Teachers' attitudes to the integration of students with disabilities into regular schools: Policy to practice?

In Victoria, the right of all children to be educated in a regular school has been Ministerial policy since 1984. However, the issue of integration is problematical because of the ways that practitioners interpret this policy. One of the crucial factors which determines the relative success of integration is teacher attitudes to disability and to curriculum. This paper summarises the findings of our research into teacher attitudes. It is argued that it is folly to develop policies which define "what will be" without careful consideration of "what is". Paper presented to the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education Gold Coast, November, 1991 "Practitioners, researchers and policy makers: Changing coalitions? " From policy to practice Policy makers determine and disseminate government decisions to be implemented by public servants. The traditional pattern of communication between policy developers and practitioners is one of transmission of expectations: it is the epitome of top-down decision making. Generally, teachers are expected to implement policies as given; but are not involved in defining, redefining or actively constructing new ways of working and understanding education. It would be assumed that a state government policy on the inclusion of all children in regular schooling would be a powerful initial step towards enabling all students to experience integrated, appropriate education. However, to assume that change in realised social and academic curricula for children with disabilities will arise from change in policy is to ignore the roles which individuals and social groups play in maintaining the notion of disability in our society and particularly within the institution of education. As Fulcher (1989: 270) notes, implementation of policy does not automatically follow its creation; for while legislative decisions may force apparent compliance, "law cannot achieve substantive rationality, or goals of the kind implied by free appropriate education". Policies tend to present directions which are couched in unproblematical terms. These are often statements of what "will be", with little recognition of what "is", are likely to have minimal effect on everyday interactions in classrooms. Bringing about educational change first involves both policy makers and teachers in recognising and confronting personal and situational constraints to change. All participants in the process must become aware of the disabling institutionalised structures which help shape and reproduce human attitudes and actions. They must examine their own traditional rôles as teachers, administrators, parents or other members of the educational community, or as policy and curriculum developers in shaping the notion of disability. They should also consider the effects of the policy itself the impact of its existence, its history, its form and possible interpretations, as well as the degree to which it demands innovative human interaction and challenges familiar ways of working. This paper reports on our research into the introduction of an integration policy for Victorian schools. We have found that integration, contrary to the intentions of the policy makers, is fast becoming another form of specialism largely because of teachers' attitudes to disability. We argue that these attitudes are closely linked with the traditions of "special" education. Integration in Victorian schools While some children with both physical and intellectual disabilities have always been taught in Victorian schools as a matter of course, many have been designated as special school candidates and have thus not had the right to attend local schools of their parents' choice. This is still the case in other states of Australia. However, in 1984, Integration in Victorian Education (Ministerial Review Committee) declared that every child has a right to be educated in a regular school. This acknowledgement was a product of active lobbying by parent groups, but this was part of a wider social movement growing out of the philosophies of the seventies and early eighties which demanded equal access to quality education for all. The fundamental schooling reforms in Scandinavian countries (see Biklen 1985, Fulcher 1989), Australia's Karmel Report (1973), the Warnock Report (1978) in the United Kingdom, and the Regular Initiative Project in the United States (see Reynolds and Wang 1983) were representative of the growth of a "breaking down the barriers" attitude of the preceding years. Development of the Labor Party's Social Justice Strategy (1985) and continuing state budget initiatives throughout the late eighties supported the process of increasing enrolments of Victorian children with disabilities into neighbourhood schools. The acceptance of the Review's recommendations as government policy was met with general resistance in schools. Teachers felt that they were not trained to teach children with disabilities, that they would need a level of resource support that the state government could not provide and that they could not cope with a heavier workload. These assumptions were supported by the primary teachers' union, which developed its own policy as a response. While both documents are superficially similar, and the union policy seems to be supporting the government's stance, subtle differences in wording have led to significant differences in practice. Close examination of union policy illustrates Fulcher's (1989: 270-271) claim that "educational aims and educational reforms are a matter for educators and are not achievable via the kinds of decisions made at government level". For instance, while the Ministry (1984: 13) determined that "every child has a right to be educated in a regular school", the Union policy (V.T.U. 1985: 290.1) stated that "Integration is providing the most appropriate education for each student in the least restrictive setting while ensuring the maximum useful association between students with disabilities and others, to the mutual advantage of both" (emphases ours). Such restrictive clauses were quickly taken up by teachers and administrators, discouraging parents from seeing integration as their children's right. This latter policy, like those of other state governments and teacher unions thus encouraged the previous practices of ascertainment and control over enrolment to be retained. Further, the Victorian Teachers' Union demanded retention and extension of those very factors which characterise special schooling withdrawal areas, training of teachers in specific responses to different categories of children and comprehensive resourcing based on assumed needs. It drew a distinction between enrolment (or entering a child's name on a school roll) and admission to classrooms, effectively creating a situation where children could be excluded from regular schooling. The union policy made no reference to curriculum change or to the necessity to adapt education according to the wide range of abilities, interests and experiential backgrounds of all students. Rather than echoing the government's attitude that children have the right to attend regular schools, the union produced detailed policy on possible breakdowns (such as failure to reach consensus) as well as alternatives such as partial integration. Integration has been a fact of life in Victorian schools for about nine years, yet much of this resistance is still demonstrated in schools. It becomes very public when children with disabilities (although they can be easier to teach than many others) continue to be used as political footballs in industrial disputes over general wages and conditions. Before undertaking this research, we suspected that the existance of policies on special needs, and the union policy in particular, have helped to shape the way in which Victorian teachers perceive their roles in the integration process. We felt that they have served to reify common attitudes to disability and the way it should be "treated" in schools. It seemed to us that in the interests of teachers and other children, emphasis on special needs has been allowed to overshadow the need to revise curricula, classroom practices and attitudes to the inclusion of all children. Thus the focus of our recent research was on teacher's perceptions of the integration process. Methodology In August, 1991, 194 primary and secondary school teachers were asked to complete a questionnaire about integration into regular schools. Half of these teachers had taught children with disabilities, while the others had no direct experience of integration. (However, integration is now a practice in most Victorian schools and has had extensive media coverage, so the latter group would have had indirect experiences and opinions on the matter). The teachers were asked about their interpretation of the process of integration as well as its advantages and associated difficulties. We had noticed during our interactions with teachers that they did not have the same reticence about coping with physical disabilities as they did with intellectual disabilities. Because of the union policy focus on resourcing, rather than changing curriculum practice, this was a notion we wanted to explore. We sought, therefore, to ascertain reactions to the possibility of the respondents teaching children with different types of disabilities in the near future. The questionnaires also provided data on years of teaching experience, grade levels taught and the gender of respondents. We were interested, for instance, in determining the validity of Bowd's (1986) contention that teachers who have had experience with children with disabilities have more positive attitudes to the integration process. A coded-category analysis of questionnaire responses was undertaken. While tallying similar answers gave us a broad picture of teacher attitudes to education, as intended, more detailed questioning through interviews would have enable