Investigation of the effects of the portage EARLY education program on the development of children aged 2-6 YEARS requiring special education and care

This research is an experimental study conducted to scale the effectiveness of the Portage Early Education Program on the development of children aged 2–6 years old, diagnosed with autism,Down syndrome, mild mental disability, physical disability and moderate-severe intellectual disabilitywhowere educated at Igdir Green Rehabilitation Center in Igdir. The study group of the research consists of 43 children aged 2-6 years, who were educated at the Iğdır Green Rehabilitation Center located in the city center of Iğdır, their families and specialist trainers working in the institution. This study was carried out between February 2022 and May 2022. In the study, in which the pre-test-post-test control group model was used, the data of the experimental group was collected from the children to whom the Portage Early Education Program was applied. The development of these children with special needs was monitored using the Portage Developmental Scale. Portage Early Education Program was applied to the experimental group by the researcher for 20 weeks. The educator provided monitoring, evaluation, activity suggestions and material support for children in the school and home environment for 3 days a week. Theonlytrainer of Portage Early Education Program is EnderMARANGOZ. The educator of the research takes lessons and supervision from MARANGOZ. In the analysis of the data, the percentage and frequency distributions, the parametric statistics, Paired Sample t-test were used to test the hypotheses of the research. A significant difference was observed between the hypotheses created and the Portage Developmental Scale pre-test and post-test scores of children with special needs between the ages of 2-6 years. This indicates the effectiveness of the implemented program. As a result of the analysis, it was seen that family participation in the Portage Early Education Program made a significant difference on the effectiveness of the Program. Thus, to maximize the development of children (cognitive, motor, language, social-emotional, self-care), to ensure and disseminate the implementation of home-based education programs, to provide information to parents about child development and education, to inform parents about the arrangement of a suitable home environment, to strengthen the role of parents as educators, to offer creative suggestions, to fill the deficiencies in children's development, to ensure that families have an idea about the skill learning period of their children, to ensure that parents have expectations in accordance with the individual characteristics of their children. It is aimed to ensure that they meet the costs and to inform the family about the materials. In addition, it is found that families need such programs for the development of their children. During the experiment, the families were given appropriate activity cards so that the children could continue their repetitions and continue their development at home. Thus, it reveals that families should be supported by information about the developmental characteristics of their children. It is seen that family-supported programs contribute to the development of children with special needs.