Pre-Service Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Inclusive Education

Abstract

Implementing inclusive education requires not only facilities and physical support but also human resources, in this case pre-service teachers.Pre-service teachers, who come from different educational backgrounds, are one of the most important components in implementing inclusive education due to their interactions with special needs children.This study aims to compare the attitudes of pre-service teachers toward inclusive education based on experiences of direct interaction, training, and teaching special needs children.Participants are college students in Jakarta majoring in Teacher Training, early childhood education, and special education.The attitudes of pre-service teachers toward inclusive education are measured by the Multidimensional Attitudes toward Inclusive Education instrument.The results of the independent-sample t-test indicated that there are significant mean score differences between the two groups-Early Childhood Education majors (M = 76.84,SD = 10.155) and Special Education majors (M = 86.26,SD = 9.275) with significance p <.005.Subsequent regression analysis demonstrated that training experience and experience teaching special needs children contributed differentially to pre-service teachers' attitudes toward inclusive education.