Inclusive attitudes of Secondary School teachers towards students with disabilities

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the attitudes of secondary school teachers towards the inclusion of students with a disability since these determine the actions of inclusion or discrimination in the classroom and the reference of their behaviour to the rest of the students. Methodology: a questionnaire was applied to 99 secondary school teachers (74.7% women) from mainly urban centres (78.8%). This questionnaire has 22 items distributed in 5 dimensions: responsibility, performance, training and resources, classroom climate and social development. Results: At a global level, attitudes are positive and scores are homogeneous in all dimensions. In the specific analysis, differences are evaluated based on the type of educational institution (ownership and scope) and professional and sociodemographic variables (years of experience, age and sex). Statistically, significant differences are found in relation to the type of centre with more positive attitudes in teachers who work in subsidized centres and depending on the years of experience. The need to create working groups between teachers of different profiles and specific training and practice programs in terms of attention to diversity is concluded, both in access programs for secondary education and in training retraining for teachers who are already practising, with special emphasis on public centres, to improve the attitudes of teachers in all the analyzed dimensions, as it is a key element in the success of inclusive practices.