Teachers' coping strategies regarding their adolescent special needs students' inappropriate sexual behaviors

Adolescence is one of the most critical periods in sexual development and many adolescents seem to need support in this area. Many locals and foreigners with special needs of adolescents' sexual development that ignored the importance of research, in parallel, in Turkey are also known to have difficulty in making sex education teachers to students. In this context, it is important for teachers to identify the inappropriate sexual behaviors (ISB) of their students with special needs and to determine the strategies they use to deal with them. Therefore, in this study, it was aimed to investigate the coping strategies of the students of teachers who work with adolescents with special needs are. Basic qualitative research method was used in the research. The participants of the study constituted 181 special education classroom teachers working with adolescents with special needs and working in autistic children education centers (ACEC), special education practice schools (SEPS) and special education vocational schools (SEVS) in the province of İzmir in the 2019-2020 academic year. Participants were formed using the typical case sampling method, one of the purposeful sampling methods. The demographic characteristics of the participants were collected through the Demographic Information Form developed by the researcher, and the opinions and experiences of the students on the strategies of coping with ISBs were collected through the ISBs: Definitions and Strategies Teacher Form, which was also developed by the researcher and consisted of open-ended questions. The data obtained were analyzed by inductive content analysis. The findings obtained from the participants revealed that teachers do not define ISBs within the framework of any scientific basis, and they see behaviors that are one of the developmental tasks of adolescence as ISB. In the interventions of teachers with ISBs, it was found that the number of participants who applied a planned intervention was quite low, that they generally made instant interventions and they went to family cooperation during these interventions, teachers supported the most and the source they applied to was families. Participants stated that the strategies they implemented vary depending on factors such as family cooperation, student age, disability level / type, and stated that they needed sexual education services for family, teachers and students. In line with these results, it has emerged that teachers who work with adolescents with special needs should be supported in order to correctly define ISBs and to implement systematic interventions. Keywords: adolescents with special needs, sexual development, inappropriate sexual behaviors, sexual education, educator views