Examining the opinions and attitudes of professional personnel working in the field of special education for the use of assistant technologies

This study was conducted to examine the opinions and attitudes of professionals working in Special Education and Rehabilitation Centers towards assistive technologies. In this context, the universe of the research consists of the professionals working in Special Education and Rehabilitation Centers in Ankara in the 2018-2019 academic year. The mixed method, which includes both quantitative and qualitative dimensions, was used as the analysis technique in the study. The sample was selected by simple random sampling method, and the data were conducted in the form of questionnaires with 400 occupational personnel and interviews with 30 professionals. In the study, "Interview Form" was used to determine the opinions of the professionals, "Personal Information Form" to collect personal information and "Attitude Scale towards Assistive Technologies" to determine their attitudes towards assistive technologies. In the study, the data were analyzed with the SPSS package program using parametric or non-parametric analysis techniques, depending on whether the data set is normally distributed or not. As a result of the statistics, the level of significance was chosen as 0.05. The validity and reliability studies of the scale used in the study were examined, and as a result of the analysis, it was revealed that the validity and reliability results of the Attitude Scale towards Assistive Technologies and the Interview Form were sufficient. According to the results of the research, a significant difference was found between the attitudes of professionals towards assistive technologies and their gender, in-service training status, marital status, having children, their field of duty and the department they graduated, while there was no significant difference between their age and professional seniority status. As a result of the interviews, it is observed that the professionals have a positive attitude towards assistive technologies.