This dissertation is composed of three articles analyzing the use of sensory rooms in schools to support student need as well as its use in other settings. Sensory rooms are rooms equipped with a variety of resources, strategies, and equipment to support an individual in de-escalation. They have been implemented in various settings including schools, psychiatric units, and correctional facilities. The first article in this dissertation explores the current available research on the use of sensory rooms in various settings. Research shows that sensory rooms are used in a wide variety of settings including but not limited to therapeutic settings, educational settings, and correctional settings. This article will explore how sensory rooms are used in each of these settings, as well as the effectiveness of the space on the targeted population. The second article of this dissertation explains a study conducted to identify how a sensory room is currently being used in a school setting. The study takes place in a school in an urban district. This specific school houses the partial-inclusion/sub-separate social-emotional/behavioral special education program. Special education staff involved in the program identified a need for a sensory room and worked together to create one. This study identifies how teachers are using the sensory room, how effective it is in supporting students in de-escalation as well as how teachers are supporting students in using the sensory room. The third article in this dissertation connects the research described in the first article with the findings of the study conducted to create a practitioner’s guide to creating a sensory room. This article will bring all of the information together to provide cohesive insight into how to most successfully create a sensory room in a specific setting. Information from this article can inform educators, therapists, clinicians, and service providers to create the most effective sensory room for their targeted population in their own setting.

Syftet med mitt arbete är att ta del av pedagogers erfarenheter av att arbeta med sinnligt lärande på en gymnasiesärskola. Hur skapar pedagogerna en kreativ lärmiljö för sina elever? Använder de sig av några sinnliga lärmetoder och i så fall hur? Min metod består bl.a. avdeltagande observationer och semistrukturerade intervjuer i en etnografisk studie. Analysen har visat att innebörden av ett framgångsrikt pedagogiskt arbete med dessa ungdomar på gymnasiesärskolan kan ses som en god praktik där fenomen som individuella mål, erfarenhet, intresse, delaktighet, sinnligt lärande, upplevelse, synliggörande samt att lära av varandra är centrala och viktiga delar. Min uppfattning är att pedagogerna försöker variera sina lärmiljöer och använder sig av sinnliga lärmetoder i undervisningen. Hela läsårets löpande arbete läggs upp i olika tema-moduler där undervisningen sker både inne och ute i natur och kulturlandskap. För vidare forskning kan det vara intressant att ta reda på om lärdomar från en lärmiljö kan överföras till en annan lärmiljö, och om ungdomarnas sociala erfarenheter och lärande i sinnliga rum blir överfört till vardagen hemma eller till skolarbetet generellt. / The subject of my paper is to examine the experiences of teachers using a multi-sensory teaching approach when working with pupils with learning disabilities in upper secondary school. How can they create a creative learning environment for their students? Do they use any multisensory teaching methods and, if so, how? My methodology has mainly consisted in participating observation and semi-structured interviews in an ethnographic study. Analysis has shown that the significance of a successful educational effort with these young people at upper secondary school can be seen as a good practice, in which phenomena such as individual objectives, experience, interest, participation, multi-sensory learning, experiential learning, visualization and learning from each other, are central and essential elements. My view is that the teachers try to vary their learning environments and that they are using different multi-sensory teaching methods. All the day-to-day schoolwork is set-up in different theme modules, where teaching takes place both indoors and outdoors in wilderness and cultivated landscapes. For further research, it might be interesting to find out if the lessons learned from one learning environment can be transferred to another, and if the social experiences and lessons learned in multi-sensory environments will be transferred to the young people’s everyday home life or to their schoolwork, in general.