Identification of Interpersonal Problem Solving Skills of Students in The Special Education Department

Abstract

.This study investigated the perceptions of the 221 Special Education Department students about interpersonal problem solving skills. It also investigated whether there were any significant differences in the perceptions of the participants about their interpersonal problem solving skills in relation to gender, age and year class. For this investigation, “Problem Solving Inventory” which was designed by Heppner and Peterson (1982) and later adapted to Turkish by Şahin, Şahin and Heppner (1993) was used. The Problem Solving Inventory had six subdimensions: ‘hasty approach’, ‘thinking approach’, ‘reversed approach’, ‘evaluative approach’, ‘self confident approach’ and ‘planning approach’. The findings of the study revealed that in general, the participant students were adequate in their
perceptions regarding their interpersonal problem solving skills. It was also found that the perceptions of the participant female and male students did not significantly differ in all the sub-dimensions. The findings indicated that the participants’ perceptions differed only for “thinking approach” and “evaluative approach”. The findings of the study revealed that the participant students significantly differed in their perceptions about problem solving skills in relation to age for four sub-dimensions:”thinking approach”, “reversed approach”, “evaluative approach” and “self-confident approach”. Yet, no significance was found in their perceptions regarding year class. The participants’ perceptions indicated that they prefered to use “thinking approach”, “planned approach”, “hasty approach” and “evaluative approach”, respectively while they felt less competent in using “reserved approach” and “self confident approach” in problem solving