Regular primary schoolteachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education: a review of the literature

Teachers are seen as key persons to implement inclusive education. Positive attitudes are therefore argued as playing a considerable role in implementing this educational change successfully. The aim of this study is to examine what attitudes teachers hold towards inclusive education, which variables are related to their attitudes and if these affect the social participation of pupils with special needs in regular schools. A review of 26 studies revealed that the majority of teachers hold neutral or negative attitudes towards the inclusion of pupils with special needs in regular primary education. No studies reported clear positive results. Several variables are found which relate to teachers’ attitudes, such as training, experience with inclusive education and pupils’ type of disability. No conclusion could be drawn regarding the effects of teachers’ attitudes on the social participation of pupils with special needs.     

Pre-service primary teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education

Research has demonstrated that an important factor in the success of inclusive education is dependent upon teachers’ attitudes. Based on this evidence, the present study investigated the impact of a range of teacher variables in association with training on primary pre-service teachers’ attitudes by examining total inclusion scores, positive affect, training and perceived competence, and negative affect. Three-hundred and forty-two participants from a metropolitan Australian University studying primary school education completed the Teacher Attitudes to Inclusion Scale (adapted). Comparisons were made between participants who had received training on special education, compared with those who had not. The analyses revealed that overall, studying an elective unit on inclusive education had a positive influence over pre-service teachers’ attitudes. It was found that teaching experience had a significantly negative impact on pre-service teachers’ attitudes. The present study demonstrates the vital role that training institutions play in developing appropriate attitudes to inclusive education with significant issues around teacher training being examined. The research has important implications for training institutions, with future research being discussed.     

Parents’ attitudes towards inclusive education in day care facilities

ABSTRACT

Parents’ attitudes towards inclusive education in day care facilities in the city and rural district of Osnabrueck in Germany were assessed by conducting a written survey (N?=?809). In the survey, parents indicated their perceptions of advantages and risks of inclusion for children with and without special needs. The interviewed parents perceived more advantages than risks for both groups of children. The results of the assessment varied depending on the kind of child care facility. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and about how institutions should develop to adequately go about the implementation of inclusive education.     

Student teachers’ attitudes towards cooperative learning in inclusive education

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Past research points to cooperative learning as a potentially effective means of fostering the academic and social development of students in inclusive...     

Teachers’ journeys towards critical use of ICT

Teachers have a central role in developing new learning models in schools. This paper describes a study that explored teachers’ confidence and competence in using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as they participated in an ICT development project conducted by an Australian education system in 12 primary schools. The project aimed to develop ICT integrated teaching practices by providing in‐class equipment and teacher professional development in ICT use, curriculum development and teaching strategies. The study used qualitative data from teacher records of Professional Development and Action Learning to identify three of four stages proposed to describe teachers’ ICT learning. Teachers moved from gaining basic ICT skills, to conducting ICT‐focused lessons and eventually appropriate ICT integration. Teachers who progressed to the third stage were able to exploit additional learning opportunities and begin to make fundamental changes to their pedagogy, but needed more time to reach the final stage of challenging existing pedagogical structures.     

Knowledge and perceived social norm predict parents’ attitudes towards inclusive education

Parents are key stakeholders in education and their support is pivotal to policy implementation. Through a large-scale survey, the present study investigated the validity of a structural model describing the relationship between attitude, knowledge, and perceived social norm among parents of children with special needs. Results revealed that knowledge and perceived social norm were powerful predictors of parents’ attitudes towards inclusion and the two predictors were intercorrelated. Exploratory analyses on the effect of demographic variables on parents’ attitudes demonstrated that male parents exhibited more positive attitudes towards inclusion than female parents; and parents of children at a higher grade level indicated less positive attitudes. Cultural issues of parents’ concerns about inclusive practice are discussed.     

Training higher education teachers’ critical thinking and attitudes towards teaching it

Teachers play a crucial role in attaining a major objective of higher education: fostering students’ critical thinking (CT). Yet, little is known about how to foster teachers’ own CT-skills and attitudes towards teaching CT. In a quasi-experimental study (N = 54), we investigated whether a three-session teacher training on (teaching) CT (n = 32) positively affected higher education teachers’ CT-skills and their attitudes towards teaching CT compared to a control condition (n = 22). The training consisted of explicit instruction on common reasoning biases combined with assignments focused on the teaching practice. Results showed that the training improved teachers’ performance on trained but not on novel CT-tasks. Also teachers’ ability to detect biases in a written student product improved; however, despite a small improvement, they still had difficulties in correctly explaining those biases. Possibly due to ceiling effects the training did not affect perceived relevance of teaching CT. Finally, perceived competence in teaching CT decreased temporarily after the first training session but this negative effect disappeared after the final third session. Future research should investigate ways to promote teachers’ ability to transfer trained skills to other CT-tasks, their ability provide feedback on students’ reasoning (i.e., bias explanation), and their attitudes towards teaching CT.     

