Abstract:

The main aim of this study is to examine the effects of variables such as gender, grade level, having taken the human rights or the children rights courses and age on the attitudes of teacher candidates of mentally handicapped children toward children rights. The second aim of the study is to determine whether these attitudes differ from those of teacher candidates of elementary school, preschool and computer and instruction technology. The study group was consisted of 85 volunteering freshman and senior students in mentally handicapped children teaching program in the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Ankara University. Also, in order to make comparisons, 202volunteering freshman and senior students who were enrolled in undergraduate programs in elementary school teaching, preschool teaching and computer and instructional technology education at the same faculty have been included. Therefore, there were total 287 students in the study group in this research. Questionnaire for Measuring Attitudes towards Children’s Rights formerly developed by Karaman Kepenekci (2006) to determine the attitudes of participants toward children's rights was used. The results have shown that gender and grade level had no effect on the attitudes of teacher candidates of mentally handicapped children toward children rights. Since none of the teacher candidates of mentally handicapped children have taken the human rights or the children rights courses, the effect of this variable on their attitudes could not be examined. No significant relation has been found between age and the attitude score of the teacher candidates of mentally handicapped children. It was concluded that the attitudes of teacher candidates of mentally handicapped children were not different from those of teacher candidates of preschool and computer and instruction technology; however, they had more negative attitudes than the teacher candidates of elementary school

Keywords: