Teachers' meaning formation and mental concept representation of inclusion

Abstract

A sample of 20 teachers with experience on inclusive education and 20 teachers with no experience dealing with inclusion of students with intellectual disability were required to take a natural semantic net instrument to analyze their mental concept representation towards inclusion. The goal was to compare both groups meaning formation regarding this topic. Results showed that both groups had similar knowledge schemata, but conceptual organization was different which lead each group to different meaning formation toward inclusion. It is argued that by using natural semantic network techniques formative learning techniques can be implemented to empower teachers to cope with inclusion of people with disabilities in regular educational programs.