Indonesian Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Inclusive Education

Abstract

Since the Bandung Declaration of 2004, Indonesia has become concerned with the development of inclusive education. Even though teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education are important for successful implementation, there have been few research studies on them in Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to understand Indonesian teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education. This study surveyed 243 Indonesian teachers using the Teacher Attitudes toward Inclusion Scale (TATIS) instrument. The findings showed that 79.4 % of Indonesian teachers held a moderate attitude toward inclusive education. In addition, the number of teachers who had a high (8.6 %) attitude toward inclusive education was less than those who held a low one (11.9 %). Moreover, there were no significant differences based on demographic data such as gender, age, province, school type, highest education, teaching experience in general education, and teaching experience in inclusive education. A significant difference was found only when the level of schools grouped the teachers: teachers who teach in secondary schools had more positive attitudes toward inclusive education than teachers who teach in primary schools. The positive attitude of teachers towards inclusive education can make them more capable of controlled learning environments. Meanwhile, to improve their attitude, a sustainable training program can be carried out. Sustainable training organized by the Ministry of Education to improve teacher pedagogical and professional competence must be in line with Education for Sustainable Development (EDS).

Sustainable Instrument Development in Educational Research

“…The ITAIE Scale (Ediyanto, 2020) was developed because no instruments were adapted to the Indonesian context. In line with this, TATIS (Cullen, Grogory, & Noto, 2010) was developed for context (and four other reasons).…”

“…Indonesian Instrument Attitudes toward Inclusive Education Scale (ITAIE Scale) (Ediyanto, 2020) The ITAIE scale was created by combining seven previous studies consisting of new items relevant to Indonesia current inclusive Education (Cullen, Gregory & Noto, 2010;Forlin, Earle, Loreman, & Sharma, 2011;Gregory & Noto, 2012;Monsen, Ewing, & Boyle, 2015;Stobier, Gettinger & Goetz, 1998;Mahat, 2008;Sharma & Desai, 2002). The seven previous studies examined instrument creation measuring teachersí attitudes on Inclusive Education.…”

“…Content validation process involved a panel of inclusive education experts (Ediyanto, 2020;Sharma & Desai, 2002;Forlin et al, 2011;Gregory & Noto, 2012). The items review was carried out on their balance, clarity, overlapping responses, wordiness, negative wording, use of jargon, praxis application, technical language usage, relationship to the problem criteria, and appropriateness of responses.…”

“…Principal Component Analysis (PCA) (Ediyanto 2020;Cullen et al, 2010;Forlin et al, 2011;Gregory & Noto, 2012) was used in the construct validation process. Things that are seen in the analysis process using PCA are the PCA value and cumulative variance.…”

“…Things that are seen in the analysis process using PCA are the PCA value and cumulative variance. In addition, the ITAIE scale (Ediyanto, 2020;Monsen et al, 2015) uses the Pearson product-moment correlation to test concurrent validity. Finally, all instruments in Table 1 use Cronbachís alpha to test reliability.…”