Bringing more to participation

EnglishChildren in need of additional support need to be effectively participating to be included in education. To date little research has investigated the involvement part of participation. With children the nature of functioning and environmental settings varies greatly in comparison with adults and assessing children’s involvement in activities is of particular importance to ensure effective and inclusive society building through education. This thesis theorizes participation from two perspectives (frequency of attending and intensity of involvement) and puts the construct in to operation using five dimensions of the environment: availability, accessibility, affordability, accommodability, and acceptability. The WHO’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children and Youth (the ICF-CY) provides the practical framework to investigate participation from two perspectives.The findings present evidence for constructing and operationlizing participation from both frequency of attendance and subjective experience of involvement perspectives. Furthermore recommendations for practically ways to capture and measure involvement are presented and discussed.