Abstract:

In Turkey, the special education population has steadily increased since 2010. As emphasized in the legislation, there is a heightened focus of inclusion of students with special needs in regular education settings in Turkey. Understanding teachers’ perceptions of students with additional support needs (students with learning problems, students with behavioral problems and high-potential students) and examining how teachers perceive their roles and responsibilities while teaching these students are crucial. To address this gap in the literature, a researcher-created scale that includes 10 items, each of which consists of three dimensions was used in this study. The purpose of this study is to examine teachers’ perceptions of students with learning problems, students with behavioral problems and high-potential students. This study included data analysis from 239 regular education teachers working in public elementary schools in Istanbul, Turkey. An independent sample t-test, a paired sample t-test, and a one-way analysis of variance were used for data analysis. Findings suggest that teachers’ perceptions were more positive towards teaching students with learning problems either than perceptions of students with behavioral problems or than perceptions of high-potential students. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in teachers’ perceptions of teaching students with learning problems, students with behavioral problems, and high-potential students by teachers’ demographic characteristics. Results were discussed and recommendations were presented for future research.

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