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Public Defence: Stine Solberg

Master Stine Solberg at the Department of Special Needs Education will defend the dissertation "Supporting Teachers in Their Work with Shy Students. A multi-method study of how schools and school leadership teams support teachers’ work with children who are perceived as shy" for the degree of Philosophiae doctor.

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Photo: Shane Colvin / UiO

Click here to attend the trial lecture and public defence via Zoom

Trial lecture - time and place

"How can distinct interventions for certain groups of children seem appropriate in relation to the ethics of inclusion?"

4th of March mars, 10 am, Aud. 1 Helga Engs Hus

Adjudication committee

  • 1st Opponent Professor Simon Gibbs, Newcastle University, United Kingdom
  • 2nd Opponent Professor May Britt Postholm, NTNU
  • Committee Chair Professor Christian Brandmo, University of Oslo

Chair of defence

Professor Øistein Anmarkrud, University of Oslo

Supervisors

Additional information

This thesis is in the field of special needs education, more precisely psychosocial difficulties. The aim of this thesis is to examine how schools and school leadership teams support teachers in their work with shy students, addressing the perspectives of both school leaders and classroom teachers.

The study is designed as an exploratory, sequential multi-method study. In the first phase of the study, school documents, school visits and interview data were used to examine how teachers were supported. The participants were members of school leadership teams in three schools with experiences in supporting shy students (n = 10) and classroom teachers who had recognized successful experiences with shy students (n = 19). In the second phase of the study, a questionnaire was designed based in Phase one findings, identifying teachers’ strategies with shy students, and their experiences of school-based support. The participants were teachers from elementary schools across Norway (n = 329).

Five key conclusions are discussed; The importance of 1) making shy students visible in school organizational narratives and policy documents; 2) making visible the resources available to teachers as one way of supporting them in their 'first-responder' responsibilities; 3) clarifying the roles of key stakeholders for preventative work for students beneath the statutory level of intervention, for example social teachers and external agencies; 4) developing teachers’ relational competencies; and 5) researching into class size as one school feature that might impact teachers’ experiences of available support resources.

In conclusion, this thesis contributes to knowledge on how schools support teachers working with students below the threshold for statutory special needs intervention. It potentially extends our knowledge on how institutions recognize and respond to the needs of teachers working with shy students. The thesis also addresses the teachers’ perspectives, revealing that although teachers indicate that they receive support from several networks of support in school, they do not uniformly seem to receive additional resources. The work in this thesis was conducted at the Department of Special Needs Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo.

Published Feb. 18, 2022 9:42 AM - Last modified Mar. 24, 2022 4:30 PM