An Investigation of the Turkish Preservice Teachers' Attitudes towards Individualized Education Program Development Process

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the attitudes of preservice teachers who study at Turkish universities towards the development process of an individualized education program (IEP). The participants of the study were composed of 304 teachers who were all seniors at the faculties of education in the 2019-2020 academic year. The data were collected through the attitude determination scale (ADS) towards the IEP development process developed by Tike (2007). The scale contained 3 dimensions and 15 items. A Principal Component Analysis revealed a 3-factor structure of 15 items with a 61,39% of the total variance explained. In order to determine the internal consistency a reliability test was implemented and the Cronbach Alpha coefficient for the 3 factors was found as 0.67. The collected data were analyzed through a statistical analysis program. In order to determine a possible significant difference between the participants' genders, previous interaction with inclusive students, taking inclusive education classes and their attitudes towards IEP development process, an independent variables t-test was implemented. To determine whether there exists a significant difference according to the participants' knowledge of the regulations regarding inclusive education a one-way ANOVA was implemented. When a difference was revealed Tukey test was implemented to determine the differentiation and check the difference between the mean scores. At the end of the study, a statistically significant difference was found regarding the participants' genders, taking inclusive education classes and knowledge of the regulations regarding inclusive education while no statistically significant difference was found according to their previous interaction with inclusive education.