Selected Determinants of the Polish and South African Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Inclusive Education of Students with Special Educational Needs
Selected Determinants of the Polish and South African Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Inclusive Education of Students with Special Educational Needs

Summary/Abstract: RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The main purpose of this research was to assess teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education (IE) of students with special developmental needs in the school space. The article is a comparative study in which teachers from Polish and South African schools – special and public schools – took part. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: Following a pragmatic paradigm, a quantitative strategy and diagnostic survey method were applied. The specially prepared tool, the Scale for Attitudes Towards IE, was used to generate data. With 444 cases in total, we considered only the randomly selected 82 teachers from Poland and 81 teachers from South Africa. Confirming the normal distribution of variables, ANOVA and t-test were used for independent variables and descriptive statistics. For post-hoc analyses, Tukey’s HSD test was used for equal or different N. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The own research on teachers’ attitudes towards IE was preceded by theoretical considerations on the idea of educational inclusion. Determinants supporting the inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools were identified. International scholars reported that one of the many factors considered as conducive to the implementation of the IE was teachers’ attitude towards the idea of inclusion, which became fundamental for research about “otherness” in mainstream education. The teachers’ attitudes were assessed as a whole and separately in division according to the type of institution, nationality and seniority. RESEARCH RESULTS: In the overall assessment of attitudes towards inclusive education there were no statistically significant intergroup differences between teachers in Polish and South African schools. However, clear differences emerged in post-hoc analyses of the variables such as: type of the institution and seniority within the two different contexts.

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