ISE (Intensive Special Education) research group at the Helsinki University
The Social-Haptic Network has been collaborating with different universities in Finland.
The Intensive Special Education (ISE) is a new research group at the Department of Teacher Education in the University of Helsinki , which started on May 2014. The leader of the research group is Elina Kontu (docent ) from the University of Helsinki. The senior researcher is Riitta Lahtinen (PhD), head of the Communication Unit from the Finnish Deafblind Association , while Russ Palmer, (SRAT) acts as consultant. The research group consists also of project manager Terhi Ojala (MA) and researcher Irene Rämä (MA), both from the University of Helsinki.
The main research areas related to social-haptic communication during 2014-2015 included:
1. The use of haptices in teaching settings with learners with diverse (special needs) and collection of case studies;
2. Preparing a Scientific Article outlining the use of haptices for describing the environment, objects and multimodal perception, and
3. Outlining the pedagogic approach to social-haptic communication – which is the basis of teaching methodology for teachers using social-haptic communication.
1 www.helsinki.fi/university
2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docent
3 www.kuurosokeat.fi is a small corporate member of DbI