Attitude change regarding inclusive education in preservice teachers

Upon entering the workforce, teachers in both primary and secondary schools are expected to teach students across a wide range of abilities and cultures. To be effective across this broad spectrum of student needs, teachers require an understanding of why they have such diversity in their classrooms and they also need the opportunity to acquire a range of skills in order to effectively adapt the curriculum to the needs of the individuals in their classes. It is likely that when current preservice teachers were themselves students in school, inclusive education was not as frequent a practice as it is in the current educational environment. Inclusive education requires a shift in beliefs and practice for some people. In order to give preservice teachers the opportunity to construct their own understandings and knowledge base regarding inclusive education, most universities in Australia have designed specific preservice courses for this purpose. At Griffith University the compulsory course Teaching to Difference is a core course across one semester for all preservice teachers. In 2003, a pilot study was undertaken to identify attitude change to inclusive education practices in a group of preservice teachers enrolled in this course. A survey was devised for this purpose from a questionnaire constructed by Kis-Glavis, Nikolic, and Igric (1996). The original questionnaire was designed to identify attitude change in teachers regarding the integration of students with intellectual or other developmental disabilities in Croatia. The adapted survey was devised to measure attitude change in preservice teachers while they were enrolled in Teaching to Difference. This paper will present the outcomes from this survey as a measurement of attitude change in preservice teachers and discuss possible implications with regard to appropriate attitude change in preservice teachers.