Examining the relationship between preschool teachers' social acceptance of children with special needs and their inclusive competences

Social acceptance is an important factor for an individual to be accepted, to discover themselves and to feel valued. Preschool teachers are also expected to have positive attitudes and behaviors so that children with special needs are accepted by their peers and society, to be able to communicate with them healthily and to be integrated into society. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between preschool teachers' social acceptance and their competence in inclusive practices. A convergent parallel design was used in the research. Within the scope of this design, qualitative and quantitative data were collected simultaneously, interpreted separately and finally combined to examine the relationship between them. The study group of the research consists of 59 teachers working as preschool teachers in Istanbul. ''Teacher Social Acceptance Scale for Individuals with Special Needs'', ''Structured Interview Form'' and ''Demographic Information Form'' were used to collect the research data. The interview forms from the data were loaded into the MaxQda24 program, coded with the open coding technique and analyzed with thematic analysis method. The scale data were interpreted with the scale score range formulation. The social acceptance of the teachers participating in the study was examined at three levels as low, medium and high. As a result of the study, it was observed that as the social acceptance levels of the teachers participating in the study increased, there was an increase in their skills regarding adaptations to the classroom environment, effective teaching methods and the IEP process. In addition, no significant difference was observed in their skills of being able to explain their feelings with awareness.