Practitioners' perspectives about the support services offered to inclusive students at special education and rehabilitation centres

Because of the nature of inclusion, it is a right to present support services to the inclusive students. The unit which provides this support service to the student with special needs, who cannot reach to adequate support service in the Turkish education system, is Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (SERS). The aim of this research is to determine the support services and their needs which are given by the teachers working in a SERS in Istanbul to the students who continue to inclusion. With this aim, semi-structured interview forms are prepared, acquired data are analyzed descriptively. The participants of this research are constituted by 13 females and two male teachers working in a SERS. According to the indications, it has been found that the SERS teachers give positive opinions directed to inclusion and the study with the students who continue to inclusion, nonetheless teachers emphasize their need for support education and information in the matter of special education and inclusion. The teachers, who say that they find difficulty in providing academic skills to the inclusive students, its evaluation or how to approach it, stated that they have not been provided sufficient support services on this subject; at the same time, they drew attention to the necessity to be given a lecture on inclusive education during their undergraduate education. The teachers who participated in this research, saying that regarding the responsibility of the inclusive schools, which the students go to, are preparing appropriate Individualised Education Programme (IEP), offering support education, helping with the problems; stated that the school should inform the peers and should never discriminate the children whatsoever. Teachers expressed that the SERS are seen as units for presenting support to the inclusive students, and as units for offering support aimed at academic, personal or behavioral problems. In addition to all these, it is seen that the teachers, who work in SERS, offer support to both the school, school teacher and to the family, when necessary and serve as a bridge between all of these. The findings of the study were correlated with the findings obtained in the literature and suggestions were made to the practitioners and researchers.