Teachers views on the play skills of children with developmental disability in early childhood

The aim of this research is to determine the views of preschool teachers and special education teachers working with children with developmental disabilities in early childhood on play skills and to compare these views. In order to find answers to the research questions, 8 pre-school teachers and 8 special education teachers working with children with developmental disabilities in the provinces of the East region who agreed to participate in the research voluntarily were interviewed. The research was carried out through phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research approaches, and the data were collected by semi-structured interview technique. Semi-structured questions asked to both participant groups were analyzed by content analysis. In the research findings, a similarity was found in the definitions of pre-school and special education teachers about play skills and the frequency of including play activities in their programs. In addition to these similarities, the observations of the two groups of teachers about the play behaviors, the games they include in their programs, the purpose of including play activities in their programs, their thoughts about the participation of the students with developmental disabilities in the play activities, their thoughts about supporting the play skills of the students with developmental disabilities and the advice they want to give to each other differences were found in their views on the themes. These findings are discussed in the light of the literature and suggestions for future research as well as applications are made.