Attitudes towards and Perceived Ability to Implement Inclusive Education: Comparison between Pre- and Post-certified Teachers

摘要

Teachers' perspective on inclusive education is associated with their success in implementing inclusionary strategies in the classroom. Today, the problem of implementing inclusive education is not entirely solved. A literature gap appears to exist addressing research related to the differences between the theoretical benefits of inclusion and the practical implementation of inclusion in the classroom with both of the following groups of teachers: certified and pre-certified teachers. This study targets both groups of teachers, comparing their attitudes toward and perceived ability to implement successful inclusive education, while also looking at their training experiences.;The instrument used was an adapted survey with national reach. The data were analyzed using a mixed methodology to reveal both qualitative data from participants' responses to open questions and statistical quantitative results from the Likert-scale questions. The results showed that there was a significant gender effect impacting the perceived ability to implement inclusive education amongst the participants. Participants with higher educational degrees and with more teaching experience reported more positive attitudes and perceived ability in inclusive education scores. Pre-certified teachers who possess more than three semesters training presented higher attitudes toward inclusive education and perceived ability to implement inclusive education. Certified teachers reported higher perceived ability to implement inclusive education when compared to pre-certified teachers. However, the results did not reveal a statistical significance between certified and pre-certified teachers' attitudes toward inclusive education.;Participants also indicated their opinions in seven open-ended questions about the benefits and difficulties of implementing inclusive education, effective training strategies when implementing successful inclusive education, and helpful courses they took during their pre-service and in-service training. For example, students with EBD were the most difficult students to teach in inclusionary settings; and co-teaching a lesson with the mentor teacher and observing the mentor teacher implementing behavior management principles, as being the most important variables during in-service training. In conclusion, this study's findings showed that teacher preparation programs should improve their courses content about inclusive education and add sufficient practicum (field) experiences in inclusionary settings. In addition, teachers need more support from administrators and colleagues.