Special Pedagogy
Learning from teaching
In the following section, I describe what our group has done for our teaching session and what I have learned from preparation and implementation processes.
Topic
As a vocational/professional teacher, how can you support a student with special needs? (Miten ammatillisena opettajana voit tukea erityisen tuen tarpeessa olevaa opiskelijaa?) Mention various school levels.
Special education and inclusive education in Finland (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2018)
Special support includes special educational needs for various cases: physically, such as illness, disability or reduced functional ability, as well as psychologically and socially. In basic schools in Finland, based on legislation, a special class is not more than ten students or, in some cases, not more than eight students (Basic Education Decree, § 2, Amendment 893/2010). In addition, classes for students with what is called “very severely delayed development” cannot have more than six students.
Special support is provided for students who cannot adequately achieve their growth, development or learning objectives through general support at schools. It is the duty of the municipality and the individual school to include students with special educational needs (SEN) in the mainstream education system. The primary option is including students with SEN in mainstream classes, and providing special needs education in small teaching groups when it is necessary. When this option is not applicable, the second option: providing special needs education in a special group, class or school, should be provided.
Special support and intensified support (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2018)
Provision of special support requires education providers to make a decision in writing. If the student is considered not to need further special support, a decision must be taken to terminate support measures, and the pupil starts to receive intensified support.
Students who need regular support for their learning or school attendance or who need several forms of support at the same time must be provided with intensified support that is based on a pedagogical assessment in accordance with a learning plan prepared for them. Intensified support is provided when general support is not sufficient.
Teacher’s role
In order to support students with SEN, teachers should:
1) take the teaching group, as well as the different abilities and needs of each student into account while developing and providing instructions.
2) be open to interacting with their environments.
3) apply both pedagogical and social knowledge and skills to work together when solving problems at school.
4) co-operate with parents and guardians, other teachers and staff members and different experts.
5) guide students to recognise their own resources, learning-related strengths and development challenges.
6) handle tasks relating to guidance, counselling and pupil welfare.
7) develop individual education plan (IEP) to provide best suitable support for each student with SEN.
Individual Education Plan (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2018)
When a special support is issued for a student, in order to implement the support, individual education plan (IEP) should be provided. IEP serves to provide persistent support for the student’s individual learning and growth process. It is a target plan relating to the student’s learning and schooling, which covers educational content, pedagogical methods and other necessary support measures.
In practice, IEP consists of:
1) List of subjects with objectives and core contents
2) Monitoring and assessment progress
3) Various ways to demonstrate skills and knowledge
4) Assessment methods and times
5) Learner’s self-assessment
The plan must be revised as required, at least once per school year, to correspond to the student’s needs. The IEP is revised whenever the learner’s support needs or teaching objectives change. IEP is discussed and developed jointly subject teacher, special education teacher, classroom teacher, guardians and student. (cf. Personalised learning in my blog post of implementation 02)
Special education in different education levels (Official Statistics of Finland, 2018)
Comprehensive schools
In Finland, intensified support was received by 59,700 (10.6 %), special support was received by 45,400 (8.1 %) of comprehensive school students (2018). The number of students who receive special support is increasing. Yle's news article (2018) highlighted teachers’ heavy workload due to inclusive education and the increasing number of students with SEN (Integration of special needs pupils adds to teacher workloads, 2018). The article says “While the idea of a shared classroom that meets all of the kids' needs is a great in principle, it creates a highly stressful work environment for classroom teachers”.
Vocational schools
The number of students in vocational education leading to a qualification having received special education has grown at least since 2004. In 2016, there were 120,357 students in vocational education for young people (curriculum-based basic vocational education provided by educational institutions), of whom 19 percent were special education students. Most special education students (86 %) in vocational education were studying in vocational education institutions. 13 % of special education students attended special vocational education institutions. And around 1 % other educational institutions providing vocational education.
Overall 84 % of special education students were studying in the same groups with other students (inclusive education).
