Correlation between attitudes, concerns, self‐efficacy and teaching intentions in inclusive education evidence from German pre‐service teachers using international scales

Abstract

The inclusion of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in schools is an ongoing challenge – it demands the development of an adapted teaching and learning environment, which, in turn, requires a corresponding teacher education programme. Studies indicate that personal characteristics of the respective teachers are one of the main influencing factors on the classroom environment. This article reports on a study of the role of teacher‐related factors, attitudes, concerns and efficacy in inclusion by testing existing survey instruments of 909 pre‐service teachers in Germany. A confirmatory factor analysis was applied to new German translations of four instruments: Attitudes Towards Inclusion Scale, Intention to Teach in Inclusive Classroom Scale, Concerns about Inclusive Education Scale, and the Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practices. With minor modifications, models demonstrated good fit measures and partial measurement invariance between special school pre‐service teachers and general pre‐service teachers. A combined model of all four scales confirmed that lower concerns were related to attitudes that are more positive, greater self‐efficacy and stronger intentions to teaching inclusively. Implications for teacher‐training and comparisons to other international samples are discussed.