Abstract:

Special education in early childhood is an educational services that aims to support the development of children aged 0-8 who are at risk or have developmental disabilities, to minimize developmental differences with their peers, and to respond to the needs of families in this period. The purpose of this study is to examine the opinions of educators who provide services to children with special educational needs diagnosed between 0-36 months about early intervention (EI)/early childhood special education (ECSE) programs. For this purpose, the research has been designed as a phenomenological study, one of the qualitative research methods. Accordingly, 18 educators working in special education and rehabilitation centers participated in the research. Research data were collected through face-to-face and telephone interviews by asking semi-structured interview questions. The collected data were analyzed by following the steps of the analysis approach suggested by Moustakas (1994) for the phenomenology design. In this study, it was determined that most of the educators working with children with special educational needs between 0-36 months did not benefit from any EI/ECSE program. Similarly, it was concluded that most of the participants did not plan to benefit from any EI/ECSE program. Another striking result was that the participants were not aware of the Ministry of National Education 0-36 months ECSE Programme. It has been determined that the expectations from EI/ECSE programs are that they support all development areas, especially communication skills, be based on family participation, evaluation and activities.

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