Investigate the attitudes of the teacher candidates who are studying social studies teaching to the individualswith special needs in terms of different variables

It is not possible for the individuals who make up a society to have the same personal characteristics. Just like physical characteristics, ability and temperament, the cognitive processes of individuals differ. Each individual is advancing in their learning environment at their own pace. While these differences do not attract much attention for normal developing individuals, when it comes to individuals with special needs, it is imperative that students make educational adaptations depending on the differences in their learning speed. Although teachers face their students by completing the necessary learning processes, a teacher's perspective on disadvantaged individuals who want more effort and effort is gaining importance. In this context, it is aimed to examine the level of attitudes of social studies teacher candidates towards individuals with special needs according to various variables. The model of quantitative descriptive survey method used in this research. The research universe has 712 candidates in social studies teaching who are studying in the spring semester of the 2023-2024 Education Year at three universities in the Marmara Region. The sample of the study was consisted of 362 teacher candidates, which was formed through convenience sampling method. The research data were collected using two separate forms. The first one is the "Demographic Information Form", which includes the personal information of the teacher candidates who form the study group, and the second one is the "Attitude Scale Towards Individuals with Special Needs"developed by Yaralı (2015a). The data of the research were analyzed using to SPSS 22.0 package program and before the analysis, normalitiy distributions of the data were examined with the kurtosis and skewness tests. The data of research that is understood to be normal distribution is solved using t-test and ANOVA test. The significance level taken as .05. Demographic characteristics of the participants were used in tables such as frequency (f) and percentage value (%). As a result of the research, it was seen that the attitudes of social studies teacher candidates towards individuals with special needs were positive at a high level. When the results of the analysis on the independent variables were evaluated, no significant differences were revealed according to the maternal education status, paternal education status and whether there were special needs individuals in their families; in contrast, according to the gender and the class variable studied, there was a significant difference between the groups. The negative attitude dimension of the scale was analyzed and it was discovered that male participants were more likely to have negative attitudes than female participants. In addition, it was found that participants who were studying in the first grade had a higher level of negative attitude than participants who were studying in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades.