Almost all schools in Europe tend to support their pupils who have intellectual disabilities and to integrate them into the mainstream education system (Van Kraayenoord, 2003). This trend has been strongly debated among the former Eastern bloc countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania). Educational support to people with intellectual disability in those countries reflects the current humanist paradigm and strives to reach the standards of the developed European and non-European countries. Many factors play an important role in the process of inclusion of the pupils with intellectual disability (especially those with mild intellectual disability) into the mainstream education system and society. An important and still neglected factor, which also affects the integration of pupils with intellectual disability in to the mainstream education, is the diagnostics of the children’s conceptions nondisabled pupils. Misinformation and prejudice (misconceptions) of nondisabled pupils about intellectual disability can significantly influence the attitude to peers with intellectual disability (e.g. Siperstein et al., 2007; Laws & Kelly, 2005; Diamond et al., 1997).

The study describes qualitative research of the children’s conceptions (also known as preconceptions, child’s science etc.) into the interpretation of the intellectual disability. Preconceptions are recognised as a set of specific knowledge and notions which are based on empirical or interpretational models of an individual. Structure content of knowledge in the forms of thought clusters and notions create an idiosyncratic unique knowledge matrix that is accentuated by an individual’s emotional component. Pupils’ preconceptions to the phenomena mentioned above was investigated in terms of the so called multidimensional entities which include cognitive (level of understanding to the phenomena) and affective (personal attitude to the phenomena) dimensions. In terms of this study the research question is formulated as follows: What understanding of and what attitudes do primary school pupils have toward intellectual disability?

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