Students’ attitudes towards interdisciplinary education: a course on interdisciplinary aspects of science and engineering education

A course entitled ‘Science and Engineering Education: Interdisciplinary Aspects’ was designed to expose undergraduate students of science and engineering education to the attributes of interdisciplinary education which integrates science and engineering. The core of the course is an interdisciplinary lesson, which each student is supposed to teach his/her peers. Sixteen students at advanced stages of their studies attended the course. The research presented here used qualitative instruments to characterise students’ attitudes towards interdisciplinary learning and teaching of science and engineering. According to the findings, despite the significant challenge which characterises interdisciplinary teaching, a notable improvement was evident throughout the course in the percentage of students who expressed willingness to teach interdisciplinary classes in future.     

Teachers’ experiences with co-teaching as a model for inclusive education

Co-teaching is an instructional strategy that can be implemented by educators in several different ways. This paper considers how frequently co-teachers implement different approaches to co-teaching and what factors are associated with the implementation of these approaches. This study found that teachers most frequently reported implementing an approach to co-teaching in which one teacher designs and delivers a lesson and the other teacher provides individualised support to specific students with disabilities. The approach to co-teaching in which educators co-plan and co-instruct different components of the curricular content occurred the least frequently. The results of logistic regression analyses indicated that structural aspects of co-teaching (multiple years with co-teacher, time spent daily with co-teacher, number of current co-teachers), teacher attitudes, and professional development opportunities (pre-service and in-service) were associated with the use of different approaches to co-teaching.     

Head teachers’ spirituality and inclusive education: a perspective from critical realism

ABSTRACT

Spiritual leadership gains attention amongst researchers for closing the gap between achieving personal and organisational goals. Despite documentations that spirituality undergirds head teacher’s actions leading inclusive schools, research still remains thin in understanding how spirituality underpins leadership for inclusive education. This paper draws on the philosophy of critical realism to offer a conceptual tool that identifies head teachers’ spiritual actions in their efforts to include ethnic minority students. This is done through multiple qualitative methods collection from an in-depth case study at a multicultural primary school in Cyprus. The critical realist framework helps uncover head teacher’s spiritual actions in a more systematic, structured and holistic way. It reveals that head teachers’ spirituality supports the goals of inclusion and occurs in at least four interrelated and emergent ontological levels (psychological, social, cultural and policy levels) which are set in four scaler levels from microscopic to macroscopic (sub-individual, micro, meso and macro levels). This framework problematises mono-dimensional and reductionist understandings of spirituality in leadership. The paper concludes by suggesting solutions to enrich leadership programmes for inclusive education with fostering leaders’ spirituality at different ontological levels.     

Teachers’ experience with inclusive education in Singapore

Teachers’ positive attitude is most critically and consistently associated with successful inclusion. However, little is known about teachers’ first-hand encounters with inclusive education in Singapore. We present findings from a qualitative study on inclusion based on focus group interviews with 202 teachers from 41 resourced primary schools. The data were transcribed and coded using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis and NVIVO software. Two broad clusters identified were teachers’ positive and negative experiences in implementing inclusion. More reference was made to negative than positive experiences. The most dominant negative experience was stress from challenging behaviours and instructional difficulties of catering adequately for diverse needs in the same classroom. The most salient positive experience was satisfaction with pupils’ progress and new learning for teachers. Classroom practices that facilitated inclusion and the value of training in shaping teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion were highlighted.     

Teachers’ attitudes towards tracking: testing the socialization hypothesis

The paper examines how teachers’ attitudes towards tracking (separating pupils into groups with different curricula on the basis of their abilities and results) differ among various generations of teachers. Fundamental and quick changes in the educational system occurred in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 as a unified educational system moved to a system strongly accenting tracking practices. We use this ‘policy discontinuity’ to validate teacher socialization theory and test three alternative socialization hypotheses based on different key periods in teachers’ development: the pupil experience hypothesis, the pedagogical preparation hypothesis and the pedagogical experience hypothesis. We work with a data-set from 2009 covering 1002 Czech teachers. The mean tests and the logistic regression analysis support the socialization theory, however only the pedagogical experience hypothesis was found to be most influential.     

‘Much ado about something’ how school leaders affect attitudes towards inclusive education: the case of Oman

The development of inclusive education (IE) is arguably the biggest challenge currently facing school systems in Oman. School leadership (SL) was argued to be a determinant of organisational effectiveness and an antecedent of organisational commitment (OC). The current study investigated how SL affects teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education (TATIE). A total of 378 teachers from both genders responded to the Principal Leadership Style (PLS), Scale of Teachers’ Attitudes towards Inclusive Classrooms (STATIC), and the Organisational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ). Using structural modeling, we tested a set of hypotheses drawn from a conceptualised model which we developed from previous research evidence. Results supported our conceptualised model. OC was found to mediate the relationship between PLS and TATIE. Further, different PLSs showed different indirect effects on TATIE through OC. Results are discussed in relation to the context of Oman.     

