Teachers Attitude towards Students with Disabilities in Secondary Schools

Teachers Attitude towards Students with Disabilities in Secondary Schools

Sanjukta Ghosh, Koushik Das

**Asst Prof, Department of Education, New Alipore College, E-mail-sanjuktaghosh2011@gmail.com

**Lecturer, Department of Education, New Alipore College, E-mail- kdas4647@gmail.com

Abstract: The study investigated attitude towards students with disabilities among teachers in secondary school. The study was undertaken to determine the teachers’ attitude and the influence of gender and demographic status. The purpose of this study to explore the perception of regular teachers towards students with disabilities in secondary schools. The study also aimed to investigate how these teachers’ attitudes impacts on students’ performance. This study sampled 101 teachers from urban and rural area in and around Kolkata. Checklist, Questionnaire and Interview schedule were used to collect data. The study also provides an overview of teachers’ attitude towards students with disabilities. 

Keywords: Teachers, Attitude, Students with disabilities

Introduction:

Under the inclusion students with special needs spend most of the time with non-disabled students. The teachers’ attitude and expectation that will either improve or worsen the students’ academic performance. Children with disabilities have the right to be part of regular classroom students with disabilities add to the diversity of the classroom and bring new strengths into the classroom. One of the most important aspect of the classroom interaction concern the way in which teachers make sense of and respond to the learning behaviour of their students. The teaching attitudes of teachers play an important role in children academic performance.                                                                    

Inclusive education is a key policy in many numbers of countries, including the UK and the US. The New Labor Government in the UK addressed the issue through its Green Paper within a few months of taking office. A major driver of all these efforts and developments has been concern that children’s rights are being compromised by special education. This is because these special children are segregated from their typically developing peers and the mainstream curriculum and educational practices. Here, the issue of the actual effectiveness of the different educational approaches has been a matter of concern for some time. We believe that the issue should be primarily determined through the perspective of values and ideologies which promulgates that all humanity is equal and therefore everyone, whether disabled or not, should have an equal right to education. (UNESCO, 1994, Statement, p. ix)

Literature Review:

Adeniyi and Tella(2009) explored attitudes of teachers about inclusion of special needs children in their secondary school in general education. The study used a descriptive research design with 60 teachers from selected secondary school in Oyo state. A finding implies that female teachers have more positive attitude towards the inclusion of special needs students than male teachers.

Dukmuk (2013) investigated the attitude of regular classroom teachers towards including students with disabilities in the regular classroom in UAE. Teacher attitude were studied in relation to their gender, age and years of experience. Different statistical analysis such as ANOVA and Correlation were administrated for the study the findings revealed that, in general teacher showed positive attitude towards education inclusion but male teachers showed move positive attitude than female.

Schmidt and Vrhovnik (2015) explored attitudes of teachers towards the inclusion of children with special needs in primary and secondary schools. Teachers with fewer special need students in class show a higher degree of support for inclusion of special need students than do other groups of teachers.

Lika(2016) studied on teachers attitude towards the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular school. The sample size of this study was 146 self reporting questionnaire use3d for data collection. According to the result teacher gender did not affect their attitudes towards the inclusion of children with disabilities.

Iyeoma and Toyosi (2017) studied on teachers attitude towards special need students in secondary school in North Senatorial district if Edo state, Virginia. Sample size of the study was 359. Result showed that sEr of teachers has no significant influence on their attitude towards special need students in secondary school.

Objective of study:

The objective of study is to analyze the teacher attitude towards special needs children in a Secondary school.   

Research Methodology:

In order to analyze the perception of mainstream and special teachers with regard to the inclusion of special needs children in mainstream school in around Kolkata data was collected from there.

Sample- 

101 teachers of secondary level were selected as sample.

Tools- 

Check-list, Questionnaire and interview schedule used for collecting data and Likert scale was use.

Statistical Techniques– 

Collected data was analyzed by statistical techniques like T-test. Calculating validity of the questionnaire, content validity has been maintained in the study.

Validity and Reliability– 

Test-retest reliability method was applied and the coefficient of correlation was found to be 0.83.

Hypothesis-

Ho1: There is no significant difference towards attitude between urban and rural school teachers.

Ho2: There is no significant difference towards attitude between male and female teachers.

Table-1

Teachers’ attitude towards students with disabilities between Urban and Rural school teachers

T-value was found 2.39, which was significant at 0.05 levels, so null hypothesis was rejected. It could be said that there is a significant difference between the attitude of urban and rural school teachers.

Figure: 1

Graphical Representation of the Teachers attitude towards Students Disability Score of Urban and Rural teachers in Secondary Schools

Table-2

Teacher attitude towards student with disabilities between male and female teachers

T-value was found 1.10, which was not significant al 0.05 levels. So the null hypothesis was accepted and it could be said there was no significant difference between the attitude of male and female teachers towards student with disabilities.

Figure: 2

Graphical Representation of the Teachers attitude towards Students Disability Score of Male Teachers and Female Teachers in Secondary Schools

Discussion:

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitude of secondary school teachers towards student with disabilities. According to the result of this study suggest that there is a significant difference in attitude of secondary school teachers towards students with disabilities between urban and rural area. The statistical analysis (table-1) has shown the urban area picture N=55, Mean=61.89, SD=13.82, SEM=1.86 and T-value was found=2.39, which is significant 0.05% level and picture of rural area is N=46, Mean=55.86, SD=11.02, SEM=1.62 and T-value=2.39.

According to the (table-2), the study suggests that there is no significant difference in attitude between male and female teachers of secondary level towards students with disabilities. Whether the picture is male teachers N=51, Mean=61.47, SD=11.67, SEM=1.63 and female teachers N=50, Mean=64.25, SD=13.76, SEM=1.95 and T-value was found=1.10, which is not significant at 0.05% level.

Through the interview researcher has known the secondary school teachers of urban area believe that, student with disabilities need to be given special attention, and they wish to spend more time in the classroom with the innovative and interactive teaching techniques. They try as much as possible to encourage student with disability to attend the class whether rural areas teachers are less excited to teach them in general class. Researcher also investigate that negative attitude of the teachers has a profound effect on students academic performance because of this they kept thinking of their lagging behind and they lose enthusiasm in study.

Recommendation:

1. Special education should be integrated and made compulsory for all education students into school of education.

2. All programme designed to cater for the needs of the special child should constantly monitored evaluated in the school.

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