Pre- and In-Service Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Students With Learning Difficulties and Challenging Behavior

Abstract

The implementation of inclusive policies is largely dependent on teachers’ willingness to accommodate students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream classrooms, which is affected by their perceived competence and attitudes. This study investigated attitudes of pre- and in-service teachers toward students with two types of SEN: challenging behavior and learning difficulties. The three components of attitudes (affective, cognitive, and behavioral) were assessed using indirect and direct measures. Results revealed that teachers held negative implicit attitudes toward challenging behavior and learning difficulties, however, implicit attitudes did not vary as a function of the type of SEN. Ratings of the stereotypical dimensions warmth and competence and overall ratings of scholastic achievement were affected by professional status and type of SEN. Professional status, implicit attitudes, and stereotypical knowledge together explained 52 and 43% of the variance in teachers’ ratings of academic proficiency for students with challenging behavior and learning difficulties, respectively. Results are interpreted within the theoretical framework and implications for teacher training are discussed.

Teachers' Implicit Attitudes Toward Students From Different Social Groups: A Meta-Analysis

“…In addition, intergroup contact may have differential effects on attitudes and beliefs, whereby intergroup contact especially reduces stereotype based prejudice (Weber and Crocker, 1983;Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006). To this extent, some studies in our meta-analysis reported that contact (Hein et al, 2011) or professional status (Krischler and Pit-ten Cate, 2019) resulted in differences in explicit attitudes and beliefs but not implicit attitudes. In contrast, found that teachers working in heterogeneous schools had less biased implicit attitudes than teachers in homogeneous settings.…”

“…For two studies (Conaway and Bethune, 2015;Krischler and Pit-ten Cate, 2019), multiple dependent effect-sizes related to multiple comparisons were reported. In accordance with the guidelines of Borenstein et al (2009), these were averaged into a composite score.…”

Implicit and explicit measures of teaching self‐efficacy and their relation to cultural heterogeneity: differences between preservice and in‐service teachers

“…This component is mainly assessed via questionnaires (Krischler and Pit-ten Cate, 2019) because it is compromised by beliefs (Avramidis, Bayliss and Burden, 2000). The affective component represents the evaluation of the object as negative, positive or neutral and can be assessed using implicit attitudes tests (Krischler and Pit-ten Cate, 2019). Interestingly, when considering attitudes towards ethnic minority students, mainly four dimensions are discussed as being relevant (Bakari, 2003).…”

A 14-Week Intervention Study on Changing Preservice Teachers’ Psychological Perspectives on Inclusion: Explicit and Implicit Attitudes, Self-Efficacy, and Stress Perception Toward Inclusion

“…Teaching inclusively is generally "associated with providing services to ensure that all students regardless of their ability can achieve their full potential in an appropriate education setting" (O'Brien et al, 2009, p. 46). On the other hand, such an inclusive education system and teaching inclusively require particular skills, behavior, and attitudes (Darling-Hammond and Bransford, 2007;Krischler and Pit-ten Cate, 2019), as well as particular structural conditions (Booth and Ainscow, 2011). This means, for example, that teachers are required to plan their lessons with the abilities of all students in mind, that they support the learning and participation of all students with a variety of pedagogical arrangements, and that they make use of students' differences as a resource for teaching and learning (Booth and Ainscow, 2011).…”