This study explored pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education. The Sentiments, Attitudes, and Concerns about Inclusive Education–Revised (SACIE-R) scale was completed by 138 teacher candidates in a teacher preparation program in Bahrain Teachers College. The findings revealed that candidate teachers needed more opportunities to interact with and teach children with disabilities during their school practicum; they also needed more preparation and knowledge about the educational policies related to these children. Not all the candidate teachers felt confident in their knowledge and skills when dealing with these children. The sentiments of the candidate teachers were generally positive and compassionate to children with disabilities. The attitudes of the candidate teachers were generally positive as well, but there were some apprehensions in regard to including children who show aggressive behavior toward others or those who require communicative technologies in regular classes. The participants had many concerns related to certain aspects of including students with disabilities in the regular classrooms. The findings indicated that there is no significant difference among the study sample in terms of their attitudes, concerns, or sentiments toward inclusion according to the academic year variable (orientation, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, and Year 4) and the specialization variable (no specialization, Cycle 1). There was also a significant negative relationship between level of confidence in teaching students with disabilities and the sentiment aspect, and also with the concerns. There was a significant negative relationship between knowledge of the local policy that relates to children with disabilities and the sentiment aspect.
Although school turnaround has been studied extensively in Western contexts such as the United States, the applicability of remedies to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has not been extensively studied. The literature that exists predominantly uses a Western cultural lens. This article identifies four key dimensions of leadership for transformation of schools—what is leadership, who becomes a school leader, how are leaders supported, and do school leaders believe they can succeed—, contrasting between the Gulf region and the West; in doing so, the article seeks to explain why the solutions to school failure that originate from the West, widely understood around the globe, are either irrelevant or of limited use in this region. Drawing in part on the authors’ experience in establishing a leadership centre, through collaboration between the Ministry of Education in Bahrain and the Bahrain Teachers College, the article calls for systematic empirical studies to establish how each of the four dimensions inform region-specific approaches to leadership for school transformation and quality improvement. It concludes by arguing that researchers should explicitly consider the extent to which their findings can be translated into practical leadership action in a range of cultural settings.
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