About me
Social Worker/Social Pedagogue, Master in Social Work and halftime PhD-student in Special Education at Stockholm University. Halftime working as an expert officer for schooling for children with intellectual disabilities at municipality level. Previously been working in preschools, special schools and the health- and social care sector, and as a research- and development assistant.
My general research interest is to link the theoretical understanding of a child's cognitive development as determined by an interaction between its biological conditions, social relations, environmental and societal contexts, with the actions taken and policies formulated within the broader field of education.
My current research focus on young children's welfare and development, and the need for developing a quality inclusive learning environment in early childhood education, specifically in terms of play interactions between children.
The purpose with my thesis, which will cover three articles, is to investigate the implementation of a play- and interaction intervention for children with special educational needs (SEN) and their peers, in Swedish inclusive preschool settings. The intervention also includes the use of an observation instrument for children's interaction in play that is validated and examined separately in one of the articles. According to several previous studies children with SEN could be at risk of becoming less involved in play situations, and may have fewer opportunities to interact in play with other children. The removal of these barriers is an important special educational task for Swedish preschools, and calls as an imperative for special education research.
Publications
A selection from Stockholm University publication database-
2019. Maria Gladh (et al.).
Children with special educational needs (SEN) are often less socially engaged than their typically developing peers. To design intervention programs to support social engagement in early intervention programs, it is important to have an assessment that is reliable and feasible for teacher to use in classrooms. The Teacher Impression Scale (TIS) is a 16 item scale (McConnell & Odom, 1999) designed to measure social engagement. The aim of the present study was to test the reliability of a Swedish version of the TIS for identifying children who might be in need of a social competence intervention and to assess its acceptability among teachers. Teachers (N=16) rated children (N=32) with and without SEN with TIS and rated the acceptability of the assessment. The results showed that TIS has high internal validity (α = 0.97), supported identification of suitable participants, and was perceived positively by teachers.
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2017. Mara Westling Allodi (et al.). Users' Needs Report on Play for Children with Disabilities, 29-41
The Action “LUDI. Play for children with disabilities” developed the survey about the views and needs of users in various contexts in 2016, asking members of Parents’ Associations for Children with Disabilities (PACDs) their opinions and views when it comes to their children’s opportunities to play. The voices of children should be heard through representatives of associations because they have a wide knowledge on many cases and can report the playing conditions in disability, showing the influence that the political and cultural aspects have on this issue. In each country participating in the Action, a member responsible for the data collection on users’ needs was asked to contact parents’ associations of children with disabilities in order to elicit the experiences and views within their organisation, concerning the children’s opportunities to play and to submit their answers in the web-survey. The answers were reviewed and analysed by members of the Action “LUDI” Working Group 4 and subsequently compiled in the present report.3.1.1. Countries participating in the survey were Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, FYR Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey (N=24).