Preparation for the lesson
Using videos to engage students
This week, we chose to implement lesson rather traditional lecture style. The reason is that the topic: special pedagogy, may not be very familiar topic for many of the students, thus we considered that it would be easier for the students to understand basic concepts with simple lecturing using the slides. When the students do not have much previous experience or existing knowledge, simple lecturing may be more effective to grasp holistic idea than participating in an activity.
To make the traditional lecturing style lesson more engaging, we used videos. We prepared four videos, which introduce or summarise aspects related to special education. By watching videos, the students were able to expect what we (teachers) would explain next or to reflect on what we (teachers) had explained. In addition, watching videos on their own browser via link provided, helped the students to keep engaged. Because the students had chance to “do something” or “interact with teacher” during lesson, they were not only a passive listeners (see my blog post of “How can present Virtual Environments be made versatile and activating?" in implementation 01).
Flow of preparation
In this week, the coordinator suggested reading materials and structure the outline of the lesson. We had three times of online meetings during the preparation period. In the first meeting, we shared our understanding towards the topic based on the suggested materials and built common ground. We divided tasks and agreed on the deadline. My task was doing research on IEP. In addition, I developed lesson plan with time table. In the second meeting, we gathered individual tasks and discussed the content which should be developed further. After the meeting, I took responsibility of finalising the content and visual of the slides.
Implementation of the lesson
The lesson went very smoothly. In fact, we had extra time for discussion where the students were actively participated. Transition of slides to videos were smooth as the students were already familiar with the way.
Reflection of my teaching
While explaining, I tried to relate to the contents of the videos, as well as the contents from previous slides or slides which comes later. In this way, students are able to connect new information with previously learned information, or students are able to be expect what will be explained in later slides. Activating existing knowledge and help get ready to new information is useful way to support students’ learning.
I was able to introduce news article about issues in inclusive special education. In addition to the teaching materials, this kind of information would help students to expand their interests and deepen understanding of the topic with multiple perspectives.
It was the second time for me to teach together with another group member. We had four videos in the lesson, each of us explained roughly between videos. In this way, transition of speaker went smoothly.
I noticed when I was listening other group’s lecture as a student that in the intro part (the first page or when we start talking about the topic), it is very important to have some kind of step to activate students. Students may not be prepared or had no idea what teacher is going to talk. Activating questions, such as “What is your experience about the topic?” Or “Have you faced any situation?”, would help students to get ready to study and lead to the topic of teaching. In this time, we did not have such activating question but went straight to the contents. Next time I will use activating questions/ images/ videos/ quotes in the beginning to help students to get ready for learning.
Learning from other groups
What does the concept of inclusion mean in practise? What does the concept of accessibility mean in an educational context? What is a pedagogically accessible learning environment? (Think, besides brick&mortar environments, online, video etc.) Give examples.
Important notes from the lecture
Accessibility in educational contexts means the process of courses, curriculum, teaching methods, and various facilities in order to meet the needs of people from a variety of backgrounds and abilities. Teachers should prepare learning environments as well as teaching and learning materials for various educational needs. In practice, for instance, teachers may give option to take the course online for students who are not able to attend, prepare multiple learning materials (e.g., reading materials and videos) if needed. In addition, videos may need subtitles to support students who have difficulty in listening.
The group introduced the following video which explains individualised and inclusive education in early childhood education. The video highlighted core concepts of special education in Finland, such as individualisation and inclusion, student’s (child’s) participation, need-based approach, corporation for support, and assessment of pedagogical consideration and implementation in individual education plan.
Good practices
The group provided informative table which describes perspectives of disability. By introducing this table in the beginning, we were able to built shared understanding of the terms and concepts.
The group also prepared a descriptive figure which highlights differences among “exclusion”, “segmentation”, “integration”, and “inclusion”. While inclusive education is one of the keywords of special education, the term is quite abstract and hard to picture what it means in practice. The visually descriptive figure which compares the four terms clearly helped me to understand the concept of inclusion.
The group held five discussion in 45 minutes lesson. It was great way to make the students participate in the lesson. The discussion topics were supportive for my learning and integrated well with the contents. For instance, the discussion topic: “How to overcome/reduce such issues in practice?” made me think the statistical data they explained in practice. The discussion topic: “How about inclusion in your house country’s education system?” made me connect information they provided with my existing knowledge.
