Abstract:

Effective teaching and instructional support are crucial for students with learning disabilities to develop their cognitive and academic skills. With the pandemic and the closure of schools, distance education has replaced traditional live teaching. The effectiveness of schools' response to these new educational conditions and its impact on student achievement and behavior is a central theme in recent literature, and related research is under constant scrutiny. This study focuses on investigating the conditions of distance education in the context of the inclusion department, with a specific focus on mathematics, and the effects on teachers' outcome expectations. The study involves 67 special education mathematics teachers who taught in inclusion classes, where 807 students with special educational needs studied. Participants completed a questionnaire with both closed and open-ended questions. The findings reveal that while changes have been observed from the replacement of live education by distance education, with an emphasis on the use of "breakouts" on the Webex educational platform, this process has also contributed to increasing barriers to teaching and learning for students with special educational needs. Furthermore, teachers reported low expectations of the adequacy of their distance teaching and its impact on the achievement and coping of their students with learning difficulties. These results highlight the need for further in-depth research on digital learning and its effectiveness in teaching students with learning difficulties. The findings of this study can inform teaching practices with the aim of providing more effective support for students' deficits.

Keywords:

Mathematics, inclusive secondary schools, COVID-19 pandemic, special educators.