Teachers? attitudes toward the inclusion of students with autism spectrum disorder: Impact of students? difficulties

Background: Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are less included within mainstream educational systems. We argued that teachers? attitudes toward their inclusion represent a key factor to understand this issue. Based on previous research showing that teachers are frequently reluctant to include them in mainstream education, we hypothesized that teachers? attitudes could be predicted by the specific difficulties faced by these students. Method: One thousand and sixty-four teachers were asked to express their attitudes toward the inclusion of students with ASD in an online questionnaire. The co-occurring difficulties that students with ASD could face were experimentally manipulated through brief information depicting specific set of difficulties. Results: Teachers expressed more positive attitudes toward the inclusion of students with ASD with no difficulties, in comparison with those with behavioral difficulties, behavioral and cognitive difficulties, or those for whom difficulties were not specified ? the control condition. Unexpectedly, teachers were not more positive regarding the inclusion of students with ASD with no difficulties in comparison with those with cognitive difficulties. Conclusions: Without specific information, it seems that teachers spontaneously associated ASD with behavioral difficulties and that teachers? attitudes were the most negative for students facing such difficulties (regardless of the presence or absence of cognitive difficulties). Nonetheless, by also suggesting that attitudes toward the inclusion of these students can be positive, these results seem to corroborate that the use of broader categories like ?students with ASD? could be discussed.