The purpose of this study is to gain additional knowledge and a greater understanding of pupils experiences of joining a special teaching group.  The study focuses on pupils with special needs and the ambition has been to get a student perspective of how they perceive their education with special support. In addition, the study is concerned with how pupils perceive their special support and whether this has any relevance to their learning, development and future goals. This study is based on Urie Bronfenbrenners theory The ecology of human development. The theoretical perspective highlights the interaction between the pupils and the school environment, which is important for development and learning. The study is based on a qualitative research method in the form of interviews. Ten pupils from two different municipalities have been interviewed. The results show that pupils are positive to the special form of teaching in smaller groups and consider their present situation better than their earlier experience of regular curriculum in large classes. In the special education groups the pupils are able to acquire the knowledge and skills they need in order to achieve their future goals. / Uppsatsens syfte har varit att få ökad kunskap och större förståelse om elevers upplevelser av att gå in en särskild undervisningsgrupp. Studien handlar om elever i behov av särskilt stöd och utgångspunkten har varit att få ett elevperspektiv på hur de upplever sin skolgång med särskilt stöd och belysa deras positiva respektive negativa upplevelser om sin särskilda undervisningsform samt i den ordinarie undervisningen i sin dåvarande klass. Uppsatsen kretsar kring hur eleverna upplever sitt särskilda stöd och huruvida den har någon betydelse för deras lärande och utveckling. Dessutom huruvida eleverna känner att skolan erbjudit tillräckligt med resurser, för att uppnå deras framtida mål. Uppsatsens teoretiska perspektiv belyser samspelet mellan eleven och dess närmiljöer vilket är betydelsefullt för att utveckling och lärande ska ske. Undersökningen baseras på en kvalitativ forskningsmetod i form av intervjuer. Där tio högstadieelever från två olika kommuner har intervjuats. Resultatet av studien visade att eleverna var mer positiva till den särskilda undervisningsformen i en mindre grupp än med den ordinarie undervisningen i stor klass. I den särskilda undervisningen kunde eleverna tillgodose sig kunskaper och färdigheter till skillnad från den ordinarie undervisningen. Den särskilda undervisningen i skolan har haft stor betydelse för deras framtida mål.

The society’s view of pupils with needs of special support in nine-year school has changed over time in Sweden. The teachers’ views of the pupils have had an influence of how the special education process is designed. The aim with my paper is to make a comparative study of how special education teachers in rural schools and schools in Stockholm have designed their work with pupils with needs of special support. Another aim is to investigate whether the special educators, that I have interviewed, perceive any change in design of special education while they have been working as teachers. For my study, I have used interview as a method. I have interviewed seven special education teachers from six different schools, which constitutes the empirical material for my analysis. The theory I have used for the analysis of my empirical material consists of two different perspectives on how special education teachers look at pupils and the design of support for them. The first perspective says that the separate, special education should compensate the pupil for its shortcomings (“excluding”) while the other perspective is critical against the first one and points out that the regular education is the best solution for all pupils’ needs and conditions (“including”), with support from relevant resources. The result of the study shows a similarity between the schools included in my investigation. My conclusion of the investigation is that there are no differences how the special education is conducted, regardless geographical differences. The result from my interviews shows also a change of the view of the pupil and how society and curriculum treat pupils with needs of special support.

Syftet med min studie är att få en förståelse för vilken syn pedagoger har på arbetet med inkludering av barn i behov av särskilt stöd i förskola och förskoleklass. I studien har jag använt mig av metoden kvalitativa intervjuer för att kunna få en djupare förståelse för hur det inkluderande arbetet kan se ut. Resultatet visar att det grundläggande arbetet med inkludering handlar om att alla barn ska har samma rättigheter till delaktighet oavsett vilken svårighet barnet har. Det visar även i resultatet kring det inkluderande arbetet att det krävs ett stort engagemang och en stor kompetens för att kunna möjliggöra inkludering av barn i behov av särskilt stöd. / The purpose of the study is to get an understanding of which view educators have on the work with inclusion of children in need of special support in the preschool and the preschool classes. In the study I have used the method qualitative interviews to get a deeper understanding for how the including work may look. The result shows that the basic work with inclusion is that all children shall have the same rights to inclusion regardless of which difficulty the child has. It also shows that the including work requires a large involvement and competence to enable inclusion of children in need of special support.

