Attitudinal instrument development: Assessing cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains of teacher attitudes toward teaching all students

Abstract

Despite their entree into the physical space of general education classrooms and the expected instruction of the core academic standards, students with disabilities may still be excluded. Successful inclusion requires a commitment at district, school and classroom level. The attitude of the general education teacher toward the inclusion of students with disabilities is a critical component in the success of inclusionary efforts. The attitudes toward teaching all students (ATTAS-mm) instrument are a nine-item scale with strong reliability and validity that measures educator attitudes. The three subscales: believing all students can succeed in general education classrooms (cognitive), developing personal and professional relationships (affective), and creating an accepting environment for all students to learn (behavioral) explain nearly 80% of the variance in scores. The unstandardized Cronbach alpha for the entire ATTAS-mm scale was 0.83. The three subscales also demonstrated acceptable reliability values (Cognitive, 0.72; Affective, 0.93; Behavioral, 0.84). With strong internal reliability and validity established through a panel of experts and alignment with cognitive psychology literature, the ATTAS-mm was determined to be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the attitudes toward teaching all students.