Perceptions About Special Educational Needs: is it Believed that Giftedness Requires Special Education?

Abstract

It is believed that in order to improve the quality of special education, it is necessary to raise awareness at a societal level. Describing the current situation is an important starting point for improving this awareness. From this perspective, the aim of this study was to explore the perceptions of students in the 5th grade about people with special educational needs (SEN) and in this context, to understand whether gifted students are seen as individuals with SEN. Students' perceptions of SEN were explored through their drawings and metaphor analysis. The phenomenological model was used in this qualitative research. The research group consisted of 43 students from a secondary school in the province of Istanbul. While collecting the research data, the students were asked to draw a person with special educational needs and complete the sentence "A person with special educational needs is like ..... because ......". The descriptive analysis method was used to analyze the data; the frequency (f) and percentage (%) were evaluated. As a result, the most frequent 5th-grade students perceive 37% of individuals with special needs as having an intellectual disability, 34% as having a physical disability, 5% as having a visual impairment and 5% as having a special ability. 23% of 5th-grade students have an "uncertain" perception of the type of special education need. Individuals with SEN are perceived as male, without material support, with an open posture and happy expression.