A case study on inclusion / integration application in the scope of early intervention programs in early childhood education

The aim of this study is to determine the current situation in pre-school inclusion practices, to apply an inclusion model within the scope of early intervention programs and to present the situation during and after the implementation process. The study group of this research which was carried out in a qualitative case study design, consists of a preschool teacher, 21 children and their parents in a preschool class of a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in an official independent kindergarten in Yüreğir district of Adana. Parental Behavior Assessment Scale (PBAS) was used to assess the interaction of teachers and parents in the study, Gilliam Autistic Disorder Rating Scale was used to determine the child's autistic disorder index, and Child Behavior Assessment Scale (CBAS) was used to assess the child's interactions with adults. Turkish Communication Behaviors Development Inventory 1 was used to measure the child's language skills. A semi-structured interview form was used to have opinions of teacher and parents. During the process, unstructured interviews were conducted with both the family and the teacher during the family visits and school exits and on the phone calls. Observations were both made for the determination of the current situation, during and after the implementation process. The systematic observation form that includes instructional arrangements for the inclusion created by the researcher during teacher observations, the form of measuring the quality of the class in the basic building blocks system, the form of determining the child measurement and behavior problems, the form of identifying the problem behaviors , In the child observations, problem behaviors determination form and 3-6 years old autistic children education program acquisition evaluation forms were used. Monthly activity plans and Individual Education Plans prepared by the teacher for the inclusive child were examined as documents. Data were collected three days a week for six weeks to determine the current situation. The inclusion process was conducted at school three times a week for 16 weeks. The data obtained from interviews, observations and document analysis were analyzed by content analysis. Family, teacher and child interaction behaviors were analyzed by video recordings at school, at home and in the special education center where the inclusion child attended. As a result; According to the form of determining instructional arrangements after the application, all sub-dimensions of instructional arrangements increased. According to the data obtained from the interviews with the teacher, in the current situation; it was determined that there were problems arising from the child, family and herself during the process of inclusion. As a result of the interviews with the teacher, it was determined that the opinions about the implementation process and the post-implementation process consisted of four headings: the opinions on the usefulness of the implementation, the benefits of the implementation, the problems encountered in the implementation process and the suggested solutions related to the implementation. According to the PBAS results of the interaction behaviors of the teacher, it was concluded that interactive behaviors increased in the desired way in the subscales of "sensitive - responsive", "emotional - expressive" and "success oriented guidance". As a result of the data obtained from the interviews with the family, the problems faced by the family regarding preschool inclusion education were classified into five categories; educational problems, emotional problems, social problems, health problems and problems arising from family interaction. As a result of the data obtained from the interviews with the family during and after the implementation process, it was seen that the implementation process consisted of six headings: benefits of the implementation process to the family, family guidance, contribution to the child, practice at school, dimensions and suggestions about the problems. According to the results of PBAS for the level of interactive behaviors of the parents in the sub-dimensions of," sensitive - responsive", "emotional - expressive" and "success oriented guidance" increased in the desired way. As a result of the data obtained from the 3-6 years old autistic children education program acquisition evaluation forms, it was seen that the inclusive child did not gain 184 behaviors out of 290 behaviors within the program, in other words, 63.44% of the behaviors were not gained. According to the results of the Developmental Inventory of Turkish Communication Behaviors 1, it was found that the child had receptive language skills at the level of 95% probability for 11 months and 65% for 16 months old. According to the CBAS results of the inclusive child, it was concluded that the interaction behaviors were very low in the "attention" and "initialization" subscales. According to the observation form of determining behavioral problems, it was determined that the frequency of showing behavioral problems of the child with a total score of 93 was found high. As a result of the data obtained by using the 3-6 years old autistic children education program acquisition evaluation form completed by the teacher, researcher and the family after the implementation process, it was determined that 117 of the 184 behaviors were gained by the child, 63.58% of the targeted behaviors in total. According to the Turkish communication inventory norms, the child has 95% probability of 19 months and 45% probability of 27 months old level of receiving language skills. While the expressive language skills could not be measured by the Turkish communication inventory norms, it was observed that the child has expressive language skills was 90% probability of 9 months and 65% probability of 12 months after the implication. According to the results of CBAS, it was observed that the interaction behaviors developed significantly in the "Attention" and "Initiation" subscales. According to the observation form of determining behavioral problems, it was seen that the frequency of showing behavioral problems decreased. According to the results obtained from all the data, the developmental areas of the child and the interaction behaviors with the adults, the interaction behaviors of the teacher and the family with the child and their knowledge levels were increased significantly. It is thought that if the guidance services are provided to the teacher and the family, success will be achieved in the inclusion / integration practices. Key Words: preschool, inclusion, early intervention programs, autism