Examining perspectives of preschool teachers having children with special needs in their classroom on naturalistic intervention process

Children with special needs have the right to take education in the very settings which is organized in accordance with their needs and where they are able to be with their peers. Instructional programs that can meet all children's needs are one of the suggested programs during implementation of inclusive programs. In this sense, one of the suggested programs is Naturalistic Teaching Process (NTP). NTP is a natural instructional process which give children chance to acquire new skills and to reinforce those skills. This study aims to define perspectives of preschool teachers who have children with special needs in their classrooms on NTP. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews. 15 preschool teachers, who work at preschools in the center of Eskişehir, participate in this study. An inductive approach based on content analysis is used for data analysis. The findings of the study shows that preschool teachers have the perspective of following a child's lead while they have difficulties in setting educational objectives for children with special needs and in developing individualized educational program. Additionally, it is defined that abilities of preschool teachers are inadequate for collaboration with families and specialists. The findings reveal that strategies and techniques, environmental arrangements, prompts used in NTP are partially used by preschool teachers but they don't use them systematically and teachers need education about those subjects.