Phenomenology of Teachers' Experiences in Virtual Teaching of Mathematics to Children with Special Needs

The purpose of this research is to study and represent teachers' experiences of virtual education of children with special needs in mathematics. The research method is qualitative and phenomenological. The population of this qualitative study consists of teachers with special needs in Saqez city who had the experience of teaching mathematics to elementary students in schools for children with special needs in the academic year of 1401-1400. The participating teachers were selected purposefully. A semi-structured interview was used to collect data, and the data collection and interview process continued until theoretical saturation. After recording the interview, they were transcribed. In order to confirm the validity and reliability, the findings were presented to the participants and their comments were received. Then, the main themes and sub-themes were extracted using the seven-step Claysey strategy. The findings include 7 main themes: family impact, unrealistic evaluation, infrastructure for virtual education, teacher empowerment, new opportunities, disadvantages, and effective teaching strategies. The results of the research showed that families, as the audience of virtual education, should be apprised of this kind of education and courses on the effective use of virtual capacity in education should be organized for teachers so that virtual education can play a role as a supplement to face-to-face education in teaching mathematics in the future. It is also necessary to consider special measures and considerations in virtual education for children with special needs of different spectrums.