Teachers and other educational agents’ sentiments, attitudes and concerns about inclusion: portuguese data

Abstract

In the beginning of the 21st century schools are characterised as multicultural spaces and times (César, 2009). In the two last decades we observe a growing cultural diversity among students who attend Portuguese mainstream schools (César, Santos, 2006). The construction of broader inclusive educational settings is related with teachers and other educational agents’ sentiments, attitudes
and concerns towards inclusive education (IE) (Forlin, Loreman, Sharma, Earle, 2007; Loreman, Earle, Sharma, Forlin, 2007). This research is part of a broader project Educação Inclusiva e Processos de Formação whose main goal was to study the sentiments, attitudes and concerns presented by educational agents, before and after attending pre- and in-service teacher education which included some curricular units regarding IE. We assumed an interpretative approach and carried out a long panel survey. To collect data we used documents and the SACIE scale – Sentiments, Attitudes, Concerns about Inclusive Education scale, by Loreman, Earle, Sharma, Forlin, (2006). The SACIE scale was answered in two moments: (1) at the beginning; and (2) at the end of the selected curricular units. Data treatment and analysis was based in descriptive statistics and used the SPSS software. The main results of the study are presented and discussed in the paper, starting from the analysis of the data referred to the majority of teachers and other educational agents, who reported comfort sentiments, but only a lower number of them showed inclusive attitudes towards students who need some specialised educational support.