How do special education pre-service teachers perceive teaching arts?

Arts is looked upon as empowering social and adaptive skills of individuals with special needs. Therefore, special needs individuals involvement with arts plays a big role in their development. In order to be able to integrate arts activities into instructional practices teachers in the field of special education are in need to have competence in teaching arts during their professional lives. The study aims to explore how the pre-service special education teachers perceive teaching arts. Quantitative research method was applied in the present study demographic information and a scale was used to collect the data. Participants of the study consisted of 361 pre-service teachers enrolled in Near East University. The collected data was analyzed with SPSS 20.00 program. The results of the study indicated that pre-service teachers special education teachers perceptions regarding arts teaching are positive. More interestingly, perceptions on teaching arts showed a significant difference regarding gender, class level and attending lecture on arts teaching. Applying arts teaching in the special education training sessions and recommendations for further research was provided in the study