: (i) 159 self-administered questionnaires ii) Nine in-depth interviews. From the results of a pilot study, necessary adaptations were made for the main study. The data provided insights to teachers’ teaching strategies, impacts of mainstreaming, factors that prevent the participation of children said to have SEN, challenges in meeting the diverse needs in the classroom and the support they may require in providing more engaging and effective learning instructions. The findings show that many teachers lack a repertoire of learning and teaching strategies appropriate for addressing barriers to learning and providing individualized approaches in the classrooms. Some teachers were positive about teaching children said to have SEN but lacked the infrastructure of support and guidance, were confused by different terminologies and found the concept of SEN not to be enabling. What teachers are calling for is more training to help them develop strategies which are responsive to the identified learning difficulties. Through Documentary Analysis of the Kenya National Special Needs Education (SNE) Policy Framework, Ministry of Education (MoE, 2009), it was identified that the policy is difficult and ambiguous for teachers to implement. The policy fails to include salient definitions to facilitate a common way of addressing children said to have SEN which results in them being labelled. The recommendations of the research indicate that children’s unique needs be made transparent and addressed using effective individualized education plans to influence and maintain high expectations, positive and enriched ways of teaching in order to improve the children’s learning opportunities as well as other extracurricular activities. The national policy should be revised to include feasible targets in order to facilitate on-going evaluation and embed definitions of key words which are pivotal to planning, assessment, identification, provision and placement of children said to have SEN. Suggestions for further research have also been included.

published_or_final_version / Psychiatry / Master / Master of Philosophy

The overall aim of this study is to achieve the increased knowledge of the use of the counselling methods in the student counsellors' work and to find the possibilities for development. Two questions are used as guidelines: Which counselling methods do student counsellors use in their work in schools? How can the current education for the student counsellors be supplemented? The analysis of the interviews with six counsellors in Stockholm's administrative province showed that even uneducated counsellors use the same counselling methods as the educated ones. All these methods which are used remind of the known counselling methods that are the part of the current education for the student counsellors. In general counsellors experienced that the education for the counsellors should be supplemented within the field children with special needs and that conversation's methodology is the essence of the counselling work.

According to Swedish school policy documents, every teacher’s assignment is to individually adapt the education to meet every student’s needs. There are no exact guidelines about how to make these adaptations. The purpose of this study is to investigate how six teachers interpret the policy documents and how they, according to themselves, work to achieve this. This study is built on six interviews with teachers who work with children in the ages from seven to ten. The theoretical perspectives of this study are based on John Dewey’s thoughts regarding every human being having different needs and the importance of meeting those needs. The other perspective is Lev Vygotskij’s zone of proximal development which means that learning is done by being helped by someone who has greater knowledge. The conclusions of this study are that the teachers all think that it is important to adapt the education to every individual. Some of the teachers give their students the same assignments, but give them different amounts of time to finish them. Other teachers expect different results depending on the student’s prerequisites. All of the teachers find it difficult to adapt the education to every student since there are no guidelines about how to do it.

