The investigation of the attitudes of children with normal development towards their peers with special needs and their bullying levels

Children with special needs may have difficulty in adapting to society and communicating with their peers due to their developmental characteristics. In this process, the attitudes of children with normal development towards their peers with special needs play an important role. There are many factors affecting the attitudes of children with normal development towards their peers with special needs. One of these factors is thought to be the bullying levels of children with normal development. The aim of this study is to examine the attitudes and bullying levels of normally developing middle school eighth grade students towards their peers with special needs. The universe of the study consists of eighth grade students attending secondary schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in Çankırı city center. The sample of the study consists of total 365 (230 female and 135 male) eighth grade students studying in five different secondary schools selected by simple random method. Mann Whitney-U Test, Kruskal Wallis-H Test and Spearman Correlation Test were used to analyze the data. As a result of the study, no significant difference was found between the bully sub-dimension of the Peer Bullying Scale and the variables (p>.05), while a significant difference was found between the victim sub-dimension and the variables of mother's education level and family structure (p<.05). A significant difference was found between the pity sub-dimension of the Chedoke-Mcmaster Attitudes Towards Children with Disabilities Scale and the variables of gender, father's education level, family structure, having individuals with special needs in the family and having a friend with special needs, and a significant difference was found between the avoidance sub-dimension and the variable of having individuals with special needs in the environment (p<.05). A negative relationship was found between the bullying sub-dimension of the Chedoke- Mcmaster Attitudes Towards Children with Disabilities Scale and the interaction and acceptance, avoidance and similarity sub-dimensions of the Peer Bullying Scale. Again, a negative relationship was found between the victim subscale of the Chedoke-Mcmaster AttitudesTowards Children with Disabilities Scale and the avoidance and similarity subscales of the Peer Bullying Scale.