Determining the reading comprehension strategies used by special education teachers

Reading, which is an action performed consciously or unconsciously at every stage of life, is also the easiest and shortest way to reach systematic knowledge. The development of reading, which is one of the most important skills that individuals use in their academic and social lives, is possible with the acquisition of reading comprehension strategies. The purpose of this research is to determine the reading comprehension strategies that special education teachers use in their classes. At the same time in the research; Data were collected about the factors affecting the choice of reading comprehension strategies, the materials used in reading comprehension teaching, the methods of applying the selected strategies, and the assessment tools used in teaching. The data of this research, which was designed with the phenomenology model, one of the qualitative research methods, were collected with a semi-structured interview form. The participants of the research are 10 special education teachers working in Gerze district of Sinop province in the 2020-2021 academic year. Easily accessible case sampling was used to determine the study group. For the content validity of the research analyzed by descriptive analysis method, opinions were taken from two special education experts, two pilot interviews were conducted to check the operability of the questions, applications were made after 90% validity was determined. sub-themes were created. According to the research findings, it was determined that special education teachers used motivation and affective strategies more in reading comprehension in their classes, and they benefited from the strategies of generating and answering questions about the text, clarifying the text (identifying incomprehensible places and words). In addition, it was observed in the study that the participants used reading comprehension strategies more before reading and less during and after reading. KEYWORDS: Individuals with special needs, Special Education Teachers, Reading Comprehension Strategies