Teachers’ Involvement in Inclusive Education: Attitudes of Future Teachers

Abstract

Background: inclusive education seeks to ensure that all students can access quality education and requires education systems to commit to providing students with equal opportunities to participate in all aspects of school life. While progress has been made in this regard, the full implementation of educational inclusivity remains hindered by significant challenges and barriers. Teacher involvement is necessary for this inclusion, and it is important to study the attitudes that affect their inclusive practices in schools. Therefore, this study aims to determine the attitudes of future teachers (current student teachers at the University of the Basque Country) towards inclusive education. Methods: 369 primary and early childhood education students participated in this study. An ad hoc questionnaire was used to collect sociodemographic data, and the Revised Scale of Feelings, Attitudes, and Concerns Towards Inclusive Education (SACIE-R) was administered using Google Forms. Results: the results indicate that 34.9% of the respondents have close contact with people with functional diversity, while 62.7% state that they have never worked with people with diversity. Male primary and lower grade students are generally less negative toward functional diversity. Conclusions: this study shows where the main efforts should be focused to highlight the importance of inclusive schools, and for this purpose, university education will be essential.

Keywords

• inclusive education
• primary education
• childhood education
• attitudes