Exploring Turkish special education teachers’ experiences of emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Individuals with special needs are highly disadvantaged during the COVID-19 quarantine days, and families and children received limited support. Learning the experiences, problems and solution suggestions of teachers who are responsible for the education of children with special needs is of great importance in determining the plans to be made to provide the necessary support. The purpose of this study is to investigate in-service special education teachers’ experiences of emergency remote teaching and to seek to understand the essence of their lived experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative study employs a phenomenological design. This current interpretative phenomenological study consists of 21 special education teachers that meet predetermined criteria. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. Five key questions and one closing question which were created by the researchers aligned with the purpose of the study were asked to the participants. As a result of the data obtained within the scope of the study, themes emerged according to special education teachers’ experiences such as technical infrastructure, ICT literacy, required technical support, transformations in performance tracking and assessment, learning resource, problem behaviors, goals and objectives, family engagement, person being supported, type of support provided and decision about sustainability.