Sixty-three visually impaired pupils from 40 different schools in Israel and their form teachers filled in questionnaires assessing quality of life. In addition, a total of 200 teachers were asked to ...fill in questionnaires on school climate and attitudes towards inclusion. Findings indicated that positive climate and positive attitudes correlated with high compatibility between pupils’ and teachers’ reports. Pupils attending schools characterized by a positive school environment (climate and attitudes) reported that they were not stigmatized by others.
Background/Aims: The increasing popularity of inclusive education for students with disabilities and the attitudes towards it inevitably affect school‐based occupational therapy practice. This ...survey study investigated the attitudes of entry‐level occupational therapy doctoral (EOTD) students towards inclusive education and the effect of professional education on their perception.
Methods: A total of 62 EOTD students responded to a self‐developed questionnaire, Attitudes and Inclusive Education Survey, yielding a response rate of 91.2%.
Results: Results of the study revealed that entry level occupational therapy doctoral students have positive attitudes towards inclusive education and believe that the inclusion movement has an inevitable impact on school‐based occupational therapy practice. Professional education in occupational therapy might positively affect students’ attitudes.
Conclusion: Given the close association between one's attitude and behaviour, the findings of the study are particularly encouraging. Future research needs to further examine school‐based occupational therapy practice in inclusive environments.
The Multidimensional Attitudes Toward Preschool Inclusive Education Scale (MATPIES; Lohmann et al., 2016) seeks to assess preschool educators’ attitudes toward inclusive education. It has been used ...in wide range of settings and with varied populations, but there has been a lack of systematicity in translation, adaptation, and validation procedures associated with it. For instance, its use in French or in a French-English bilingual context such as Québec (Canada) has yet to be validated.
The present study documented the translation and validation process for the MATPIES in bilingual early childhood education settings.
The MATPIES was completed by 211 French- and English-speaking early childhood educators and administrators in the province of Québec, Canada.
Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the original factor structure for the MATPIES was not replicated within the bilingual Québec sample.Exploratory analyses suggested a four-factor structure encompassing 15 items, which had good internal consistency (α = 0.87).
The factor structure of the MATPIES may vary across populations. This study underscores the importance of evaluating instruments in contexts that differ from those in which they were originally constructed to ensure the validity of results.
•A measure of attitudes toward inclusive education was adapted to French.•The factor structure of the adaptation differed from the original instrument’s.•The MATIES/MATPIES may function differently across languages and cultures.•A new factor structure is proposed for the bilingual context of Québec.•Psychometric validation is more complex when two linguistic groups coexist.
The aim of this study was to find out about attitudes toward inclusion and benefits perceived by families with children enrolled in schools attended by students with ASD at different educational ...stages (from kindergarten to high school). 323 families of classmates of students with ASD from different educational stages of 16 mainstream schools participated. The analysis of the attitudes, perceived benefits, relationship with the teacher, and relationship with the school was carried out through questionnaires. The results show positive attitudes toward the inclusive education of students with ASD in all families, but especially among families of children with SEN. All the families identified the benefit of inclusion. Attitudes are related to collaboration with the school and satisfaction with teachers.
As the classroom represents an important social context for the development of out-group attitudes, the current study investigated the role of inclusive classroom norms for students' attitudes toward ...hyperactive peers. The study included 1209 Swiss children from 61 school classes who were surveyed in the fifth grade (T1) and in the sixth grade (T2) (MageT1 = 11.55 years, MageT2 = 12.58 years). Students' attitudes toward hyperactive children was assessed by self-reports on students' sympathy and intended inclusion toward hypothetical children who show hyperactive behavior. Moreover, students rated their classmates' inclusive attitudes. Analyses with an autoregressive multilevel path model revealed that inclusive classrooms norms in the fifth grade predicted students' sympathy and intended inclusion toward hyperactive children in the sixth grade. The results implicate that group-level analyses are important in order to explain hyperactive children's peer group problems.
Introduction: The focus of our research converges on the analysis of attitudes and the prediction of the behavior of university students towards the inclusion of students with disabilities in ...university. The evaluation of attitudes and the prediction of behavior are complex, but it is fundamental because of the decisive impact they have on the participation of students with disabilities in the socio-educational field. Therefore, for this purpose a scale based on the theoretical framework of the "Theory of Planned Behavior" ("TPB") model has been developed and validated; one of the models that provides a more complete methodological vision to explain and predict behavior. Methodology: The sample consisted of 1044 participants, of whom 623 were students from Spanish universities and 421 from Argentine universities, collected with the instrument designed according to the "TPB." The validity and reliability of this instrument were estimated through the "Confirmatory Factor Analysis," a procedure framed within "SEM" ("Structural Equation Modeling"). Results: The results obtained in terms of the reliability and validity of the instrument confirms the adequacy of the goodness-of-fit, internal consistency, discriminant validity and criterion validity. On the other hand, it's observed that, in general terms, the responses of students without disabilities toward the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education are positive. Discussion and conclusions: Although there are researches carried out in university field that analyze the attitudes towards people with disabilities, there are few that apply the model of "Theory of Planned Behavior" with sufficient evidence of reliability and validity. In this sense, we present a psychometrically validated scale which objective is to evaluate the attitudes and the intention of university student to the inclusion of students with disabilities in university. In this way, we can develop interventions to improve the inclusion of students with disabilities in university.
This study compared changes in attitudes toward inclusion and efficacy of 98 general and 76 special education students completing their master's degree. Data were collected at the beginning of the ...program, at the end of the first semester-upon completion of an Introduction to Inclusion course-and at the end of the program. Results indicated that, though attitudes toward inclusion became significantly more positive among special education students throughout the program, general education students' attitudes became significantly more positive only after completion of the inclusion course but later significantly regressed. These findings support those of other studies that demonstrate improvements of attitudes after one course. Efficacy scores followed a similar pattern for general and special education students with significant increases from the beginning to the end of the program. Implications for elementary education programs for general educators are discussed, taking into account that all teachers should be prepared to teach all students.
An experimental study (n = 288 general and special education teachers) examining the effects of altering the referent (“students with mild disabilities,” “students with severe disabilities,” or ...“students with disabilities”) on a four-item scale (Negative Effect of Inclusion) indicated that wording changes had little effect on the scale’s psychometric properties (e.g., factor pattern coefficients). Changes did result in a shift in the mean level of the attitude scale. Regression coefficients between the scale and type of teacher, total years of teaching experience, years of experience at current school, and training in inclusion were not significantly altered by changing the referent. Gender was the only predictor that exhibited a lack of invariance in its regression coefficients across questionnaire forms that differed in referent. For most of the bivariate relationships examined in this study, the same conclusions would be drawn no matter which of the three referents were used.
The purpose of the research was to identify variables affecting the attitudes and involvement of school counsellors in the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classrooms. The sample ...included 220 primary and middle school counsellors in Israel. Two specially constructed questionnaires (i.e., the Involvement in Inclusion Questionnaire and the Personal and Institutional Characteristics Questionnaire) and an adaptation of the Shechtman, Reiter, and Schanin (
1993
) Attitude Questionnaire were employed in the research. The findings indicated that counsellors have positive attitudes towards inclusion and allocated about 36% of their time to inclusion activities. Special education training and attitudes toward inclusion were the variables that explained the greatest amount of variance in the counsellors' involvement.
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