Attitudes and self-efficacy of Jamaican teachers towards inclusion after co-teaching in an inclusive classroom (PDF)

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Pedagogy - School System, Educational and School Politics, grade: 72.00, Roehampton University London (Laureate), course: Master of Arts in Inclusive and Special Education, language: English, abstract: This study should bring awareness to the Ministry of Education and Teacher Training Colleges that traditional lecture style training without relevant practicum may be preventing the facilitation of inclusion. Despite Jamaica's Ministry of Education having established an inclusive education policy in 2008, the majority of children with special needs are kept at home. With very little inclusion in schools and segregation of students with special needs (SWSN), teachers in Jamaica have not experienced inclusion and do not feel adequately equipped to facilitate it.

Literature shows that teachers with experience only in traditional classrooms, and no exposure to diverse students are likely to be resistant to, or unable to, implement inclusion. Teachers also tend to implement inclusive teaching methods and adopt better attitudes after hands-on experience, modelling with a co-teacher.
Five teachers participated in a 2-week training condition, each teacher was provided with an inclusive classroom and an experienced inclusive teacher (mentor). The first week the teacher is assisting the mentor, the second week the mentor assists the teacher with lesson planning and teaching. Teachers were given 2 self-rating questionnaires before and after training to measure whether their attitudes and self-efficacy improved and whether a direct measure of attitude and self-efficacy towards inclusion could be predicted after training. Another questionnaire was given 2 weeks after training that measured the potential success of training through implementation.

Using paired sample t-tests for both attitude and self-efficacy scores it was found that all 5 teachers could be predicted to show an increase in both attitude and self-efficacy scores after training. It was also found using independent sample means tests that teachers without any previous experience teaching SWSN gained a larger difference in attitudes compared to teachers who already had experience however there was no difference in gains in self-efficacy.