The rational of inclusive programs for pre-school education are provided by legal and legislative issues (Odom & Diamond, 1998).  According to UNESCO (2005), inclusion is based in an educational system which permits the participation of all children, responding to their needs and increasing their active role in learning and communicating in the school society, providing the appropriate conditions and provisions of modifying approaches and strategies. In the Greek educational context (3699 Act of 2008) “Special Education involves a congruent and harmonious development of the personality of special needs students and the improvement of their abilities aiming to achieve their integration or re-integration in regular classrooms and a functional professional and social living”. Pre-school education provides the appropriate means for a growing person to form a well educated personality and cultivate cognitive and social abilities. The benefits of educational experiences in the early childhood function as a compensatory factor during the life of any child at risk of learning or socio-economical difficulties (Gorey, 2001).  Well designed and organized pre-school general education programs, with the provision of special needs students, can prepare the school community to accept the differences in children with disabilities and empower their school readiness and entry to general primary education. Each Europe citizen, in order to reach the personal development, should be able to possess knowledge, possibilities, and attitudes that lead to social integration, one of the basic capacities to obtain, as they are planned for the Countries - members of the European Union (Tsakiridou & Stergiou, 2014). Inclusive practices contain the meaning of social justice that advocates over the education of all students in a school setting that provides education opportunities irrelevant to their difficulties (Loreman  et al., 2007). Similar studies contribute to an overall understanding of pre-school students’ ideas and their future attitudes, contributing to the planning of effective intervention strategies for the improvement of social interactions between children with disabilities and their typical peers. The present research is focused on answering several questions concerning the positive or negative attitudes of early aged children toward disability, the nature of their understanding and the reasons for their attitudes toward people with disabilities.  Children’s perception about disability is following a developing course and during the preschool period significant changes are placed in a cognitive and social level.  Pre-school pupils tend to recognize as disability every impairment that can be visible or renders physical appearance disadvantage and is connected to their daily experiences (Conant & Budoff, 1983). Social interaction and participation in play activities with children with special needs help their typical peers to develop friendships and positive sentiments towards individuals with disabilities (Diamont, 1993). 

The purpose of this study was to investigate students’ opinions about disability. Following the directions of the Greek Institute of Pedagogical Issues, concerning the conduct of research, and after having the official permission of Greek Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affair, the principals and pre-school teachers gave their approval to enter the school. A letter was also sent to the parents, describing the aims of the study and requesting their written consent, permitting the children’s participation in the study. In the present study participated 396 students, aged 4 to 6 years old and they were all attended general education schools. The children were interviewed in their classrooms and before starting the interview process, the researcher stayed in the classroom; that helped the children and the researcher to develop a sense of familiarity. The instrument used for this study was a revised edition of PSSHP - The Primary Student Survey of Handicapped Persons (Dyson, 2005), which consists of six questions. The psychometric tool measures the children’s knowledge and their responsiveness toward special needs students and their attitudes toward disabled persons. Three of the questions are referred to the understanding of disability and the following three questions are related to children’ s attitudes toward their peers with special needs. Interview is an appropriate resource to obtain children’s representations, seeking information directly from them (Docherty & Sandelowski, 1999). Data analysis will be conducted using the inductive content analysis process and the thematic topics will emerge as the accordance of two independent researchers (Diamond & Hestenes, 1996).

The research project offers an insight to preschool children’s opinions about children with special needs and their attitudes, and defines the grade of their readiness to be co-educated with their disabled peers in the general classroom. It is expected that preschoolers will define disability as a physical difficulty (Diamond & Huang, 2005) and they will recognize a peer with special needs as dissimiral to them (Diamond, Furgy, & Blass, 1993). It is also predicted that they will express sentiments of compassion to the preschoolers with disabilities (Huckstadt & Shutts, 2014) and typical relationships with them (Kalyva & Agaliotis, 2009). This strategy permits the enrichment of learning and social abilities of every student and identifies the appropriate conditions for an inclusive policy. In that context, people with disabilities can access equal educational opportunities in the school and reinforce their social skills.

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