Educational Attainment and Years of Teaching Children with Special Needs as Factors in Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Inclusive Education in Thailand

Abstract

Due to the growing trend in education of mainstreaming children with special needs, it was learned that there are hardly any recent studies that have been conducted to ascertain the attitudes of teachers toward inclusive education in Thailand. It is believed that a teacher’s attitudes may in fact play a significant impact upon students with special needs. This study focused on teachers handling inclusive education in Thailand. Through convenience sampling, 67 teachers of 10 different nationalities from private and government schools in Thailand volunteered to be the respondents of the study. The Kern Survey of Teacher Attitude Regarding Inclusive Education (KSUTAIE), a 42-item, 4-point Likert scale instrument was administered on the respondents. The instrument measures 5 subdomains namely, Student Variables, Peer Support, Administrative Support, Collaboration and Training. With respect to the respondents’ scores in these five subdomains, Student Variables yielded a verbal interpretation of agree, Peer Support produced a verbal interpretation of strongly agree, Administrative Support yielded a verbal interpretation of agree, Collaboration produced a verbal interpretation of agree and Training yielded a verbal interpretation of agree. A significant low positive relationship was established between the respondents’ years of handling children with special needs and the subdomain of Student Variables. When the respondents are grouped according to educational attainment, the analysis of variance revealed a significant difference with respect to the subdomain of Student Variables.