Teacher attitudes toward inclusion

The purpose of this study was to examine the type of attitude towards inclusion that exists among regular classroom teachers, special education teachers, and specialist teachers in a middle school setting. Seventy-one subjects – forty-nine regular classroom teachers, ten special education teachers, and twelve specialist teachers – from a suburban New Jersey community were studied. Participants were given the Survey of Attitudes Toward the Inclusion of Students with Special Needs, a twenty item Likert-type scale. Data was analyzed using a one-way ANOVA and the Games-Howell post hoc test. Findings suggest that regular and specialist teachers believed that inclusion results in a lower amount of positive effects on children and setting than special education teachers. Regular and specialist teachers also held significantly higher attitudes in regard to the negative effects of inclusion on children and believed that inclusion results in a higher amount of workload for teachers. Significant results were also found regarding differences between teaching experience and attitudes toward inclusion. Those with more experience held significantly lower beliefs on the positive effects of inclusion, higher beliefs on the negative effects of inclusion, and higher beliefs on the amount of workload resulting from inclusion than those with less experience