In modarate and severe mentally disabled people teacher opinions on music activity applications

This study which aimed to stress the importance of music education for mentally disabled individuals in secondary education programs, draw attention to the possibility formentally disabled individuals to maintain their lives with education together with society and to demonstrate how useful the fine art education was for their development within educational processes used case study design, which is among qualitative research methods. The study group comprised classroom teachers and music teachers (n:10) who taught in music classes in secondary education. For data collection tool, the study used teacher's interview form which was prepared by a researcher on the basis of expert opinions related to the field and included personal information form and semi-structured interview questions. Within the scope of the data acquired via interview technic, the study reached themes, subthemes and codes via analysis method and then tabularized and interpreted the findings obtained. According to the results obtained from the views of the teachers who took part in the study related to activities in the secondary education program used for moderate and severe level mentally disabled individuals in music class in terms of specific characteristics, the study found that the teachers paid attention to using technology based support equipment during the activities and tried to teach practice based interesting and amusing activities from the program. Following the interviews conducted with the teachers, the study stressed that one of the main problems was that no activities to contribute to these students were used and there was a lack of adequate support resources related to the field. Additionally, the necessary physical environment was not useful and it had to be enhanced. Finally, the teachers of the class stressed that they needed activities to contribute to their language development in line with different subjects and activities without remaining dependent on the text book so that they could teach the class more effectively and efficiently. They stated that field related resources needed to be created specific to the field and a physical environment fitting today's technology needed to be provided both for the mental and personal development of these special individuals via feedback related to the field.