The views of preservice teachers studying at undergraduate programs and receiving pedagogical formation program towards the inclusion

Abstract

Since the acceptance of teaching as a profession, teacher education has been a debatable issue. Especially recently, it has been expected from preservice teachers to have high level of competency of special education in addition to their own discipline. Within this context, it is considered that the preservice teachers studying at different departments should have a common and basic competencies regarding their attitudes towards the students with special educational needs. The aim of this study was to investigate the views of preservice teachers studying at undergraduate programs or receiving pedagogical formation regarding the students with special educational needs and the inclusion. In this study, descriptive screening model was used. The participants were composed of a total of 383 preservice teachers studying at two faculty of education or receiving pedagogical formation education at two state university in Turkey during the 2016-2017 academic year. “My Thoughts on Inclusion Scale”, which was developed by Stoiber, Gettinger, and Goetz (1998) and adapted into Turkish by Dalgar (2011), was used as the data collection tool. The data obtained from the scale were analyzed using SPSS 18.0 software. As a result of the analyses, it was found that participants studying at undergraduate programs had positive opinions regarding the inclusive education while the participants receiving pedagogical formation education had negative opinions. Moreover, participants scores didn’t differ significantly in terms of gender, grade level, and having a handicapped person in the family (p>.05); however, it differed significantly in terms of the program and having received a special education course (p<.05). Finally, it was determined that participants’ scores differed significantly in terms of the department. © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology.