Hacettepe University Department of Special Education

Special Education Department of Hacettepe University has a distinguished record in Special Education through its undergraduate program that is designed to prepare the students to be effective teachers on intellectual and visual disabilities. The mission of the Department is to improve the lives of children with intellectual and visual disabilities through the preparation of exceptionally competent teachers and researchers and conducting research for enhancing the quality of life of persons with (dis)abilities and their families. The Department's commitment is effective teaching, excellent field supervision and to support the students for using evidence practice for their special education career. Each year, the Department continues to improve its master's (students with intellectual, autism, gifted and visual disabilities ) and phd-level program (special education) to ensure the best preparation of special education teachers, administrators, and field researchers. There is Hacettepe University Disability Research and Application Center at Hacettepe University. The aim of the center is to; conduct national and foreign scientific researches and applications regarding disabled people in cooperation with the relevant departments and divisions of the university, and arrange educational activities. Persons Gökhan Töret, Ph.D. in Special Education. He is a full time assistant professor of Department of Special Education at Hacettepe University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at Hacettepe University. His research focuses on the development, evaluation, and dissemination of social communication interventions for young children with autism spectrum disorders. He completed his doctoral dissertation in 2016. He obtained her master degree in special education at Ankara University of Ankara and later completed his Ph.D. at Gazi University of Ankara. He focused on teaching “early intervention” to students with autism spectrum disorders. His studies social communication deficits in ASD and the development, evaluation, and dissemination of social communication interventions. He also conduct research on the impact of ASD on the family and the broader autism phenotype. A major emphasis of his current work is on the development of community-focused, traditional pre-service teacher mediated interventions for young children with ASD. Also his research activities were on language intervention of students with developmental disabilities. Dr. Töret, with considerable teacher training experience, dedicated his research to improve pre-service teacher’s competencies especially in becoming autonomous learners. He has many articles which were published both in national and international indexes. He presented over 50 papers both in national and international congress. Along with summarized experience, currently he also focused his research effort in developing a new special education training program for higher education. He has been involved in several national and international research and collaboration projects, and therefore has experience in the implementation of the proposed action. Recent ones included: Theory of mind and face recognitions in children with autism spectrum disorders. Developed theory of mind training program for children with autism spectrum disorders and investigated face recognition styles of children with autism spectrum disorders by eye tracking movements (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, ) Design of Curriculum for Teachers and Other Professionals Working for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities ( Erasmus+, ,).