Students with Special Needs in Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language: Affective and Instructional Challenges

Individuals with special needs, despite being active participants in social life, are often marginalized in the second or foreign language learning process. This study addresses this gap by examining teachers' experiences instructing learners with special needs in Turkish as a foreign language. These experiences are essential for developing an inclusive foreign language teaching process and serve as an effective roadmap for identifying the educational needs of individuals with special needs and the necessary interventions. This qualitative study employs a phenomenological research design and involves ten teachers selected through criterion sampling. These teachers share the common characteristics of working with students with special needs learning Turkish as a foreign language. In the study, teacher experiences were analyzed across six themes: diagnosis of students with special needs, emotional states of students with special needs, obstacles encountered by instructors during the teaching process, classroom environment and peer relations, obstacles faced by students with special needs during instruction, and instructor suggestions. The findings reveal that the teachers were eager to develop professionally, highly motivated to teach, sensitive to differences, and possessed diverse skill sets. However, they faced significant challenges, including difficulties in diagnosing students with invisible disabilities, managing classrooms, sourcing or creating appropriate materials, planning specialized instruction for various disabilities, and conducting effective assessments and evaluations. Besides, these teachers reported insufficient academic and administrative support to help them to address these challenges.