It has been shown in various research contexts that action programs do not always work as they should, even though there are clear guidelines on how the action programs should be designed and used. The aim of this study is to illustrate which processes that occur before an action program as well as how these processes lead to action that will give the student the support he or she needs. Through qualitative interviews with eight teachers, I have tried to answer the questions that I created. I have tried to answer my research questions that I have made based on the purpose. The questions are; What type of inquiry will be done if a student risk to not reach the knowledge goals? How will the inquiry support the action program? In what way does the action program support pupils in special needs? The result of my survey show that the survey being done for an action program is very individual-focused and that the mapping rarely shows on the teachers role or school environment to students who fall into special needs. It also shows that teachers find it difficult to identify the students who have general learning difficulties. It also emerged that there are teachers who do not believe that the action program helps students in need of special support, that educators believe that it depends on many different factors if the action program becomes to support the students or not. One factor are including the teachers themselves. Conclusions to be drawn from the survey is such that it is the pedagogue attitude toward the action program that governs whether it helps the student in need of special assistance or not. A further conclusion is that the action programs structure are similar to the formative assessment within the assessment theory, assessment for learning. / Det har i olika forskningssammanhang framkommit att åtgärdsprogrammen inte alltid fungerar som de ska, trots att det finns tydliga direktiv om hur åtgärdsprogrammen ska utformas och användas. Syftet med detta examensarbete var att belysa vilka processer som sker innan ett åtgärdsprogram upprättas samt på vilket sätt dessa processer leder till det åtgärdsprogram som ska ge eleven det stöd som han eller hon behöver. Genom kvalitativa intervjuer med åtta pedagoger har jag försökt besvara de frågeställningar som jag utifrån detta syfte utformat. De frågeställningar jag utgått ifrån var: Vilken typ av utredning, kartläggning sker om en elev riskerar att inte uppnå kunskapsmålen? Påverkas utformandet av åtgärdsprogrammet utifrån den utredning, kartläggning som gjorts? På vilket sätt stödjer åtgärdsprogrammet eleven som är i behov av särskilt stöd? Resultatet av min undersökning visade att den kartläggning som görs inför ett åtgärdsprogram är väldigt individfokuserad och att kartläggningen sällan visar på lärarens roll eller skolmiljöns betydelse för eleven som hamnar i behov av särskilt stöd. Det visar även att pedagogerna upplever svårigheter att kartlägga de elever som har generella inlärningssvårigheter. Det visade även att det finns pedagoger som inte anser att åtgärdsprogrammet hjälper elever i behov av särskilt stöd, att pedagogerna anser att det beror på många olika faktorer om åtgärdsprogrammet blir till något stöd för eleverna som är i behov av stöd eller inte, däribland pedagogerna själva. Slutsatser som kan dras av undersökningen är till exempel att det är pedagogens inställning till åtgärdsprogrammet som styr om det hjälper eleven som är i behov av särskilt stöd eller inte. En ytterligare slutsats var att åtgärdsprogrammens uppbyggnad liknar den formativa bedömningen inom assessment teorin, bedömning för lärande.

