Inclusion as a process of being aware of, responsive to and meeting the diverse needs of individuals requires changes, modifications and adjustments to attitudes in order to be successful and ensure participation and active involvement. Regular schools that develop to implement inclusive education strive to meet the needs and characteristics of students as all children have the right to a quality education and to achieve and maintain an appropriate level of knowledge. Attitudes towards inclusive education consist of three key components: cognitive, affective and behavioural. Teachers and other educational professionals enter the profession with pre-formed attitudes that are reflected in their behaviour, flexibility and approach to working with students with special needs. Teachers' attitudes are significantly influenced by their knowledge, their experience of working with students with special needs and the support they receive from school management and other staff. The process of professional preparation at university level also plays an important role in shaping these attitudes.
In this master's thesis, we investigated attitudes towards inclusion and the inclusion of specific groups of students with special needs among 341 students of the Faculty of Education at the University of Ljubljana enrolled in the Special and Rehabilitation Education and Primary Education degree programmes, as well as in the Master's degree programmes in Special and Rehabilitation Education and Primary Education.
We also focused on students' perceptions of teamwork in practise in selected study programmes and compared their mutual attitudes and factors (experience of working with students with special needs, type and severity of special needs, sense of competence and acquired knowledge and experience at university, and the influence of other people) that influence these attitudes.
For the master's thesis, we developed a questionnaire that included the MATIES and TAIS attitude assessment questionnaires, as well as additional questions to assess experience working with students with special needs and a five-point scale to assess the importance of factors that influence individual attitudes toward inclusion.
The research results show that both groups of students have a positive attitude towards inclusion; however, students of special and rehabilitation education expressed a statistically significantly higher inclination towards inclusion. Contact, experience and an increased sense of competence in working with students with special needs after practical experience only had a statistically significant influence on the formation of attitudes among primary school teaching students, with those with previous contact and experience showing a more positive attitude. Both groups of students had the most positive attitudes towards the inclusion of students with learning disabilities and the most negative attitudes towards the inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities. However, primary school teaching students were statistically significantly more willing to include students with intellectual disabilities. Statistically significant differences between the two groups were found in relation to the influence of the type and severity of special needs on attitudes towards inclusion, as well as in relation to the factor of knowledge about special needs acquired at university. These factors were more important for the special and rehabilitation education students. The latter group also rated the number of experiences gained during practical training as a statistically significant factor, with a greater proportion showing a lower inclination towards inclusion after practical experience.
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