An Investigation of Social Acceptance Levels of Students with Typical Development toward Their Peers with Special Needs in terms of Certain Variables

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the level of social acceptance of students with typical development in inclusive classes towards individuals with special needs in terms of certain variables. In this study, the screening model was used, which is one of the quantitative research methods. The reason for choosing the screening model in the research is to determine the relationship between different variables such as gender, parents' education level, and whether there is a disabled person in the student's immediate environment and the level of social acceptance. In the 2019-2020 academic year, 1083 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students in inclusive classes in public secondary schools in Turkey participated in the study. The Social Acceptance Scale developed by Arslan (2010) with an internal consistency coefficient of .93 was used. The statistical package was used to analyze the data. The results of the study revealed that there was a significant difference in social acceptance levels of students with typical development towards their peers with special needs (p˂0.001) according to the variables as ge nder, father's education level, grade level, the presence of disabled people among relatives, previous attendance of kindergarten and nursery in the past, family status. However, it was found out that there was no statistically significant difference between the mother’s level of education of the students with typical development and their social acceptance levels towards their peers with special needs.Keywords:Social acceptance, inclusive education, peer, typically developing student