This thesis looks at how information and computer technology can be incorporated in a pedagogical program PALS - a program designed to help teachers and staff include pupils with behavioral problems in a normal teaching and learning environment. ICT is currently not used in the PALS teaching program.
Our thesis is that integrating ICT in this first phase of teaching and learning will enable a greater degree of learning and a greater chance of transferring learning to practice.

Our research is focused on finding requirements and needs, expressed by the staff. We have then asked how these needs can be addressed by the use of ICT. We have collected data by using focus groups and interviews in which members of the staff have voluntarily taken part. The data collected in the interviews has been organized using elements of Grounded Theory to categorize statements given by the interviewed. The data in focus groups has been analyzed by using an interaction analysis approach.

In order to understand the data, we have used Engeströms activity system to find tensions within the system and we have used Wenger’s concept of “communities of practice” as a way of seeing how teaching and learning about PALS could be enabled by a CoP with and integrated use of ICT. We have looked at different ways of learning within a social constructive framework (situated learning, Lave and Wenger), as reflection-in-action (Donald Schon) and as an experience-based process from novice to ekspert (Dreyfus brothers) and considered how ICT can be incorporated.

With basis in our research we have made the first sketches for an ICT learning tool which can be incorporated in the PALS-teaching program. The prototype takes both the needs of the users (staff members) and the developers of PALS (stakeholders) into consideration.