The children who are defined as with special needs are very different from other children in a variety of rates in terms of physical appearance and learning ability. For a qualified education, it is important that the teachers who will take active role in those children’s education should know those children very well and also prepare an educational setting according to their needs.
The aim of this study is to investigate the awareness of teacher candidates about the students with special needs. To reveal the awareness of teacher candidates about students with special needs, qualitative method is used. The sample of the study is composed of students who are studying at 2nd, 3rd and 4th years of Hasan Ali Yücel Faculty of Education from the departments of Foreign Language Teaching, Mathematics Teaching, Science Teaching, Special Education Teaching, Primary Education and Educational Sciences. The sample of the study is composed of 26 teacher candidates. In the study which is conducted with qualitative method, the data which is collected with semi-structured interview is analyzed with descriptive analysis technique.
According to the findings of the study, the teacher candidates know who are children with special needs and can define them correctly. Together with this, most of the teacher candidates mentioned that they do not know how to communicate with those children and also how to teach those children. Most of the teacher candidates mentioned that it may cause anxiety for them when there is a student with special needs in their classroom. The frequency of candidates who thought that they should be in touch with parents is found to be very low. It can be mentioned that the teacher candidates have not realized the importance of establishing empathy.
Teacher candidates can be trained during their education in order to gain the ability to communicate with children with special needs. For this purpose, some compulsory lessons can be added.