Case Scenarios

Factual description of the scenario

Şerife was born in rural area. She has a lot of problems because of her social and economic conditions. She has problems with her family too. Şerife’s mother died when Şerife was born. She has four siblings. Two of her siblings are visually impaired. She looked after her visually impaired brother and sister except for schooltimes. Şerife lives in Kayseri, and has gone to Salur elementary school. Serife is 10 years old and continues to third class, but she has failed one school year.

Şerife who takes education at a multigrade class, has a lot of adaptation problems with her friends. Multigrade classes are the classes in rural areas that many children from different ages and different grades are educated in the same classroom. She had problems about her lessons and with her friends from the beginning of her education life. Specialists who work in counseling and research center have decided that she has mild cognitive disorder.

Attitude and behaviour of the protagonist student

She has a lot of adaptation problems with her friends and has problems about bad grades. Şerife has some specific behaviors which are incompatible for classroom environment and some inappropriate behaviors to her friends. She wants to leave school.

Attitude and behaviour of the classmates

At the beginning, the teacher didn’t understand Şerife’s weird behaviors in the class. Later on, the teacher started to understand Şerife’s problems day by day. The teacher decided to send Şerife to counseling and to a research center in order to make an individual education plan; the teacher tried to get permission from her father. Her classroom teacher also has not sufficient experience for implementation of this individual program in classroom. As a result of this, Şerife could not be included fully to individualized training program which was prepared for her.

Attitude and behaviour of the teachers

Compared to the behavior of the student, the teachers of the class think to activate common strategies and homogeneous , but not always this is possible. The class team of teachers, through the coordinator, can only recommend to know better the main aspects of the situation. Teachers try to involve in this step of identification also the different stakeholders, the headteacher and the social services workers, but not always this is possible, for difficulties to dialogue between different actors and for lack of financial and human resources.

The teachers are not completely aware of these actions, they have news often only through the few classmates not involved in these actions, and with many difficulties of relationships .

Attitude and behaviour of the parents

Her father has not accepted her test results. He could not believe that she is mildly intellectual disabilities child. Her father has ignored her special needs. He did not accept to make an effort for his daughter.

Attitude and behaviour of the school director

School director heard Şerife’s problem from her teacher, but he didn’t concentrate on this subject. Solely, he told the teacher to go to the counseling and research center. He approached this issue with neglectfully manner. He didn’t spoke to Şerife about her problems and didn’t try to understand the real situation and the source of her problems. He also didn’t meet Şerife’s family to understand the reasons of her problems about her lessons and friends.

Attitude and behaviour of other actors

Şerife’s relatives didn’t do anything. After Şerife’s mother died, they showed no interest in Şerife’s life and needs. Only her uncle helped Şerife’s father for the children’s school needs. When they learned Şerife’s mild cognitive disorder problem, they moved away from Şerife and did not do very much effort to eliminate the problem.

On the other hand, other social services are not very powerful in rural areas and there was not so much social initiatives to help Şerife’s situation economically or socially. If she was in a big city, maybe she would have received some social and economic support from some people or association, but in rural areas such possibilities are rather limited.

Attitude and behavior of the protagonist

Attitude and behaviour of the classmates

Attitude and behaviour of the teachers

Attitude and behaviour of the parents

Attitude and behaviour of the school director

Attitude and behaviour of other actors