Attitudes of students of the Faculty of Education and the Masters’ Degree in Special Education towards an educational inclusion

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to analyze the attitude towards inclusive education of pre-service teachers. Two hundred seventy-four students coursing degrees in Preschool Teacher Education and Elementary Teacher Education and master in Special Education at the University of Valencia (Spain) completed an adaptation of the scale ORI (Opinions Relative to Integration of Students with Disabilities Scale). We analyzed the reliability and factorial structure of the scale. We compared the scale scores between undergraduate and master students; between students of Degree in Early Childhood Education and Elementary Education; and between undergraduate students before and after completing the course “Special Educational Needs”. All students had a favorable attitude towards inclusive education. The attitude was better in Early Childhood Education students than in Primary Education Teacher students. There was a significant improvement in the attitude of students after completing course "Special Education Needs". The attitude was significantly more favorable in master students than in grade students. The twenty-five original items of the scale were reduced to twenty-three in our adaptation, and the four initial factors were increased to five.