Building Capacity for Special Education in Turkey
August 6, 2012
Special education students in Turkey are benefiting from a collaboration between Kimber Wilkerson and two former graduate students in the department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education.
With support from the Turkish ministry of education Macid A. Melekoglu and Orhan Cakiroglu chose to do their doctoral studies in special education at UW-Madison. Although they completed their graduate studies and now hold academic posts in their home country, they continue to correspond with education professor Kimber Wilkerson, who chairs the RPSE department.
Macid A. Melekoglu now serves on the education faculty at Eskişehir Osmangazi University. Among other things he studies motivation to read in struggling readers with and without learning disabilities.
A former Spencer Doctoral Research Program fellow at UW-Madison, Orhan Cakiroglu serves on the faculty at Karadeniz Teknik Universitesi. He writes about single subject research, a method that is increasingly used in the field of special education.
When Wilkerson traveled to Turkey to give a keynote at the Turkish National Special Education Congress and an invited talk on Response to Intervention (RtI) in Turkey at Anadolu University. She took time to visit local K-12 schools as well.
Two challenges face educators there. Showing snapshots she had taken with her phone camera, Wilkerson explains that most public school facilities need substantial upgrading. And, many students are remote from the special education services they need. They receive no services in regular schools; they must attend separate schools, which employ all the special education teachers.
With Melekoglu and Cakiroglu, Wilkerson co-published a 2009 article recommending that Turkish special education teachers receive more training in inclusion practices, and that Turkish educators conduct more original research focused specifically on the needs of Turkish students requiring special education services. Topics include a brief history of special education services, an overview of special education laws and regulations, and a summary of efforts around inclusion and current directions in teacher training.
(See “Special Education in Turkey,” International Journal of Inclusive Education, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 287-298).
