Abstract

Stuttering is a speech defect which is seen in all countries. Stuttering affects fluency of speech due to some physiological, psychological and neurological causes. Protractions, clogs and repeats are seen in stuttering. Since it will probably result in social handicaps, stuttering should be considered as more important than other speech defects. There are many physiological, mental and psychological factors affecting stuttering. Findings of researches show that in addition to environmental factors, psychological measures are also important in the treatment of stuttering. One of the factors which affect the student most is the teacher. The attitude of teacher affects stuttering student, too. The aim of this research is to determine the attitudes of teachers toward stuttering students. The research was carried out with the participation of 290 teachers who work in Malatya Province. A stuttering scale, developed by the researcher, was administered to 219 primary school teachers and 71 Turkish language teachers. The scale consists of failure, awareness and abstraction sub-dimensions. Teachers develop positive attitudes considering these sub dimensions. In addition, we also investigated whether attitudes of teachers toward stuttering students differ in terms of their gender, branches, length of service, having had stuttering student, and having read books on stuttering.

Key words: Stuttering, education of Turkish Language, language education, teacher attitude