Attitudes and intention of Greek and Cypriot primary education teachers towards teaching pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools

摘要

The aim of the study was to record the attitudes and intentions of Greek and Cypriot primary education teachers towards teaching children with special educational needs (SENs) in mainstream schools. The instrument used was based on 'Planned Behaviour Theory'. The sample of the study included 179 educators, 87 from Greece (34 men, 52 women) and 92 from Cyprus (15 men, 70 women). Descriptive statistics indicated that school teachers have positive attitudes about the possibility of teaching students with and without SENs. Pearson's correlation coefficient revealed that intention has significant correlations (p ≤ 0.001) with attitudes, self-identity, attitude strength, experience, information and knowledge. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis revealed that intention, attitude strength and knowledge are the variables where the differentiation between the educators was located, with the educators from Cyprus having the higher records. Also, Cypriot educators had more experience in working with SENs pupils, and all of them had low university-level education in the subject of Special Education. In conclusion, experience, attitude strength, self-identity, knowledge, information and also tertiary-level education, in the subject of Special Education, have a positive effect on the attitudes and intentions of people who want to teach pupils with SENs.