What does the French public think about inclusive education?

ABSTRACT

Background

To explain that students with intellectual disabilities are not fully included in mainstream education, the present paper investigates public attitudes towards inclusive education and notably examines how these vary according to students' type of disability (i.e., an intellectual, a communicational, a sensory, a motor, or a specific learning one).

Method

Data were extracted from an opinion poll on inclusive education conducted on a representative sample of the French population (N = 1001).

Results

The analyses indicated that the public are less favourably inclined towards the inclusion of students with an intellectual disability in comparison to students with autism spectrum disorder, a sensory disability, specific learning disabilities or a motor disability. Participants who are familiar with disability seem to express more favourable attitudes than those who are not.

Conclusions

The present study contributes to a better understanding of public attitudes towards inclusive education and opens perspectives to develop more inclusive societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Public attitudes
• disability
• Down syndrome
• autism
• inclusive education

Acknowledgements

This study was partially funded by the “Caisse Nationale de Solidarité pour l’Autonomie (CNSA)” (grant number IReSP-17-AUT4-08).

Authors wish to thank the association Trisomie 21 France for letting us using their dataset.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Caisse Nationale de Solidarité pour l'Autonomie: [Grant Number IReSP-17-AUT4-08].