Does teacher efficacy for inclusive practice predict attitudes towards inclusive education & vice versa? An empirical study from northern Denmark

Objectives

11 municipalities in the norther region of Denmark are all a part of the project The diverse school which in essence is concerned with ensuring that local schools become more inclusive and able to meet the diversity of the entire student body. Teachers in schools in northern Denmark are to some extent struggling with providing quality inclusive education which is the primary motivation for the regional project. Teachers are finding a lack of competencies and knowledge on inclusive education in relation to the task of ensuring a more inclusive school. Furthermore, different, conflictual, and counter-productive educational agendas in Danish schools are producing discursive, pedagogical, and didactic dilemmas for teachers, and in some cases the agenda of inclusion is set aside, and a more neoliberal agenda of excellence, testing and standardisation is in the foreground (Hedegaard-Soerensen and Grumloese, 2020, Engsig and Johnstone, 2015).

As an integral part of the large-scaled regional project we are conducting a longitudinal study of teacher’s attitudes towards inclusion and their experiences of self-efficacy regarding inclusive education. There is a substantial number of studies on attitudes regarding inclusive pedagogy and education. There is also a growing body of literature concerning teacher efficacy in relation to inclusive education. However, there is a possible gap in the literature when it comes to addressing the correlation between attitudes towards inclusion and self-efficacy regarding ensuring inclusive education (Savolainen, H.; Malinen, O-P. and Schwab, S., 2020). We will in the presentation address this gap in the literature and our study will contribute to our understandings of teacher self-efficacy and attitudes regarding inclusive education and the relations between these phenomena.

Main Perspective

Based on data from just above 5,000 respondents in schools in the northern region of Denmark and through the application of two scales: Teacher self-efficacy for inclusive practices (TEIP) (Sharma, Loreman and Forlin 2012) and Sentiments, attitudes, and concerns about inclusive education revised (SACIE-R) (Forlin et al., 2011) and our own constructs, we will present analysis and findings on teacher’s experience of self-efficacy when it comes to their pedagogical and didactic practices with ensuring inclusive education. Furthermore, we will present finding on teacher’s attitudes towards inclusive education and present how the two phenomena relate to and form each other. We will furthermore present and discuss findings regarding background variables such as experience with inclusion and students with special needs and level of education relate to both self-efficacy and attitudes in relation to inclusive education.

In relation to the conference theme, The power of protest, we will discuss that within the notion of attitudes and concerns on inclusive education lies a protest on the pedagogical, political and organizational possibilities, or perhaps barriers, for inclusive education.