Procedures in Turkey for Guiding Students with Special Needs into Inclusive Settings

Abstract

Systematic and organized management of guidance and placement procedures is a definitive prerequisite for the quality and functionality of inclusive settings. This research aims to analyze the Guidance and Research Centers' (GRCs) procedures for guiding students with hearing loss into inclusive settings in Turkey. Being designed as a phenomenological study, it is composed of semi-structured interviews conducted over 14 experts and six parents. Research data have been subjected to inductive analysis, which has revealed five groups of themes regarding inclusive settings, such as how guidance procedures work in GRCs, the guidance criteria for inclusive settings, and suggestions for improving the quality of these procedures. Findings show that the participant experts and parents go through these guidance procedures starting with educational assessment and have faced problems with team work and parental participation. Aside from the experts' need for professional development, the lack of criteria for guiding into inclusive settings is a noteworthy problem. This study concludes that the organizational structure of GRCs should be revised to enhance the quality of the guidance procedures and suggests that future case studies are needed to understand these guidance procedures comprehensively.