Concerns of regular teachers about inclusive education of students with disabilities
Date Issued
2020
Author(s)
Abstract
The legislation in the Republic of Macedonia, from the school year 2022/23, mandates full
inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classrooms. In our school system, regular
teachers are implementing inclusive education, but they have limited knowledge and resources
for this process. The aim of this study is to determine the levels of teachers' concerns regarding
inclusive education by utilizing Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ). The SoCQ is
comprised of 35 statements to which the participants responded on a 0-7 Likert scale according
to how true the statement seemed to them at the time from 0 (irrelevant) to 7 (very true of me
now). Descriptive statistics (mean & standard deviation) were used to evaluate teachers’
concern regarding inclusive education. A total of 81 regular education teachers participate in the
study. More than half of the participants were primary school teachers (N=42; 51,9%), while
80,2% (N=65) of the participants were female. Based on the SoCQ instrument, teachers
reflected concern in Stage 0 (Awareness) and Stage 3 (Management), and a low level of concern
in Stage 5 (Collaboration). The high score on Stage 3 indicates that teachers are more concerned
about how inclusive education will actually happen. Results revealed that regular teachers have
a low level of concern toward inclusion. But, we consider that policy-makers in Macedonia
should focus further activities on continuous educator training and increase funding for
education
inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classrooms. In our school system, regular
teachers are implementing inclusive education, but they have limited knowledge and resources
for this process. The aim of this study is to determine the levels of teachers' concerns regarding
inclusive education by utilizing Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ). The SoCQ is
comprised of 35 statements to which the participants responded on a 0-7 Likert scale according
to how true the statement seemed to them at the time from 0 (irrelevant) to 7 (very true of me
now). Descriptive statistics (mean & standard deviation) were used to evaluate teachers’
concern regarding inclusive education. A total of 81 regular education teachers participate in the
study. More than half of the participants were primary school teachers (N=42; 51,9%), while
80,2% (N=65) of the participants were female. Based on the SoCQ instrument, teachers
reflected concern in Stage 0 (Awareness) and Stage 3 (Management), and a low level of concern
in Stage 5 (Collaboration). The high score on Stage 3 indicates that teachers are more concerned
about how inclusive education will actually happen. Results revealed that regular teachers have
a low level of concern toward inclusion. But, we consider that policy-makers in Macedonia
should focus further activities on continuous educator training and increase funding for
education
Subjects
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