Perceptions of the students of the university master's degree in teacher training on their training in attention to diversity

Abstract

The teacher has a fundamental role in achieving quality attention to diversity in the classroom. So, adequate training is essential to ensure an educational response in accordance with the heterogeneity and diversity of needs present in all students. The purpose of this study is focus on knowing the perception of future teachers about the knowledge acquired about attention to diversity in the Master's Degree in Teacher Training of the University of Murcia (Spain). A non-experimental, descriptive and cross-sectional quantitative design has been used. The invited sample has been all the students enrolled in the aforementioned master's degree for the 2020/2021 academic year; 461 students divided into 18 groups according to their specialty. Finally, the participants in the study were 195, specifically, 118 women and 77 men aged between 22 and 58 years, achieving a representation of 95% and a margin of error of less than 5%. The instrument used was the Questionnaire for future secondary school teachers about perceptions of attention to diversity: Construction and validation of the instrument, by Colmenero & Pegalajar (2015), getting a Crobach's Alpha equal to p = 0.915. The results show that the students of this study do not feel sufficiently qualified to address the challenge of providing an educational response to diversity in the classroom after completing the master's degree, although they express a positive attitude towards the inclusion of all students. In conclusion, it highlights the need to include in the postgraduate degree a greater load of practical activities on attention to diversity, seeking the assimilation of theoretical-practical concepts by the student.