Distance Special Education During The Pandemic Process: Teacher Opinions

Abstract

The transition from face-to-face education to distance education was conducted in the Spring Semester of the 2019-2020 Academic Year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of this research is to determine the opinions of special education teachers in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus on distance education. In this study, the case study, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The data of the research were collected by semi-structured interview technique. The data were analyzed by content analysis technique. The research was conducted with 17 special education teachers working in private education institutions according to the purposeful sampling technique. A semi-structured interview form prepared by the researchers in line with expert opinions was used as the data collection tool. Considering the results of the research, it was determined that the studies that special education teachers conducted with their students with special needs as a distance education application were adaptation studies, academic, individual and group studies. It was concluded that the technological platforms used by special education teachers in the distance education process are Zoom and WhatsApp applications. Another finding of the study is that special education teachers’ distance education process is evaluated positively by families.