Special Teachers Attitudes Towards Inclusion of Students with Special Educational Needs

Special Teachers Attitudes Towards Inclusion of Students with Special Educational Needs

In their article “Teacher Perceptions of the Regular Education Initiative” by Semmel, Abernathy, Butera, and Lesar (1991) carried out a survey of 381 elementary school teachers from 22 public schools in California and Illinois, where 71 were special teachers, 310 were regular classroom educators, 38 were ancillary personnel (such as the counselors, Bilingual educators, and Chapter 1 personnel ), and 11 were administrators. The researchers’ concentration was on the attitudes of both special and mainstream educators towards the inclusion of the pupils with mild disabilities using survey questionnaires that were submitted to the respondent to fill. The researchers concluded that the educators who participated did not support or were against the placing of special needs pupils in mainstream schools. The respondents asserted that the current resources set aside for special needs pupils should be protected. They asserted that inclusion would not improve the educational achievement of the student. Also, they claim it would negatively affect the allocation of time in the classroom for teaching the set curriculum objectives, and there were no definite social benefits for including the special needs children in mainstream learning (Semmel, Abernathy, Butera & Lesar, 1991, p. 20).
In another study by Vaughn, Schum, Jallad, Slusher & Saumell, where they based their survey on the attitude of both special and mainstream teachers towards inclusion using focus group interviews.

The participants included 25 regular teachers, 25 special education educators, 15 educators of the gifted and 8 Chapter 1 personnel. The interview results revealed the majority of the participants had negative feelings concerning the inclusion. The responded claimed that it was not practical and the decision makers would not be able to implement it because it was not going to meet the classroom realities (Vaughn, Schum, Jallad, Slusher, & Saumell, 1994, p. 15). The teachers pinpointed various factors that would hinder the inclusion success such as inadequate resources, class size, the extent at which the pupils would benefit from the inclusion and insufficient preparation of the teachers
In their article on” Students Teachers’ Attitude Towards the Inclusion of Children with Special Needs”, the authors Hastings and Oakford carried out a study on the effect of the various categories of special needs that is (emotional and behavioral problems versus intellectual disabilities) and teachers under training to work with older or young children concerning their perception on inclusion. The total number of participants who completed the survey questionnaires well was 93, where 31 teachers who had worked with pupils with special needs, 26 had social contracts with either the friends or family friends of a pupil with special needs. The researchers concluded that student teachers had a negative attitude concerning the inclusion of children who have emotional and behavioral issues (Hastings & Oakford, 2003, p. 92).
Mahony (2016) shows similar findings after surveying on 67 primary school educators located in urban district schools in Dublin. Fifty-eight of the participants were teaching in an inclusive classroom while nine were not (Mahony, 2016, p. 18). The researchers were assessing the educators’ attitude towards the inclusion of special needs children using survey questionnaires. They concluded that some teacher had negative thoughts concerning integration to the mainstream. The educators identified that various factors could hinder the inclusion success such as class size, and inadequate skills to handle the multiple needs of the special pupils (Mahony, 2016, p. 23 -24)
Reference List
Hastings, R.P. & Oakford, S., 2003. Student teachers’ attitudes towards the inclusion of children with special needs. Educational psychology, 23(1), pp.87-94.
Mahony, C., 2016. Assessing teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education within an urban school district in Ireland.
Semmel, M.I., Abernathy, T.V., Butera, G. & Lesar, S., 1991. Teacher perceptions of the regular education initiative. Exceptional Children, 58(1), pp.9-24.
Vaughn, S., Schumm, J.S., Jallad, B., Slusher, J., & Saumell, L., 1994. Teachers’ Views of Inclusion:” I’d Rather Pump Gas.”.