Every child is unique and special, besides, has certain individual differences. Individual differences, diversity, disability and special needs, all form inclusive education. Nowadays, inclusive education for all children has been supported by the Turkish Constitution as well as UN Human Rights. According to UN Human Rights, children having special needs must not be prevented in order to get an education with their typical friends. For people having special needs, the education system should be adopted and the change needed for this adaptation has recently started in Turkiye. Turkiye cooperates with UNICEF for children having special needs since 1983. In between 1983 and 2018, many valuable works concerned with people having disabilities and special needs have been performed. As a conclusion, in 2018, by MoNE (Ministry of National Education), Special Education Services Regulation has been published. In this regulation, all concepts related to inclusive education -all disorders, individual differences, abbreviations, disabilities, special needs- have been redefined to have a common base among the professionals. Nevertheless, even today, many obstacles have occurred toward inclusive education. These obstacles have been listed as non-qualified teachers, lack of appropriate plans and curriculum, as well as lack of income for materials and supports, and teachers, families and peers with low awareness (Rieser, 2014; Shaked, 2020; OECD, 2020; UNICEF, 2021; MoNE, 2018). Scenario-based instruction might be considered as a means to overcome some of these obstacles. In a scenario-based course, the scenario given by the teacher is read by students, then an incident or a problem in this scenario is solved by students actively.  In this type of instruction, the scenario is a tool in order to reach accurate information, not an aim. In this instruction, participation of students is a very significant point. Because, if students intellectually attend to scenarios given them in class, they will meet the objectives of related courses more easily (Kokoulina, 2019; Massey University, 2022). Based on the information given above, in this research study, it is aimed to investigate the effects of scenario based instruction on prospective science teachers’ perceptions about students with special needs.

The research is designed as a program effective case study which is one of the qualitative research methods. The purpose of the program effective case study is to examine the effects and impact of a program as well as the reasons for its success and/or failures (Hayes, Kyer & Weber (2015). Research participants were 4 senior prospective science teachers attending a large scale public university in Istanbul, Turkiye, in the 2020-2021 academic year. None of the participants attended a course on inclusion and instructional adaptation before participating in this research. The research took place within the framework of “Inclusion and instructional adaptation” course and scenario-based instruction was used as a medium of instruction. Several data collection tools were employed in this research: scenarios prepared by the researcher, researcher's field notes, focus group interviews and student generated diaries. The scenario about experiences of a student who has autism and communication disorder with his friends and teacher in a classroom has been given to prospective science teachers. An inappropriate incident has occurred in this classroom. In the scenario, the student with autism and communication disorder has answered a question incorrectly. Then, all of the students had made fun of this student and had laughed at him. Because of mockery and laughter, the student had started to yell and scream when the course was going on. While the student was yelling and screaming, the teacher had slapped him to stop his unwanted behavior. The research participants were asked to answer some reflection questions after applying this scenario. "In which areas does the student with autism challenge the teacher?", "How would you control anger in individuals with autism?", "Why do teachers protect the students while playing games?" are some of the examples of questions they were asked to reflect. After the discussions about questions mentioned above, researchers informed participants about autism and communication disorders as well as mentioning appropriate instructional strategies too. Then, the prospective teachers were asked to write a diary under the headings of "how the script (scenario) made you feel", "what would you do if the student was in your class?", "your strategies for involving the student in the lesson". Data collected through several data sources were analyzed with the MAXQDA 20 Package Program. Research findings are grouped under two headings: 1. The effects of the scenario on participants, 2. appropriate methods and techniques to involve students with autism and communication disorders in the lesson.

1.Prospective teachers' views on the scenario of autism and communication disorders; The participants expressed the teacher's reaction to the incident (slapping) in the scenario repeatedly in the lesson and during the focus group discussion as if something would not happen at all. It can be said that participants’ empathy feelings and awareness towards special needs students have occurred due to this event in the scenario. 2. Methods and techniques of prospective teachers to involve students in their lesson; enriching the lesson visually and audibly, approaching the student with understanding, and informing classmates about the student's situation. Participants expressed that visual and auditory materials attract students with autism and communication disorders. Hence, participants specified that students with autism and communication disorders can adapt to the lesson and participate in the lesson when there are appropriate enrichments. Besides, it is clarified that approaching the students with understanding might be a sign of awareness exposed by the scenario. Similar to the results of the research, there are some studies in the literature. In an article, conducted by Van-Tassel Baska (2012), it is aimed to express ideas on curriculum, instruction and assessments which ensure help to practitioners for gifted students. According to the results of this study, problem-based learning which is used with scenarios has been one of the highly effective techniques to conduct and arrange the curriculum for the gifted. In another article, conducted by Sailors (2015), it is aimed to examine the perceptions of pre-service teachers toward including students with autism spectrum disorders in a general education setting. According to the result of this study, pre-service teachers had positive perceptions about including students with ASD.

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