Inclusion in the Greek Secondary School: Students’ Attitudes Concerning Their Peers With Special Educational Needs in the General Education.

Abstract

The present research is aimed to assess secondary general education students" attitudes concerning the inclusion of their peers with special educational needs and to reveal the determinants that are associated to their attitudes. The survey involved 1348 secondary students, who attend the Greek general school and completed the Chedoke-McMaster Attitudes Toward Children with Handicaps Scale, (CATCH), (Rosenbaum, et al., 1986). The results showed that students adopt generally neutral attitudes concerning their classmates with a special need. A complex of variables, like gender, school grade, year of birth, age, place of residence, contact with a friend with special needs, disability type, disability grade and having a member with disability in the family or in the extended family environmenthave a differentiating effect on students" attitudes on their peers with disability. The research underlined the importance of reinforcing children" s attitudes concerning their special needs peers, in order for the policy of inclusive education to be implemented successfully.