Abstract
Teachers' preparedness is a critical component in implementing inclusive education. It is pertinent to understand whether mainstream instructors are ready for inclusion as the number of children with special needs increases steadily over the years. The Zero Reject Policy has accelerated the implementation of inclusive education in Malaysia. While this is an essential step forward, assessing teachers' readiness for change is critical. This study aims to find out the predictive factors (attitudes and self-efficacy) on the preparedness of mainstream primary school teachers towards the implementation of inclusive education. This study is of a correlational research design where questionnaires were distributed to 367 teachers randomly selected from a cluster of nine schools in Hulu Selangor, Malaysia. The results show that teachers have moderate levels of readiness, attitudes and self-efficacy. There are also significantly positive relationships and predictive correlations between attitudes and readiness as well as self-efficacy and readiness. This implies that attitudes and self-efficacy should be considered in gauging teachers' readiness in the implementation of inclusive education. Taken together, findings in this study could inform further inclusive education research in Malaysia and could be taken into consideration in the design and execution of teacher training courses on Inclusive Education.
Highlights
Learning disorders are showing a steady increase in Malaysia. Ching (2009) asserts that in 2004, there were 57,483 children with special educational needs (SEN), and in 2009, there was an increase to 100,180
Since self-efficacy in this study shows a predictive correlation towards readiness towards implementing inclusive education, self-efficacy should be considered in increasing the preparedness of mainstream primary school teachers towards inclusive education
It is promising that at the infancy stage of inclusive education in Malaysia, teachers' attitudes, self-efficacy, and readiness for inclusive education in a relatively small town in Malaysia are at moderate levels
Summary
Learning disorders are showing a steady increase in Malaysia. Ching (2009) asserts that in 2004, there were 57,483 children with special educational needs (SEN), and in 2009, there was an increase to 100,180. Learning disorders are showing a steady increase in Malaysia. Ching (2009) asserts that in 2004, there were 57,483 children with special educational needs (SEN), and in 2009, there was an increase to 100,180. Malaysian education Statistics (MOE, 2018) presented an increase in enrollment figures of SEN children from 48 140 in 2010, 50 738 children in 2012, to 79 836 in 2017. MOE (2017) reported that 78% of children are in integration programs, while a small portion (19%) attend the inclusive education program, and 3% of the students are in special schools. There is still more work to implement inclusive education, one of the key goals in the Malaysian Education Blueprint, to have 75% of SEN children in inclusive education by 2025
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