What do the student welfare services (in Finnish: opiskeluhuolto) mean in vocational schools and in higher education?
Important notes from the lecture
The education providers must provide students with information about student welfare, and guide students to ask help from student welfare services when needed.
Student welfare act (Finlex 1287/2013)
Student welfare includes:
1) school and student health services
2) psychological and curatorial services in student care
3) multidisciplinary individualised study care
4) the social services provided by the education organiser
(see also my blog post of Competence in Laws and Amendments)
Objectives for students welfare in Finland include:
1) promoting student learning, health and well-being and inclusion and prevent problems;
2) promoting the well-being, health and safety, accessibility, community-based activities of the educational community and the study environment, and cooperation between the home and the educational institution;
3) providing early support for those in need; preventative
4) ensuring equal access to and quality of student support services for students;
5) strengthening the implementation and management of study care as a functional entity and as a multidisciplinary collaboration.
The group introduced the video which summarise Finnish way of special education. While in many countries, special support is provided to students when issues occur, in Finland, it is considered that special support should be provided before issues occur. Providing early support is a way to prevent potential issues due to special education needs. When a student have problems to understand the content, s/he receive intensified support, being taught in a smaller group. Thus, many students actually receive special support. So the way Finnish schools support students with special education needs is making special education not “special” but “normal”.
Individual work
What were the key findings in your group’s discussion? What observations did you make comparing your results to the other groups’ discussion?
Key findings in our group’s discussion were as follows:
1) The number of students with special education needs is increasing in different education levels.
2) Inclusion of students with SEN into mainstream classroom is widely implemented in Finland.
3) Students’ support is based on IEP.
Comparing with other groups’ discussion, core ideas were similar in all three groups, such as inclusive education. Additionally, other groups remarked:
1) Student’s active participation
2) Preventive special support
3) Need-based approach
From comparison of three groups’ discussions, I conclude that special education in Finland is focusing on individual students’ needs. Form of providing special education is inclusive, which means including students with SEN in mainstream classrooms rather than separate them. I consider that inclusive education has been growing in Finland because of intensive focus on individual student’s needs. In addition, financial strategies, such as reducing special schools and classes (Integration of special needs pupils adds to teacher workloads, 2018), as well as small number of private schools may encourage implementation of inclusive education.
References
European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (2018). Country information for Finland - Systems of support and specialist provision. Retrieved December 15 2019, from https://www.european-agency.org/country-information/finland/systems-of-support-and-specialist-provision
Finlex (2013, December 30). Oppilas- ja opiskelijahuoltolaki. Retrieved December 18 2019, from https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2013/20131287
Integration of special needs pupils adds to teacher workloads (2018). Yle News. Retrieved December 18 2019, from https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/integration_of_special_needs_pupils_adds_to_teacher_workloads/10442186 Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Special education [e-publication]. ISSN=1799-1617. Helsinki: Statistics Finland. Retrieved December 15 2019, from http://www.stat.fi/til/erop/index_en.html
School Practices. (n.d.). Retrieved December 15, 2019, from https://www.mayk.fi/en/school-practices/.
Ström, K. & Hannus-Gullmets, B. (2015). From special (class) teacher to special educator – the Finnish case. In Cameron, D. L., & Thygesen, R. (Eds.) Transitions in the field of special education. Theoretical perspectives and implications for practice. Waxmann. 2015. Retrieved December 15 2019, from https://www.fduv.fi/Site/Data/2594/Files/skola%20och%20utbildning/From%20special%20(class)%20teacher%20to%20special%20educator%20%E2%80%93%20the%20Finnish%20case_Kristina%20Stroem%20och%20Britta%20Hannus-Gullmets.pdf
Student support services. (n.d.). Retrieved December 15, 2019, from https://www.hel.fi/peruskoulut/fi/koulut/ressu-comprehensive-school/teachingandlearning/student-support-services/.
(Last update: 18.12.2019)