Play is the primary activity of childhood. It is connected to other areas of child’s development, therefore through play, children improve skills and abilities. The most common categorization of play is into the developmental and social aspect of play. The highest level of play is achieved when the true social play occurs. The ideal setting for social play to occur is early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions. ECEC in Croatia is striving for inclusion of children with difficulties/special needs, as stated in Croatian ECEC leading documents. In this study, these children will be referred to as children in need of special support since is perceived that name reflects the bio-psycho-social model of disability that recognizes issues in child´s functioning, apart from the child itself, coming from the environment. All the services, for children in need of special support, including ECEC are disability-based. It has been found that children in need of special support experience problems during play which affects other domains of development. The purpose of the study is to investigate play of children in need of special support and the factors, i.e., facilitators and barriers for their play. Play of the children in need of special support is chosen to be explored through the perception of their parents and educators with the use of the grounded theory approach. After collecting data through interviews and preformed data analysis, characteristics of play children in need of special support display together with the factors that affect play positively or negatively emerged. Factors were found to affect children’s play directly or indirectly. The most outstanding facilitators for children’s play were found to be the parents’ and educators’ actions and attitudes regarding the importance of play. The most substantial barriers were found to lie in the children’s characteristics concerning play which were tended to be perceived as consequences of their difficulties and diagnosis-based educational and social systems. Furthermore, the schooling system forcing ECEC institutions to focus on early preparedness for academic success, putting play aside emerged as a notable barrier for the play.

The main purpose of the study is to examine different factors that have impact on a child's access to special support from a special educator's perspective. What needs and challenges are prominent in preschool linked to children in need of special support? What role does the special educator have on the basis of the needs and challenges in the preschool? The method we used when we conducted our material for this study was a qualitative research approach. The empirical data has been collected through interviews with eight special educators and the answers were analyzed through systems theory, the individual perspective and the relational perspective. The main result of the study shows that the individual perspective is the prominent approach managing special support in preschools. It has also shown that there is a need of the special educator guiding educators to shift focus to the relational perspective in order to create an including environment in preschools. The prominent results in the study regarding needs has shown to be difficulties of mapping special support, lack of communication and handling children who acts out. The prominent results of challenges have been the lack of time for educators in preschool to reflect on their own role in the change to the relational perspective and to get the emotional support and guiding from a special educator.

Behavior problems are quite common in preschool.  Without effective intervention, children with behavior problems are at risk for rejection by teachers, peers and academic failure. But many children in preschool are not diagnosed and are not getting the support they need. At the age of two, children can show both prosocial and aggressive behavior with peers. Researchers stress the importance of positive peer relationships in childhood, because early childhood is the time children learn how to interact with each other. Through peer interactions children develop social, cognitive and language skills. The aim of this systematic literature review is to identify, and critically analyze, special support in preschool which promote peer interaction of children with behavior problems (age of 2-5 years). Five studies, with different interventions have been found through the search procedure. The results show that all the implemented interventions had positive effect on peer interactions and did reduce behavior problems in the classrooms. The results show that the studies focused on different behavior problems, but aggression was found in all the articles.  The studies were focused on different participants in order to influence behavior problems and peer interactions. Four major groups of special support orientations were found: Teacher oriented support, Team-based oriented support, Peer oriented support and Support oriented toward target children. This review presents a good overview on available special support in preschool settings, however more research still needs to be done.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the concepts of children in need of special support, inclusion and how preschool teachers work with an inclusive approach in preschool with children in need of special support. The research questions that have formed the basis of this study have been 1) What does the preschool teacher's definition of the concept of children in need of special support consist of? 2)What does the preschool teachers' definition of the concept of inclusion around children in need of special support consist of?  3) How do the preschool teachers describe what an inclusive way of working looks like in preschool? 4) What previous experience do preschool teachers have of working based on an inclusive approach? The study was conducted with qualitative interviews of six preschool teachers where the collected data material was analyzed with a thematic analysis. The theory that the study leans towards is soft and hard inclusion as well as the compensatory and the critical perspective. The result showed that all preschool teachers had a consensus of definition of inclusion with children in need of special support. It was described as allowing all children to be part of a community. Furthermore, they had a similar view of the definition of children in need of special support. They believed that it was children with and without a diagnosis, children who need extra support to make everyday life work. Preschool teachers describe an inclusive way of working as an adapted approach, an adapted environment, and activities as well as certain individual-adapted methods. They described that inclusion work is based on children being involved and that the activities are based on democratic values ​​where everyone's equal values ​​are considered. All preschool teachers had a lot of experience of an inclusive approach, but they felt that there were some difficulties.

