Sensory disabilities at school. A study on the attitudes and fears of a pre-service teachers group

Abstract

The paper presents results of a study on pre-service teachers' attitudes and fears towards sensory disabilities. It presents the development of a new instrument, the Multidimensional Attitudes Scale Toward students With Sensory Disabilities (MAS-SD). Based on the multidimensional
approach, it investigates the construct of fear and it posits that attitudes are composed of three dimensions: affect, cognition, and behavior.
The scale was distributed to a sample of 200 pre-service teachers group of course on support disability at University of Salento (Lecce). Results indicate the importance of a multidimensional approach in the study of attitudes.