Abstract
Teacher beliefs are action guiding in the classrooms. Teacher beliefs about inclusive education are thus a crucial pre-requisite for its success. Therefore, those beliefs have to be addressed during the first phase of teacher training. Generally accepted concepts or operationalized definitions would be valuable guidelines for pre-service teachers and their educators. However, neither the ones nor the others are available at present. Therefore, pre-service teachers have to fall back on their own beliefs, a rather unexplored notion so far. Within the present study, pre-service teachers’ beliefs about inclusive education were assessed before and after an academic seminar. During this academic seminar, participants co-taught in either multi-professional (i.e. one pre-service teacher for special educational needs and one for general education) or mono-professional (i.e. both pre-service teachers for special educational needs or both for general education) teams in inclusive classes of secondary schools. Pre-service teachers’ beliefs were assessed with the help of concept-maps, which were created by the participants at two testing times. The concept-maps were analyzed employing graph-theoretical approaches as well as qualitative, summarizing content analysis methods. Results show that pre-service teachers who worked in multi-professional teams expanded their conceptualization of inclusive education to include facets like individualization and differentiation, while pre-service teachers who worked in mono-professional teams displayed no such expansion. Also, the conceptualization of pre-service teachers who worked in mono-professional teams contained a larger percentage of propositions addressing disadvantages and negative consequences of inclusive education. Therefore, it is concluded that multi-professional co-teaching during teacher training helps prepare teachers for successful inclusive education.
Highlights
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities states that children must not be excluded from the general education system on the basis of disability (United Nations, 2006, p. 17)
The contents of the individual episodes are explained in detail: (A) During the theoretical episode, teacher trainees are introduced to topics concerning inclusive education, such as the theoretical background of co-teaching, educational methodologies and strategies for inclusive settings, or instructional techniques and aids for different special educational needs
The aim of the present study is to investigate what teacher trainees’ beliefs about inclusive education are and whether multiand mono-professional co-teaching in inclusive classes leads to a different change of these beliefs
Summary
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities states that children must not be excluded from the general education system on the basis of disability (United Nations, 2006, p. 17). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities states that children must not be excluded from the general education system on the basis of disability The Convention orders that “State Parties shall ensure an inclusive education system at all levels [. In Germany, the UN-Convention was ratified in 2007. Co-teaching and Pre-service Teachers’ Beliefs and incepted in 2009. Parents of children with special needs have the right to choose either mainstream or special needs schools. There has to be inclusive education in mainstream schools. For it to be successful, teachers’ beliefs are a crucial factor
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