Young children with special needs are placed in preschool classrooms within the frame of mainstreaming practices which began in the 1980s in our country. It has been ensured with the Decree-Law No. 573 (1997) and Special Education Services Regulation (2006), which was issued in parallel with this decree law, that young children with special needs continue education in preschools in which their peers are educated, and support they need are provided primarily in preschools. The number of young children with special needs who attend preschools within these legal frameworks increases every year.

In many countries, inclusion practices during early childhood are questioned. Therefore it is aimed to develop inclusion practices constantly, and variables affecting the success of inclusion are identified through studies which examine all aspects of inclusion such as competencies of teachers working in inclusive classrooms and the developmental benefits of children. In this way, it is tried to create inclusion models that will provide the best outputs for children with and without special needs in the same classroom. However, in our country, it seems that studies on preschool inclusion are limited to the attitudes of teachers, parents, and administrators towards children with special needs and their opinions about inclusion. In a few studies, preschool teachers were given short-term training to investigate the effects of this training and teachers’ attitudes towards the training program they attended and their opinions about the program were also examined. However, there have been no studies investigating the development of children with special needs who attend preschools, or in other words, what kind of changes the inclusion has caused on children's development. For this reason, this project is the first study which has the purpose to determine the outcomes of inclusion that has been implemented for the last 30 years in our country. The aim is to examine longitudinally the development of children with and without special needs participating in inclusion for two years and to determine the variables which predict their development. As a result of the project, the developmental gains and the predictors of these gains will be determined for the children with and without special needs who attend preschools.

The findings of the project will contribute to the improvement practices to improve the quality of preschool inclusion practices. By determining the effects of the factors related to the children, families, teachers, and schools that affect the development of children, the findings will contribute to the national and international literature.

The project was initiated by Hacettepe University in July 2015, in cooperation with Ankara University and Gazi University, it is planned to be completed in July 2018.