Knowledge and beliefs of classroom teachers about dyslexia: the case of teachers in Turkey

Abstract

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin, is characterised by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities and is encountered in one in every five children. Teachers’ pedagogical knowledge plays an important role in the education of students with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a very new topic in Turkey. For this reason, scientific research in the field of dyslexia in the country is currently very limited and teachers have very limited knowledge about dyslexia. Due to the lack of such studies, this study was conducted with teachers who worked directly with individuals with dyslexia. The objective of this study was to analyse the knowledge levels of 260 primary school teachers on dyslexia and factors that may be associated with it as determined by their scores on the Knowledge and Beliefs about Developmental Dyslexia Scale. The results show that these classroom teachers were not knowledgeable enough about dyslexia and did not feel ready to teach students with dyslexia. For this reason, it would be beneficial to attach importance to the professional development of teachers by improving their knowledge through inservice training programmes, seminars, and conferences. The findings are discussed within the framework of extant literature.