¬TEACHERS’ THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS WITHIN GENERAL EDUCATION SETTINGS REGARDING INCLUSION IN TURKEY

Abstract

Even though Turkish Ministry of Education (Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı [MEB], 2006) accept the philosophy of inclusion and made huge shift in terms of this philosophy, inclusion has still not common yet in Turkey and that the required and expected levels of individual and social benefits have not been obtained (Sari, Celikoz, & Secer, 2009). Therefore, teachers’ concern about inclusion is wondered. The purpose of this case study is to describe the attitudes of general education teachers’ towards inclusion for students with disabilities and to understand the effectiveness of inclusion in classroom settings, in Turkey. Qualitative research method was used in this study. The research was done as a Case Study. Participants of this study are four general education teachers, two of them are working at elementary and other two are at secondary level. Even though inclusion is promising benefit for all students, the research showed that indeed, inclusion in Turkey is not working effectively because of several reasons, such as lack of professional development programs and inefficacy of existing programs for general education teachers and psychologist working in Guidance Research Center (RAM), lack of resource, lack of collaboration between teachers-psychologists, and teachers-family. Most critical finding is violation of inclusion rules.

Keywords: Teachers, Education, Turkey

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