A Descriptive Study on the Training and Attitude of Future Teachers towards Educational Inclusion

Jorge Rojo-Ramos,Fernando Manzano-Redondo,Patricia Polero,Manuel Fernández-Guerrero,Miguel Ángel Garcia-Gordillo,José Carmelo Adsuar,Carlos Ferrera-Granados

doi:10.3390/su12198028

Jorge Rojo-Ramos, Fernando Manzano-Redondo + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12198028

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Abstract

The Spanish educational system has heterogeneous and diverse students that have increasing learning needs. All this has forced it to reinvent itself, designing and applying a model of inclusive education that serves to offer a higher quality educational response to these students. One of the main pillars for achieving this challenge is the teaching staff. The aim of this study is to evaluate the training and attitudes of future teachers to work in inclusive educational environments. The present research had a sample of 245 future teachers in the degrees of Early Childhood Education and Primary Education, who answered the Teacher Training Evaluation Questionnaire for Inclusion (CEFI-R), specific to the object of study. As the main conclusions, we obtained that the perception of future teachers towards the concept of inclusion is positive and that the training they receive is adequate, although there is room for improvement. However, there is a need to adjust the curriculum, increase the period of practice and better coordinate the actions of the members involved in the educational process.

Highlights

In recent years, the Spanish educational system has increasingly seen a positive exponential increase in groups of heterogeneous students, each with their peculiarities
Future teachers had to respond to the item “On a general level, I consider that my training at university has prepared me, or is preparing me, to respond to the diversity of needs of my students” (Table 2)
The results show in the second dimension, “Methodology” (Me = 3), that future teachers feel competent to teach and make the relevant adaptations according to the individual characteristics of the students, would know how to develop curricular and didactic material to respond to such needs and would know how to adapt the necessary communication techniques that students with special educational needs require

Summary

Introduction

The Spanish educational system has increasingly seen a positive exponential increase in groups of heterogeneous students, each with their peculiarities This fact constitutes a challenge and, at the same time, a great opportunity for the school to reinvent itself and generate the necessary changes and adaptations to be able to offer a higher quality educational response adjusted to the students. Previous studies [2,3,4,5] warn about the little attention that has been given to the initial training of teachers to prepare them as competent, attentive, and sensitive professionals through an inclusive model of education In this context, it seems that the main barrier preventing both educational institutions and schools from being organizations attentive to diversity lies in reviewing the pre-established ideas, norms and beliefs in force in the school, as well as functioning patterns and agents involved in teaching and its associated processes [6,7,8]

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