"Det är väldigt svårt att utgå från något annat än elevens förmågor..." : individualisering som den framstår utifrån fyra olika klassrum

The school is responsible to make sure that each students´ individual needs are met as well as that the lessons are suitable for all students´ ability. As this is the case it is very interesting to evaluate how this is done in reality. The purpose with the study has been to shed light upon what different methods teachers in various schools use in order to individualize their teach­ings. Are their obvious differences in the way teachers work with individualization and how does this affect the students? The teachers in the different schools provided me with informa­tion on how they work in order to teach, stimulate and motivate well achievers as well as stu­dents who find school more difficult. I also asked if, and to what degree they apply different learning techniques as well as if, and how often they consider various learning styles. The phenomenological study is qualitative. Methods used are interviews with the different teachers as well as observations in all four classrooms. The classes were each observed for a full day and after time spent in the classroom teachers involved that particular day was inter­viewed. The results showed that the teachers work in many different ways in order to individualize their teaching. It was also clear that there were differences on the classrooms physical shape as well as material and books. There were also differences in class sizes and the amount of teachers in the classrooms – which surely affected the situations. A conclusion of the study is that two main methods of individualization were noted. One method used by one group of teachers was to let all students work on the same problems but to their own ability. The other group of teachers used and offered, to a larger extent, different and various materials to their students in order to meet the child at its level of scholastic development and ability