Session Information
04 SES 03 A, Professional Learning, and Pupils' Self-Image, Professional Learning, Pupils´Self-Image and Teacher Attitudes toward Inclusion in 1913 and 2009
Paper Session
Time:
2009-09-28
14:00-15:30
Room:
NIG, HS A
Chair:
Susan Tetler
Contribution
How have teacher attitudes toward inclusion of students with disabilities changed over the last 100 years? Results of a questionnaire completed in 1913 will be compared to one completed in the past year.
In November, 1913, a short article was published in the United States in The Training School Bulletin, entitled “Backward Children and Forward Teachers” (Johnson, 1913). The article fit well with the values and perspective of the journal. The Training School Bulletin was published by the administrators and researchers at the Training School at Vineland, New Jersey. It was here that researchers such as H. H. Goddard, E. A. Doll, and Alexander Johnson prepared much of their arguments for social policies that fit with their eugenic beliefs about the “burden of the feeble-minded” (Fernald, 1912) . The Bulletin was aimed at educators and others who were part of the burgeoning array of special education classrooms springing up in cities across the country. The articles preached the message that self-contained classrooms and schools were the direction that such programs should take. The “Backward Children” article was no exception.
The article reports on an informal survey of teachers. These were teachers “of long experience in the regular classes, who are at present, or recently have been, in charge of special classes (Johnson, 1913, p. 97). Of equal importance, the participants in the survey had almost all attended one of the annual ‘Summer Schools” at Vineland. In these early days of public school special education, the ‘summer schools’ (offered by a number of state institutions) were the only specialized training offered to those teaching these newly labeled students. The article includes the survey questions and reports on the results.
Despite a number of obvious methodological flaws, the study summarized in the article provides a fascinating snapshot of teacher attitudes about children with intellectual disabilities and where they should be educated. The focus of the survey is captured well by the first question:
“What, if any, is the effect, beneficial or hurtful, on a backward or feeble-minded child, of contact with normal children in the class room” (Johnson, 1913, p. 97). In short, through this and three subsequent questions, the survey asks teachers of the time what they believed about educating children with intellectual disabilities in general education classrooms. This presentation will report the results of an attempt to replicate this study almost 100 years later.
Method
The four open-ended questions from the original questionnaire were reworded to update any obsolete or offensive terminology(e.g., “feeble-minded children” became “children with intellectual disabilities”).The updated survey was then distributed to a random sample of both special and general education teachers in three school districts in Southern California.Teachers were not told that the survey was a replication of one done in 1913.The results of this new survey have not yet been completed.However, by the time of the conference,the results will have been collected and analyzed by a team of doctoral students in disability studies under the supervision of a professor in their program.The guiding question for the study was how current attitudes of teachers compare to those expressed by teachers 1n 1913?In short,we wanted to know how much or how little has changed in the beliefs of educators about the benefits of children with disabilities to be educated in inclusive settings.
Expected Outcomes
The presentation will lay out the results of the replicated survey and compare it to the original study as reported in the 1913 article. I will first establish some of the context for the original article, showing a copy of the article itself and discussing the Vineland Training School’s influence on the early years of special education in America. This will be followed by a review of the results from the original survey as summarized by the article. The third segment will describe the results of the new survey and draw comparisons with the earlier study. A review of the literature about teacher attitudes will also be described. Finally, the presentation will conclude with speculation what such a comparison tells us about the ongoing debate over inclusive approaches in education. We will open up the presentation to discussion with the audience as well.
References
Fernald, W. (1912). The burden of the feeble-minded. Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 17, 87-111 Goddard, H. H. (1912). The Kallikak family: A study of the heredity of feeble-mindedness. New York: Macmillan. Johnson, A. (1913). Backward children and forward teachers. The Training School Bulletin, 10(7), 97-104.
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