Teachers’ Attitudes and Perceptions of Inclusion in Relation to Grade Level and Years of Experience

The practice of inclusion is increasingly evident in today’s schools and expectations continue to rise with respect to how all students perform on high-stakes standardized testing. Positive attitudes about inclusion and concomitant lower stress levels among teachers would provide the most conducive environment for positive student outcomes. The authors investigated the relationship between teacher grade levels, years of experience, and their attitudes and perceptions toward inclusion. It was hypothesized that teachers of lower grade levels and with fewer years of experience would have more negative attitudes toward inclusion. A previously developed survey instrument was used to gather data from teachers in an elementary school. The authors concluded the study with highlighting the importance of providing pre-service and ongoing training to teachers of lower grade levels and suggestions were made for future study. 2 Electronic Journal for Inclusive Education, Vol. 3, No. 3 [2015], Art. 3 https://corescholar.libraries. wright.edu/ejie/vol3/iss3/3 TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES AND PRECEPTIONS OF INCLUSION 2 Teachers’ Attitudes and Perceptions of Inclusion in Relation to Grade Level and Years of Experience The work of educating children with special needs has been constantly evolving. With the passage of public law 92-142 in 1975, each state was mandated to provide a free and appropriate public education for children with special needs (U.S. Department of Education, 2007). Under this law, children with special needs are to be educated within the public school system and given educationally related services designed to assist them in receiving instruction and in learning. Children with special needs were placed along a continuum which defined the types of supports they would receive according to their specific need. Each degree of need defined the type of restrictive environment to which the child had access and in which the specific need could be met. Children whose needs defined them as being on the profound level were more often placed in the most restrictive environment, the self-contained classroom which does not include any children without special needs. Over the years, however, new educational standards have been developed that now require states to increase the rigor with which children are taught core content subjects. Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001, states were mandated to examine and implement ways in which all children with special needs can potentially be taught in a regular classroom environment, increasing the rigor of instruction for the core content subject areas. This mandate has led the way to the policy and practice of inclusion. Inclusion is defined as the process of including children with special needs into the general educational environment and providing their educationally related services within this environment (Wisconsin Educational Association Council, 2012). A core principle of the practice of inclusion is the belief that children with special needs are to be placed in the general 3 Barnes and Gaines: Teachers’ Attitudes and Perceptions of Inclusion in Relation to G Published by CORE Scholar, 2015 TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES AND PRECEPTIONS OF INCLUSION 3 educational environment first and only then removed if their educational needs cannot be met within this environment (Wisconsin Educational Association Council, 2012) This practice is in opposition to the practice of mainstreaming in which children are to be placed in the selfcontained classroom first and then placed in the general educational environment if they have demonstrated that they would benefit from such placement (Wisconsin Educational Association Council, 2012). Many states, such as Florida, are now looking to inclusion as a viable option for students with special needs to attain the level of learning needed to be deemed proficient in the core content subject areas. Florida students participate in annual high-stakes assessment known as the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT), a test designed to measure students’ proficiency on specific standards as outlined in NCLB. Previously, the scores of students with special needs were not weighted as heavily as other students’ scores when average scores for a particular grade level or school were calculated. Recent changes in FCAT testing procedures now require that the scores of students with special needs be weighted equally with scores of all other students (Beech, 2010). As a result, educators are looking to inclusion as a way to ensure that children with special needs are receiving the same level of rigor as all students in the core content areas and that they are achieving the FCAT scores needed to demonstrate proficiency in those content areas. However, recent studies show that not all teachers are ready to accept the idea of inclusion and that they express negative attitudes that follow from the perceived amount of stress that may result as teachers strive to meet the educational needs of children with special needs (Brackenreed, 2011; Fuchs, 2010; Hwang & Evans, 2011). Teacher stress can lead to negative outcomes in the classroom for students. Teacher stress has been associated with lower teaching standards and an increase in negative teacher4 Electronic Journal for Inclusive Education, Vol. 3, No. 3 [2015], Art. 3 https://corescholar.libraries. wright.edu/ejie/vol3/iss3/3 TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES AND PRECEPTIONS OF INCLUSION 4 student interactions, resulting in lower quality student learning experiences and lower academic outcomes (Stevenson & Harper, 2006). Geoff (2000) also found that stress led to more negative teacher-student interactions, which then had a negative impact on teacher self-efficacy. Furthermore, when teachers in educational settings where changes are constantly being imposed upon them, they experience an increased prevalence of alienation and other stress factors, resulting in high teacher attrition rates (Margolis & Nagel, 2006). McCormick and Barnett (2011) found that teachers most often cited the reason for teacher burnout as being the result of classroom management issues with high levels of teacher stress related to student misbehavior leading to lowered teacher self-efficacy. The reason for teacher stress has also been attributed to a lack of administrative and special education teacher support (Avramidis et al., 2000; Fuchs, 2010; Hwang & Evans, 2011), as well as to a lack of teacher training, either preservice or ongoing inservice training (Alahbabi, 2009; Hwang & Evans, 2011; Itkonen, 2007; Odom et al., 2011; Wah, 2010). While there have been numerous studies describing the reasons for teacher stress in the classroom in general, there has also been research that specifically investigated teacher stress when providing instruction for a particular student demographic having to do with requiring more than “regular” classroom instruction. Ozdemir (2006) compared stress levels of teachers of ADHD students to the stress levels of teachers of non-ADHD students. Results were reported across 3 domains – exhaustion, depersonalization with others, and perceived self-efficacy as a teacher – and indicated that, while the two groups were similar with respect to levels of depersonalization and exhaustion, teachers of ADHD students scored lower in the perceived self-efficacy as a teacher domain. The current study sought to examine the relationship between teachers’ attitudes and perceptions toward inclusion and their grade level taught and the relationship with their years of 5 Barnes and Gaines: Teachers’ Attitudes and Perceptions of Inclusion in Relation to G Published by CORE Scholar, 2015 TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES AND PRECEPTIONS OF INCLUSION 5 teaching experience. It was hypothesized that teachers of lower grade levels or with fewer years of teaching experience would have a more negative attitude toward inclusion when compared to their counterparts. Such negative attitudes would, arguably, contribute to teacher stress and the resulting negative outcomes for learners. Findings would be important when deciding on the level of supports needed to increase positive attitudes which would lead to decreased stress among general education teachers as they prepare special education students to meet the demands required for success on state-mandated standardized assessments. The findings would also assist administrators and other stakeholders in determining the extent to which professional development for teachers might be needed in order that they experience a greater level of selfefficacy, another aspect of stress reduction, as they provide instruction in increasingly inclusive classrooms. As noted by Greenfield, et al (2010), vital to the implementation and success of a school-wide instructional reform initiative is assessing the perceptions of educators, and in this study, understanding the perceptions of teachers will enhance instructional quality by heightening teacher competence in serving special education students in inclusive classroom settings. Methods Participants Participants consisted of a convenience sample of 33 kindergarten through fifth grade regular education teachers from an elementary school in Pensacola, Florida. For the 2012-2013 school year, the total number of the school’s instructional staff was 52, with 44% of the teachers holding advanced degrees and 100% of the teachers considered highly effective according to the Florida Department of Education teaching standards. For the purpose of this study, exceptional 6 Electronic Journal for Inclusive Education, Vol. 3, No. 3 [2015], Art. 3 https://corescholar.libraries. wright.edu/ejie/vol3/iss3/3 TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES AND PRECEPTIONS OF INCLUSION 6 student education teachers and special area teachers, such as reading or mathematics specialists, were not included as only the regular education teachers were of interest. For the 2012-2013 school year, the school’s demographic information