An examination of the special education teacher training programs in Turkey and European Union member countries in terms of language development and communication education

Abstract

The academic terms and the periods of the courses related to the language development and communication differs considerably in the programs of the countries which train teachers for the special education department. The aim of this study is to examine the contents and credits of the communication and the language development courses in Teacher Education Programs for hearing-impaired, intellectual disability, gifted and talented multiple disabilities, visual impairment education at the special education department. In this study in which the descriptive research method is used, the data have been collected from the sources of Turkey and European Union member countries, called Agencies of the European Union, Eurydice-Network on Education Systems and Policies in Europe. The courses in Special Education Teacher Training undergraduate programs of higher education institutions of each country stated in the reports of National Education System Descriptions have been examined to reach these data. While there are undergraduate programs for four years of study related to each disability type in Turkey, it has been seen that the department of hearing impaired education teacher training is the department which mainly includes the language development and communication skills courses among mentioned programs. The countries such as Luxemburg, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, Ireland, Finland Ireland and Lithuania give common ground courses of special education department to the preservice teachers in 6 to 7 academic terms.

Keywords:  Special education, teacher training program, communication and language development education