Student Attitudes in Inclusive Settings: Public Middle Schools

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of inclusive education on the general education population of middle school students’ attitudes. Therefore, a quantitative study was designed as a quasi-experimental study to measure such attitudes. The study included nonrandom samples of one control group (non-inclusive) and one experimental group (inclusive). This study took place in a middle school in a large urban school district in the US. The participants of this study included 20 students without disabilities in each classroom with a total number of 120 students from a total of six different middle school classrooms. The study included two classrooms (one inclusive and one non-inclusive) for each grade level (6, 7, and 8). About 60% of these students were Hispanic, 50% were male, and 80% received free or reduced lunch. In addition, ages ranged from 11 to 15 years. Inclusion Survey for Middle School Students (ISMSS), which included 30 questions was used to measure the attitudes of students without disabilities towards students with learning disabilities. SPSS was used for descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. The findings of this study indicated that inclusive education had a negative effect on the attitudes of students without disabilities towards their peers with disabilities in public middle school classrooms.&nbsp