Journal of Economic and Social Dynamics

Abstract

This essay focuses on the dilemma of teachers' attitudes towards the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream education and aims to understand teachers' attitudes towards the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream education. This research was based on quantitative methodology, using questionnaire survey techniques and observation. We assess and discuss the bibliographic contributions that allowed us to elucidate exclusive conceptions, such as attitudes, attitude formation, and attitude structure towards the inclusion of students with disabilities. We worked with a sample of 150 general education teachers, who share the common characteristic of having specific training in Special Education or working with children with special needs. The application of the questionnaire "Teachers' Attitudes towards the Inclusion of Children with Disabilities in Mainstream Education," developed for the study, revealed good psychometric qualities, mainly in terms of internal consistency, and a factorial structure with a probabilistic value P volume of σ 0.05, and a margin of error and confidence level of 95%. The results obtained in this investigation on teachers' attitudes towards the inclusion of disability in mainstream education show that, in our sample, the attitudes of mainstream teachers seem to favor the inclusion of students with disabilities. This makes it clear that some teachers have favorable attitudes and some have unfavorable attitudes towards the inclusion of children with special needs within the mainstream education system. This even leads us to believe that the inclusion of students with special needs in mainstream classrooms is fundamental.