A study of public school teachers’ opinions on inclusive education
Authors:   South Ural State Humanitarian Pedagogical University, Roslyakova Svetlana V. , Sivrikova Nadezhda V. ,   South Ural State Humanitarian Pedagogical University, Sokolova Nadezhda A. ,   South Ural State Humanitarian Pedagogical University, Chernikova Elena G. ,   South Ural State Humanitarian Pedagogical University
Published: December 2024

The opinion of public schools teachers towards inclusive education was studied. The predominantly positive modality of their attitude to inclusion, the primacy of factors for improving the quality of inclusive practice (a systematic approach to its organization and the creation of support services), the priority of problems related to their own professional activities over others were revealed. The methodological basis of the study was the constructive paradigm and the activity approach. To collect empirical data, a mass online survey was used, conducted using the Yandex.Forms Internet service and organized with the assistance of the Chelyabinsk City Committee for Education in June 2023. The questionnaire developed by the authors’ team and used for the survey included nine questions aimed at identifying the teachers’ opinion. The authors came to the following main conclusions. The analysis of the survey data showed that teachers have different attitudes towards the idea of implementing inclusive education in a mainstream school. The majority of teachers surveyed (63.8%) support it, of which more than a half of the respondents see the idea as promising (51.3%). However, one quarter of the respondents (25.2%) have a negative attitude towards it, considering it nonviable, and 10.9% see it as another paper project. The teachers’ opinion is based on their attitude towards inclusive education and their assessment of the factors that will improve its quality, constructive proposals and identified problems. The study and comparison of its results with data from other surveys showed that the teachers’ opinion towards inclusion is changing – a positive trend is observed: comparing the results of previous studies, the proportion of teachers who have a positive attitude towards inclusive education is increasing. The attitude of teachers towards inclusive education is often positive, but every third does not support the idea. This attitude is not affected by factors of teachers’ participation in the inclusive educational process and their length of service at school. At the same time, among those working on adapted programs, those who are negative and indifferent to inclusion are almost twice as many, which indicates the presence of problems in this process. Among the proposed factors influencing the improvement of the quality of inclusive education, teachers gave priority to the system of support for inclusive education built in the school. The overwhelming majority of teachers (regardless of their opinion) do not deny the role of the school administration and the management decisions it makes. However, no category of teachers names the administration among the primary factors in improving the quality of inclusive practice. Most of all, in inclusive education, teachers are concerned about the problems of their own activities (motivation, stimulation, management of a mixed class, class size, lack of assistants, etc.) within the framework of inclusion, and the problems of interaction between participants in this process, the presence of structures – administrative and specialized – recede into the background and the following planes.