Attitudes towards inclusion of students with disabilities in high school teachers

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the attitudes of secondary school teachers towards the inclusion of students with disabilities since these determine the actions of inclusion or discrimination in the classroom and the reference of their behaviour to the rest of the students. A questionnaire was applied to 99 secondary school teachers (74.7% women) from mainly urban centres (78.8%). This questionnaire has 22 items distributed in 5 dimensions: responsibility, performance, training and resources, classroom climate and social development. At the global level, the results found indicate that the attitudes are positive and the scores homogeneous in all dimensions. Differences are analyzed according to the type of educational institution (ownership and environment) and professional and sociodemographic variables (years of experience, age and sex). Statistically significant differences are found about the type of centre with more positive attitudes in teachers who work in private centres and differences are found in the different dimensions depending on the years of experience. The need for workgroups between teachers of different profiles and training programs and specific practice in the area of attention to diversity is raised, both in access programs for secondary education and in training recycling for teachers who are already practising, with special emphasis on public schools, to improve teachers' attitudes in all the analyzed dimensions, as this is a key element in the success of inclusive practices.