Turkish Teachers' Expectancies for Success in Inclusive Classrooms.

Abstract The present study was designed to investigate (a) which social skills were accepted as critical for success in inclusive classrooms according to the Turkish general classroom teachers and (b) whether the teachers' expectancies related to social skills of the students with and without disabilities differed. The importance dimension of the Social Skills Rating System-Social Skills test (SST) developed by Gresham and Elliott was administered to the 172 teachers in order to determine the social skills expectations for the students. Each teacher was asked to fill out two forms, one for the students with special needs (SSN) and the other for the average student (AS) of the classroom identified based on the teachers' views. To evaluate elementary school teachers' expectancies, the percentage of the teachers who scored each item of the SSS-T by giving 0, 1 and 2 were calculated and thus the social skills accepted as "not important", "important" and "critical" for success by the teachers were identified. In order to compare teachers' expectations for SSN and AS, Mann Whitney-U test was used. The results of the analysis indicated that most of the teachers thought that none of social skills were critical for the school success of SSN whereas 13 social skills mostly from cooperation subscale of the social skills test were important for these students. By most of the teachers, 10 social skills mostly from assertiveness subscale were considered as critically important for AS. In addition, it was found that the teachers' social skills expectations for SSN are significantly less than their peers without special needs. Key Words Social Skills, Teacher Expectations', Students with Special Needs, Inclusion. Teachers' expectancies are generally defined as the cues of teachers shaping the behaviors of children (Good, 1987 cited in Trouilloud, Sarrazin, Martinek, & Guillet, 2002). In existing literature, several researchers highlighted that there was a strong relationship between teachers' expectancies and the achievement of their students; in other words, the success of students might increase or decrease parallel to teachers' expectancies (Alvidrez & Weinstein, 1999; Harris, Rosenthal, & Snodgrass, 1986; Jussim, Smith, Madon, & Palumbo, 1998, Trouilloud et al., 2002). When students are aware of the expectancies of the teacher, they are more likely to learn and use the skills being emphasized and praised by their teachers. In addition, the students who meet the teachers' and peers' expectancies are more likely to be adapted to the classrooms and are able to attain more positive outcomes in terms of academic and social success (Beebe-Frankenberger, Lane, Bocian, Gresham, & McMillan, 2005). Therefore, one of the most important roles of schools is to teach and shape positive social behaviors of students so as to support their socialization and academic achievement in the classrooms. Students with disabilities who are placed in general classrooms, similar to their peers without disabilities, are required to meet teachers' expectations such as following instruction, complying with rules, and establishing friendships (Lane, Givner, & Pierson, 2004; Lane, Pierson, & Givner, 2003). However, in literature, it was frequently pointed out that students with disabilities generally fail to meet teachers' expectations related to social skills (cited in McMullen, Shippen, & Dangel, 2007). For example, children experiencing behavioral and learning difficulties are unable to establish and maintain friendship and have trouble initiating in- terpersonal behaviors, deficiencies in the cognitive problem-solving skills that negatively affect both teacher-related and peer-related adjustment (Lane, 1999). In addition, they may have little regard for typical school behavior-related expectancies such as listening, following directions, and waiting to take a turn (Ellett, 1993 cited in McMullen, Shippen, & Dangel, 2007). …