TEACHERS' OPINIONS ABOUT THE PROBLEMS IN THE SPECIAL EDUCATION CLASSES DURING THE DISTANCE EDUCATION PERIOD / UZAKTAN EĞİTİM DÖNEMİNDE ÖZEL EĞİTİM SINIFLARINDA YAŞANAN SORUNLARA İLİŞKİN ÖĞRETMEN GÖRÜŞLERİ

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

The Pandemic process, which started in Wuhan, China and shook the whole world, affected a period of our lives with various restrictions. Vaccination requirement, asking the test result in official or private workplaces, measures for masks, gloves, hygiene and social distance rules, travel restrictions and even curfews were experienced. One of these measures was to provide distance education, which was not used as frequently as this time for the first time in this period.

Distance Education is a teaching system in which the learner can access the educational resources and content synchronously or asynchronously, without the limitation of time and place, and participate in teaching activities using rich communication technologies as well as printed materials. For an individual, education is a need that must be met as much as the need for shelter and nutrition.

Many countries had to leave face-to-face education and switch to distance education during these periods in order to prevent the increase in the number of cases in the epidemic. In this study, which aims to summarize the thoughts of the special education teachers working in primary schools on distance education during the epidemic period, the qualitative research method known as the phenomenology design was chosen.

The research data were obtained through online surveys conducted with semi-structured questions prepared to determine the views of teachers on distance education during the epidemic, the problems they experienced and the opinions of volunteers on solution suggestions. The universe of this research; It consists of 17 volunteer special education teachers working in different parts of Turkey in the 2022-2023 academic year and determined by the most diverse sampling method.

This study was prepared using semi-structured interview technique and online form. The form consists of asking four pre-prepared questions to the participants and the answers given by the participants to these questions. Semi-structured online interviews were conducted with 17 teachers in order to determine the opinions of the classroom teachers about distance education, the problems they experienced and the solution proposals during the epidemic.

Content analysis, one of the qualitative data analysis techniques, was used to analyze the opinions of teachers about distance education in special education classrooms during the epidemic, the problems they experienced and their solution suggestions. In content analysis, data can be organized according to the themes created by the research questions or presented by focusing on the questions or dimensions used in the interview process, and also often include direct quotations to reflect the interviewees strikingly.

In addition, it was stated that the use or access of the internet, technological infrastructure, the target audience's inability to focus and socialize in the virtual world, inequality of opportunity in education, and students, parents and even teachers in the first period of the epidemic were blocked in adapting to distance education. As a solution proposal, the thought that distance education is not a suitable way for special education and that it would be appropriate to follow the ways that take this situation into account, was expressed by special education teachers.