Teacher’s attitudes

Abstract

Teachers’ positive interactions with people with disabilities improve their awareness and advocacy for inclusion, which is an important policy and community goal worldwide. Therefore, to guide and shape inclusive efforts in Angola as well as to promote advances in research related to measurement of attitudes we conducted a study to analyzed the factor structure, validity, and reliability of the Interaction with People with Disability Scale (IDPS) for a sample of 1352 elementary teachers. Results of an exploratory factorial analysis showed a solution with factors of discomfort, coping, and vulnerability explaining 64.29% of the variance. A confirmatory factorial analysis suggested a model with good fit and convergent validity for discomfort and coping, and good evidence of discriminate validity for the three factors. We discussed and concluded with how this results and how exploring attitudes towards people with disabilities with the IDPS can be useful when promoting activities for teachers training in inclusive education.