Denna studies syfte är att bidra med en fördjupad kunskap om hur anpassningar i lärmiljöerna kan bidra till att barn i behov av särskilt stöd och anpassningar inkluderas i förskolans utbildning utifrån sina egna förutsättningar. För att uppnå detta syfte har jag använt mig av deltagande observation, där tre förskollärare observerats under tre förmiddagar. Detta för att synliggöra hur de arbetar med både de sociala och fysiska lärmiljöerna på förskolan för att inkludera alla barn i verksamheten. Studiens resultat har analyserats med ett socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv på kunskap, och ur ett symboliskt interaktionistiskt perspektiv. Som metodologi har etnografi använts. Studiens resultat redogörs utifrån de tre teman som framkommit under de observationer som genomförts. Dessa teman är bildstöd, den fysiska lärmiljöns utformning och förskollärarnas förhållningssätt. Slutsatserna visar på hur de sociala strukturer vi som människor aktivt och omedvetet deltar i, påverkar hur barnens utbildning ser ut, och vilket material som blir aktuellt att arbeta med på förskolan. Det konstateras även att förskollärarna påverkar barnen genom att de själva ingår i en social struktur som påverkat vad de lärt in. Grunden i vad som lärs in, och hur det är strukturerat, är språket. / The purpose of this study is to contribute with an in-depth knowledge regarding how adaptations in the learning environment can contribute to children in need of special support or adaptations being included in the preschool’s education, based on their own conditions. To achieve this purpose, I’ve used participatory observation, where three preschool teachers were observed during three mornings. This was done to make visible how they work with both the social and physical learning environments at the preschool to include all children in the activities. The results of the study have been analyzed with a social constructivist perspective on knowledge, and from a symbolic interactionist perspective. Ethnography has been used as a methodology. The results of the study are reported on the basis of the three themes that emerged during the observations that were carried out. These themes are image support, the design of the physical learning environment and the preschool teachers’ approach. The conclusions show how the social structures we as humans actively and unconsciously participate in, affect how the children’s education looks like, and what material becomes relevant to work with in preschool. It is also stated that the preschool teachers influence the children by themselves being part of a social structure that has influenced what they have learned. The basis of what is learned, and how it is structured, is the language.

Den här studien syftar till att synliggöra hur elevassistenter som arbetar hos elever med synnedsättning upplever sitt uppdrag och yrkesroll. Studien utgår från en fenomenologisk ansats och tidigare forskning. Studiens resultat grundar sig på elevassistentens berättelser om sina upplevelser och erfarenheter. Fenomenologin står fast vid att respondentens upplevelser och erfarenheter är det som är i fokus i studien. Studien har genomförts med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Respondenterna kontaktades av syncentralen eller fått information från specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheterna om studiens syfte och mål. Studien bygger på berättelser från fyra elevassistenter om deras upplevelser och erfarenheter kring uppdraget samt yrkesrollen. Resultatet visar på oklara förhållanden gällande elevassistentens uppdrag och yrkesroll i skolans verksamhet. Det framgår att elevassistenterna huvudsakligen arbetar med hjälpmedel, syntolkning eller lärarens arbetsuppgifter. I det framgår även att skolledningen behöver utveckla sin kunskap kring elevassistentens uppdrag och yrkesroll hos elever med synnedsättning. Fortbildning både efterfrågas och behövs inom hela denna verksamhet. / This study aims to highlight how student assistants working with students with visual impairment perceive their assignment and professional role. The study is based on a phenomenological approach and previous research. The study results are based on the student assistant's stories about their impressions and experiences. The phenomenology firmly holds that the respondent's impressions and experiences are in the focus of the study. The study was conducted with semi-structured interviews. The respondents were contacted by the vision center or received information from the special education school authorities about the purpose and objectives of the study. The study is based on stories from four student assistants about their impressions and experiences regarding the assignment and the professional role. The results show ambiguous relationships regarding student assistant assignments and professional role in school activities. It can be seen that the student assistants mainly work with aids, visual interpretation or the teacher's tasks. It is also evident that the school management needs to develop their knowledge regarding the assignment and the professional role of the student assistant for students with visual impairment and continuing education is needed throughout the operations.