Session Information
04 SES 01 C, Teacher attitudes Towards Inclusive Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Teachers are playing a vital role in the education process and their attitudes toward inclusion have a significant effect on the implementation and success of inclusion (Cook, 2011). Teachers possess positive attitudes toward inclusive education but they express their concerns related to inadequate education process and the means of educating students with special educational needs (Scruggs & Mastropieri, 1996). Other research (Saloviita, 2018) showed that teachers develop neutral to negative attitudes toward the inclusive education. Furthermore, men teaching in the mainstream school adopt positive attitudes in a lower level than women, teacher in a low self-efficacy level expressed positive attitudes in a low degree, but teachers who participated in special education seminars or completed a special education master, formed positive attitudes toward the inclusion policy (Vaz et al., 2015). Other study concluded that going aged teachers are characterized by positive attitudes toward the education for all (Monsen, Ewing & Kwoka, 2014). Teachers who work in primary education express positive attitudes toward the inclusion of students with low to mild degree of disability and express their beliefs to the effectiveness to the inclusion education practices (Ćwirynkało et al., 2017). Secondary education teachers support the inclusive education, especially for those who have taught a student with special needs and those who are qualified in special education (Bhatnagar & Das, 2014). This result was verified by another study (Yuen & Westwood, 2001) but teachers develop negative attitudes toward to the inclusion of students with behavioral problems, severe sensory impairments and mental retardation and their positive attitudes are referred to the inclusion of students with physical disabilities and mild speech and health problems.
Method
In the current study participated 154 teachers who work in general education. The questionnaire used was the Multidimensional Attitudes toward Inclusive Education Scale (MATIES) (Mahat, 2008). It consists of 18 items, scored in a 6-point Likert scale. The items are equally organized in the three attitude subscales: cognitive, affective, behavioral. Three of the items of cognitive domain and all the items of behavioral domain are reverse coded, in order for the higher score to state a more positive attitude toward to inclusive education. Total Cronbachs' a ranges from 0.77 to 1.30 and item loading higher than 0.50. For the three subscales Cronbachs' a resulted as follow: cognitive, a = 0.77, affective, a= 0.78, behavioral, a = 0.91. Second part is consisted of demographics variables, such as, teaching school (primary-secondary school), teaching lessons, qualification level, years of teaching in public and private education, attending special education seminars, previous teaching experience with students with special needs, cognition of special education law, gender, age (Tsakiridou & Polyzopoulou, 2014). The adaptation of the instrument followed the same procedure as previous research (Tsakiridou and Polyzopoulou, 2019). The questionnaires were created in a Google form type and the responses were recorded on a sheet from where they were collected for further process (Lao et al., 2022).
Expected Outcomes
The Greek version of questionnaire consists of 18 items. According to confirmative factor analysis, there emerged the three factors of the original instrument (KMO = 0.86, Bartlett's test of sphericity = 1213.816, p < 0.001) that explains the 72.56% of the total dispersion. The results showed differences concerning family member with disability, attending special needs training, seminars topic, previous teaching experience, knowledge about special education law, primary and secondary level education, general and technical high school, teaching lesson, years of teaching in public and private education, age. Findings may have a reasonable degree of generalizability to teachers groups and they could be used as base so that they can expand in an national and international level (Boyle et al. 2013).
References
Bhatnagar, N., & Das, A. (2014). Regular School Teachers' Concerns and Perceived Barriers to Implement Inclusive Education in New Delhi, India. International Journal of Instruction, 7(2), 89-102. Boyle, C., Topping, K., & Jindal-Snape, D. (2013). Teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion in high schools. Teachers and teaching, 19(5), 527-542. Cook, B. G. (2001). A comparison of teachers' attitudes toward their included students with mild and severe disabilities. The journal of special education, 34(4), 203-213. Ćwirynkało, K., Kisovar-Ivanda, T., Gregory, J. L., Żyta, A., Arciszewska, A., & Zrilić, S. (2017). Attitudes of Croatian and Polish elementary school teachers towards inclusive education of children with disabilities. Hrvatska revija za rehabilitacijska istraživanja, 53, 252-264. Lao, K. A. C., Lao, H. A., Siason, V. A., Cabangcala, R. B., Cadapan, E. D., & Alieto, E. O. (2022). Attitude towards Inclusive Education (IE) among Prospective Teachers: Is there Gender Polarization?. International Journal Of Special Education, 37(3). Monsen, J. J., Ewing, D. L., & Kwoka, M. (2014). Teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion, perceived adequacy of support and classroom learning environment. Learning environments research, 17(1), 113-126. Scruggs, T. E., & Mastropieri, M. A. (1996). Teacher perceptions of mainstreaming/inclusion, 1958–1995: A research synthesis. Exceptional children, 63(1), 59-74. Tsakiridou, H., & Polyzopoulou, K. (2014). Greek teachers’ attitudes toward the inclusion of students with special educational needs. American Journal of Educational Research, 2(4), 208-218. Tsakiridou, H., & Polyzopoulou, K. (2019). Educators’ attitudes concerning teaching of students with special educational needs in the mainstream Greek school. International Journal of Innovation Education and Research, 7 (7), 317-337. Vaz, S., Wilson, N., Falkmer, M., Sim, A., Scott, M., Cordier, R., & Falkmer, T. (2015). Factors associated with primary school teachers’ attitudes towards the inclusion of students with disabilities. PloS one, 10(8), e0137002. Yuen, M., & Westwood, P. (2001). Integrating students with special needs in Hong Kong secondary schools: Teachers' attitudes and their possible relationship to guidance training. International journal of special education, 16(2), 29-84.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.