From normalisation to inclusion: effects on pre-service teachers’ willingness to teach in inclusive classes

ABSTRACT

Teachers’ willingness to teach in inclusive classrooms consists of their intention and readiness to include students with a disability into their classes. This article reports on a qualitative pilot study examining how pre-service teachers understand the essence of including students with disability and how willing they are to engage in inclusive teaching. Partially structured interviews were held with 18 pre-service teachers in various training years and types of training programme. The findings show the distinction between willingness to help students with disability and willingness to apply inclusive teaching. It turns out that the willingness to engage in inclusive teaching, as declared by the pre-service-teachers, suits the normalisation principle rather than current inclusion principle based on the more up-to-date approach of inclusive classes. This distinction may explain the causes of difficulty in applying the inclusion policy in education systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Including students with disability
• willingness to teach
• pre-service teachers
• inclusion
• normalisation
• diversity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Orit Gilor holds Ph.D. degree in Special Education from Haifa University. She is an active researcher and lecturer in the teacher education program, at Beit Berl College. Her main interests are the inclusion of students with special needs into the formal and informal education system in Israel and learning disabilities, and teaching learners with learning disabilities. She is the head of the Center for Teaching Enhancement at Beit Berl College.

Michael Katz holds BSc and BA degrees in mathematics, psychology and political science from Bar-Ilan University, MA degree in social psychology also from Bar-Ilan University, and MSc and DPhil degrees in mathematics from Oxford University. He held research and teaching positions, as well as visiting scholarships, at universities in Israel, England, Italy, Australia, Canada and the United States. He was head of the department of education and chairman of the MA committees in the departments of psychology and education at Haifa University.