Teaching Practices Used by Preschool Teachers Who Have Mainstreamed Students in Their Classrooms

In our country, the instructional arrangements for the children with developmental disabilities placed into general schools to participate in the instruction together with their peers and have systematic instruction during the daily routines and activities are needed. In order to identify what these arrangements are, in the study it was aimed to determine what the instructional goals preschool teachers who have mainstreamed students planned to teach to children with typical development in their classes are, what sorts of activities they made in order to reach these goals, and how they make the children with developmental disabilities a part of the activities in the classes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 preschool teachers and the data were analyzed inductively. Four main themes and sub-themes came out of the data. Results of the study revealed that teachers reached the instructional goals by embedding them into natural teaching opportunities including the plays, routines and transitions but the results also showed that in order for the children with developmental disabilities get benefit from these opportunities more systematic practices should be conducted in the classes. Moving from this point, causing preschool teachers working with children with developmental disabilities to acquire the skills in order to use activity-based instruction, one of the natural teaching strategies, with other systematic instructions can contribute to increase the success of inclusion of these children into preschools and for the students to be more successful in the inclusion classes. Based on these findings, recommendations for further studies and practices were made in the study.