Predicting pre-service teachers’ preparedness for inclusive education: Bangladeshi pre-service teachers’ attitudes and perceived teaching-efficacy for inclusive education

This study reports on the second phase of a larger study, which investigated the preparedness of pre-service teachers to teach in inclusive classrooms in Bangladesh. Phase 1 employed two standardised scales that were used with 1623 pre-service teachers from 16 teacher education institutions to measure their attitudes and perceived teaching-efficacy for inclusive education. The findings of Phase 1 indicated that the level and length of training, along with gender, influenced both teacher attitudes and teaching-efficacy. In Phase 2, semi-structured interviews with six administrative heads of the pre-service teacher education institutions were conducted in order to better understand these findings. Outcomes of Phase 2 indicated that curriculum, teacher-related and a number of contextual variables may explain the differences in the findings of this study that were in sharp contrast to those from previous international research. Recommendations for policy and curriculum reform for pre-service teacher education are also made.     

A comparativist’s predicaments of writing about ‘other’ education: a self-reflective,critical review of studies of Japanese education

This self-reflexive essay teases out the predicaments that I have encountered through my past publishing experience, while situating them in a critical review of the existing English-language studies of Japanese education. Drawing on postcolonial theoretical insights and recent critical sociology of academic knowledge production, I use my personal experience as a starting point to identify the particular discursive structure of comparative education that constrains the articulation of ‘other’ education in the field. My critical review of comparative studies of Japanese education demonstrates that many of them, including my own, unreflexively accept the subject positions offered by this discursive condition and thus further constrain space for those who write in English about ‘other’ education and Japanese education in particular. In conclusion, I discuss recent studies of Japanese education that partially address the dilemmas raised in this paper and the wider implications of this study for the field of comparative education.     

Japanese in-service teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education and self-efficacy for inclusive practices

Using a sample of 359 in-service teachers, this study examines Japanese teachers' attitudes toward inclusive education and their self-efficacy for inclusive practices. The results indicate that although teachers’ sentiments toward disabilities were generally positive, the teachers had some concerns about implementing inclusive education in their classroom. The overall level of self-efficacy was relatively low in the Japanese sample compared to that of other countries, particularly in relation to managing problematic student behavior. Self-efficacy regarding managing behavior and collaboration was related to overall attitudes toward inclusive education. The findings can enable useful insights in developing pre-service and in-service teacher education.     

Teachers’ perceptions of and attitudes towards performance appraisal in Zimbabwean schools

Abstract

This article reports on an empirical investigation of Zimbabwean teachers’ attitudes towards Performance Appraisal (PA) as a model of staff supervision and the resultant impact on their motivation and performance. A survey design was used to gather data by means of a questionnaire containing ninety one precoded response items on the concepts of supervision and PA, induction programmes, PA interviews and teachers’ attitudes to PA. The responses of fifty two teachers out of a sample of sixty revealed that on the whole teachers are positively motivated by staff supervision models which seek to develop their pedagogical skills and therefore tend to enhance their performance with a view to improving education and attaining educational goals. The research revealed that PA should be collaborative, transparent, dialogical and accountable. Models which are judgmental and call for close and constant supervision are unpopular.     

Teachers’ professional development: a theoretical review

Background and purpose:?The article reviews studies that focus on the professional development of teachers after they have completed their basic teacher training. Teacher professional development is defined as teachers’ learning: how they learn to learn and how they apply their knowledge in practice to support pupils’ learning. The research question addressed in the article is: How do experienced teachers learn?

Main argument:?The review is framed by theories within the constructivist paradigm. From this perspective, knowledge is perceived as the construction of meaning and understanding within social interaction. The social surroundings are seen as decisive for how the individual learns and develops. It is argued that courses and lectures, or ‘times for telling’, and teachers’ development of a metacognitive attitude are decisive factors for teachers’ learning within a constructivist frame of reference.

Sources of evidence and method:?To attempt to answer the research question, a search was conducted of the subject of pedagogy in the ISI WEB of Science (search undertaken 9 August 2011) using the search strings ‘teacher learning’, ‘teacher development’ and ‘teacher professional development’, and covering the period from 2009 to 2011 to probe the most recent decade of research. Articles that dealt with basic education, primary and secondary school, were selected, and articles that dealt with learning using digital tools and the internet and newly trained teachers were rejected. A set of 31 articles was selected from this search. To ensure width and depth of coverage, this was supplemented by a selection of review studies and research on further education in respect of teachers’ learning. The texts were analysed by means of open and axial coding, developing main and sub-categories.

Conclusions:?The review of articles shows that both individual and organisational factors impact teachers’ learning. Teacher co-operation has importance for how they develop, and some of the teachers can lead such learning activities themselves. Moreover, a positive school culture with a good atmosphere and understanding of teachers’ learning, in addition to co-operation with external resource persons, may impact the professional development of teachers. The article concludes with the reflection that learning in school is the best arena for further development of teachers.     

Pre‐service primary education teachers’ changing attitudes towards teaching: a longitudinal study

This study investigated the longitudinal changes in the attitudes of pre‐service primary education teachers towards the teaching profession as they progressed through training. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in pre‐service teachers’ attitudes towards the profession between their freshman and senior years. Moreover, the findings obtained through interview data have shown that both positive and negative changes occur in pre‐service teachers’ attitudes towards teaching throughout their education, and these changes are observed to be related to teaching practice, cooperating teachers, teacher education institutions and teacher educators.