Teachers’ readiness for inclusive education in a developing country: fantasy or possibility?

ABSTRACT

This article aims to examine teacher readiness for inclusive education with the contextual influence of gender, age, academic qualification, teachers’ teaching experience, involvement in teaching students with special educational needs, and teacher training. Using a quantitative research design, a survey questionnaire was administered to 628 teachers in 77 government schools. The results from the survey were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 27.0. Findings indicate teachers’ rating of their knowledge, understanding, skills, abilities and attitude for an inclusive education. In addition, results for the inferential statistics of t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) based on teacher’s gender, age, academic qualification, teaching experience, involvement in teaching students with special needs, and teacher training are presented. The findings from this research highlight the important role of teachers’ knowledge, understanding, skills, abilities and attitude in further enhancing the inclusive educational opportunities for students with special needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive education
• teacher readiness
• knowledge
• understanding
• skills
• abilities
• attitude

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Donnie Adams

Dr. Donnie Adamsis a senior lecturer at the Department of Educational Management, Planning and Policy, Faculty of Education, University of Malaya. He obtained his PhD in Educational Leadership from the University of Malaya. He is a recipient of the University of Malaya’s Bright Sparks scholarship and a recipient of University of Malaya’s Excellence Award 2016: PhD Completion in Less than 3 Years.

Ahmed Mohamed

Ahmed Mohamed is a lecturer at The Maldives National University (MNU). His current research interests are educational leadership and management, teacher education and professional learning, inclusive education, organisational behaviour, bibliometric and validation studies. He has been actively engaged in research and worked as a reviewer for Scopus Indexed journals.

Visal Moosa

Dr Visal Moosa is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Research and Publications, Islamic University of Maldives. He holds a PhD in Education from Universiti Brunei Darussalam, and a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership and Management from Universiti Malaya. His research interests include educational leadership and management, teacher learning, and school improvement.

Mariyam Shareefa

Mariyam Shareefa is a senior lecturer at the Islamic University of Maldives. She has completed PhD in Education at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She also obtained Master of Education and BATEFL from The Maldives National University, Maldives. She has contributed to several publications in the field of teaching and learning.