Special education in Turkey

Abstract

Special education has been gaining intense attention from governments and educators throughout the world. As a developing country, and official candidate for the European Union, Turkey has been working on issues related to special education provision and inclusive education to improve the quality of services for citizens with disabilities. This article presents the developments and current status of special education in Turkey. The purpose of this paper is to describe the structure of the special education system in Turkey and current developments within the special education field. Topics include a brief history of special education services, an overview of special education laws and regulations, as well as a summary of efforts around inclusion and current directions in teacher training. We conclude by noting several challenges in the ongoing improvement of the quality of special education in Turkey.

From thinking to practice: school staff views on disability inclusion in Turkey

“…The findings in this theme support the notion that provisions offered in special education institutions and related practices, upon which the education of disabled students has historically been based, still influence school staff views (Melekoglu, Cakiroglu, and Malmgren 2009). This is partly because the national policy (e.g.…”

“…Thematic analysis is an appropriate analysis method when the study investigates an under-researched area and participants' likely views related to the area are not sufficiently known (Braun and Clarke 2006). This is applicable to the problem under research because Turkey is a country where inclusion of disabled students is a recent and under-researched phenomenon (Melekoglu, Cakiroglu, and Malmgren 2009). With this in mind, thematic analysis can help in providing a rich thematic description of the data in order to comprehend the significant and dominant themes (Braun and Clarke 2006).…”

Burnout and teacher self-efficacy among teachers working in special education institutions in Turkey

“…They were psychological counselling and guidance teachers (n = 19; 16%), special education teachers (n = 29; 24.6%), teachers of students with mental impairment (n = 20; 17%), teachers of students with hearing impairment (n = 6; 5%) and teachers of students with visual impairment (n = 5; 4.2%), primary education teachers (n = 27; 22.9%), music education teachers (n = 6; 5%) and art education teachers (n = 6; 5%). Considering the limited number of available staff belonging to the branches mentioned above (Melekoglu, Cakiroglu, and Malmgren 2009), the number of participants in this study was a fairly accurate representation of the population of each branch.…”

Modelling inclusive practices in postgraduate tertiary education courses

“…Legislation and government policy in most (if not all) Western countries, and in many others, have begun to redress this educational inequity but we are still a considerable distance from the reality of fully inclusive schools and classrooms (e.g. Curcic 2009;Drudy and Kinsella 2009;Melekoglu, Cakiroglu, and Malmgren 2009). Furthermore, while one might be seduced by policies and associated rhetoric to believe that inclusive education is not only common but universal, the reality is quite different.…”