Attitudes of Teachers Education Centres to Special Education Inclusion

Abstract

The current tendency in special education is the pedagogy of inclusion. Teachers' views on inclusive education were analysed in connection to their age, gender, and degrees of job stress. Twenty-eight hundred and eighteen elementary and secondary school educators from five different prefectures in Greece participated in the study. For this study, we used a questionnaire about teachers' occupational stress to identify specific sources of stress in the classroom and the Opinions Relative to the Integration of Students with Disabilities (ORI) scale to investigate teachers' perspectives on including students with disabilities in regular classrooms. Independent factors included teachers' gender, age, and job strain. Some teachers, especially the older ones, had just somewhat favourable views toward inclusion. In particular, younger educators were more optimistic than their more senior colleagues. But there were no distinguishing characteristics between the sexes. Moreover, elevated stress levels were noted, and the sources of that stress were identified. Additionally, negative views toward inclusive education were linked to higher levels of occupational stress among instructors.