Syfte: Undersöka huruvida patienterna känner att den individuella vårdplanen de har fått har varittill nytta och vilka upplevelser de har kring den. Metod: En deskriptiv kvalitativ studie medsemistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes höstterminen 2013 vid Uppsala Universitet i samråd medRegionallt Cancercentrum. Informanterna i studien var patienter med bröstcancer ochkolorektalcancer vid Akademiska sjukhuset i Uppsala och Gävle sjukhus som använt denindividuella vårdplanen. Resultat: Samtliga patienter kände att den individuella vårdplanen varpositiv och till hjälp, men flera önskade mer och djupare information. Av de sex patienter somintervjuades var samtliga nöjda med sin kontaktsjuksköterska. En patient förstod inte alls syftet medvårdplanen hon fått. Patienterna i stort var nöjda med sin möjlighet att påverka tider ochbehandlingar och sjukvårdspersonalen kunde anpassa sig efter patientens önskemål. Självavårdplanen såg patienterna främst som ett schema som de kunde blicka tillbaks till. Flera patientervad missnöjda med att deras anhöriga inte fick mer hjälp i form av stöd och samtal. Slutsats: Detsammantagna resultatet visar individuell vårdplan var positiv för patienterna men att det behövs enbättre implantering. Resultatet visar också att kontaktsjuksköterskor är en uppskattad profession.Projektet med vårdplanen hade inte kommit tillräckligt långt för att denna intervjustudie skullegenerera tillräckligt utvecklande svar. / Aim: Examine whether patients feel that the individual care plan they have received had anbeneficial effect and what experiences they have around it. Method: A descriptive qualitative studyusing semi-structured interviews were conducted the fall of 2013 at the University of Uppsala inconsultation with Regionalt Cancercentrum. The informants in the study were patients with breastandcolorectalcancer, who all had an individual care plan. The study were conducted at AkademiskaUniversity Hospital and at Gävle Hospital. Results: All of the patients felt that the individual careplan was beneficial and helpful, but many wanted more and deeper information. Of the six patientsinterviewed were all satisfied with their contact nurse. One patient did not understand the purposeof the care plan she had. Patients in general were satisfied with their ability to influence the timesand treatments and the medical personnel were able to adapt to the patient's wishes. The patientssaw the care plan primarily as a schedule that they could look back to. Many patients weredissatisfied with that their relatives did not get more help in the form of support and calls. Conclusion: The combined results show an individual care plan was beneficial to patients, but thatit needed a better implementation. The result also shows that the contact nurses are an appreciatedprofession. The project with the care plan had not gone far enough for this interview study to beable to generate enough elaborated responses.

The goal of this study was to investigate the career counselling needs at a school in a deprived community. High School learners form part of the future workforce that will influence this country's economy. Therefore it is necessary to focus on the development of a workforce that has the basic skills. Career counselling is therefore seen as the field of education by means of which these skills need to be addressed, but to present successful career counselling, the needs of the learners and teachers have to be taken into consideration. The staff and pupils of a Secondary School from a deprived community in Potchefstroom were used for the purposes of this study. The group consisted of 15 participants in total, of which 10 were pupils (6 girls and 4 boys) in grades 10 to 12, and 5 teachers (4 ladies and 1 gentleman). In order to determine the participants' experiences with regard to Career Counselling, qualitative research methodology was used by means of phenomenological principles in interviews. A specific effort was made to give an account of the extent and nature of this need, as well as to determine what the pupils' needs for Career Counselling are and what the limitations are for the teacher regarding career counselling. The results showed that pupils see career counselling as important and that they have a need for this field of education, that the current career education sessions at school do not fulfil their needs for career guidance, that learners indicate that they have specific needs regarding career guidance, that their peers show indifference towards receiving career guidance and also that their career choices are influenced by their home backgrounds. Furthermore the results showed that the teachers acknowledge the importance of career counselling at schools, the need for better career guidance, that certain factors exist that influence career guidance in a negative way and also that they have specific needs regarding career guidance. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

This study was undertaken to determine if persons with disabilities encounter difficulties in accessing dental care in Ontario, to identify barriers to accessing dental care and to determine if persons with disabilities and caregivers value oral health. Community organizations providing supports for persons with disabilities were recruited to circulate a questionnaire to their members via mail or internet. Fourteen community organizations mailed out 1755 paper questionnaires. A response rate of 23.9% was calculated from original surveys returned. In total, 634 paper and internet surveys were deemed valid. Data analysis was conducted using the chi square test and logistic regression. Most (73.2%) persons with disabilities, primarily developmental disabilities, were able to access dental services in Ontario. Personal internal factors were more likely to act as barriers to dental care than external factors. The majority of caregivers and persons with disabilities believe that oral health is an important part of overall health.

