Life experiences to promote attitudinal change towards intellectual disability in the classroom

Abstract

The discourse of inclusive education, which is committed to an educational system that responds to the needs of all students and respects their diversity, emerged more than thirty years ago, but it is still not possible to say that schools hold said award. Diversity continues to find barriers in educational environments, with attitudes towards it being a determining factor in its inclusion, both at school and socially. The objective of this work focuses on analyzing the effect of real and direct contact with people with intellectual disabilities on the attitudes that students in the field of education at the University of Murcia have towards said disability. To this end, a quasi-experimental investigation has been carried out with the participation of 87 students from the Degrees in Pedagogy and Early Childhood and Primary Education. The results show that life experiences and direct contact with people with intellectual disabilities produce a significant change in attitudes towards acceptance of diversity.