The purpose of the study was to find out how teachers in a school in Kenya conducted the education of mathematics in standard 4-6. The focus was how the teachers worked with children in need of special support in mathematics.To find out the purpose a case study was made with two interviews and seven observations with four teachers on a rural school in Kenya. The following issues were: Which standards were there in the classrooms during lessons in mathematics in Kenya? How did the teachers express the view of children in need of special support? The main conclusion was that different teachers teaching in mathematics looked the same.The teacher was standing in front of the blackboard where the teaching occurred and the pupils were sitting lined up in their benches. The teaching of the pupils was about repetition and imitates the teacher and mostly filling the gap that the teacher made them say. Pupils in need of special support got their help through extra lessons and homework but the teachers thought that it was hard to help every child when there was only one teacher in the classroom. / Studiens syfte var att undersöka hur lärare i en kenyansk skola bedrev sin matematikundervisning i årskurs 4-6. Fokus las på hur lärarna arbetade med barn i behov av särskilt stöd i matematiken. För att besvara syftet gjordes en fallstudie med två intervjuer och sju observationer med fyra lärare på en landsbygdsskola i Kenya. Följande frågeställningar användes; Vilka klassrumsnormer rådde under en kenyansk matematiklektion? Hur uttrycktes lärarnas syn på barn i behov av särskilt stöd i matematik?De slutsatser som framkom var att olika lärares matematikundervisning liknade varandra.Läraren stod framme vid svarta tavlan där de ledde undervisningen och eleverna satt uppradade i bänkar. Undervisningen byggde på att eleverna upprepade och härmade läraren genom att eleverna det flesta gångerna fyllde i sista ordet i meningen som läraren fick dem att säga. Elever i behov av särskilt stöd fick hjälp i form av extrauppgifter och extralektioner men lärarna ansåg att det var svårt att hjälpa alla elever då det var många barn på få pedagoger.

The educational process in the pedagogy is very important. The teacher planning the process of education has to consider the needs of every child and help every pupil to teach how to learn and to reach the optimal results. The schoolchildren of different needs attend the school, some are good at one subject, some - at other, some are quick, some – slow, some have one or other disability, some are left-handed, etc. Besides the children growing up in the different environment, besides these with one of the parents in pedagogically neglected families, who have the problems of behavior, appeared the immigrants and children, whose parents are moved abroad. The different models of planning that individualize the process of education, the surroundings of the development, the methods and means can be helpful for it. There were no the surveys of planning for primary class teachers until now. In this work referring to the pedagogical and psychological literature, the results of questioning primary class teachers, schoolchildren and their parents, my long time experience of pedagogical work in summary the singularities of planning primary education process for schoolchildren of different needs paying attention to the development of schoolchildren with special needs larger to apply the active methods of (self) development especially using the method of game and organizing the education of parents.

The research was made in the year 2005 - 2006. It’s goal was to establish head’s of educational institutions used staff motivation means and ascertain if they satisfy personnel’s needs. The main tasks of this work are: to establish in which ways heads of educational institutions are achieving to improve teacher’s work quality; what are teacher’s needs; find out what defines the school as an attractive place to work; also establish which factors have influence to head’s of schools opinion building up the personnel’s motivation policy. These are the methods which were used for this research: 1) scientific psychological, pedagogical (educational) literature analysis; 2) interrogatory by questionnaires; 3) research data’s mathematical statistical analysis. There were 150 respondents who participated in this research, including 100 teachers from secondary schools of Lithuania and 50 heads of secondary schools of Lithuania (in town: Vilnius, Kaunas, Rokiškis, Alytus, Panevėžys, Marijampolė, Utena, Molėtai, Anykščiai). The results showed that leaders give most importance for stimulation by praise, and less importance for promoting. The leaders often make conditions to raise qualification and give possibility to use the newest literature and supplies to achieve better teacher’s work quality. But pedagogues prefer higher payment and acknowledgement. Most teachers’ dissatisfaction because of work settles bad administrative work and low social status. The chosen employees’... [to full text]