Development of the Indicators of Successful Inclusion Scale (ISIS): addressing ecological concerns

Abstract

The Indicators of Successful Inclusion Scale (ISIS) was developed to measure pre-service and practicing educators’ beliefs regarding factors that contribute to educating students with disabilities in general education classrooms. The measure was designed to assess teachers’ beliefs and attitudes related to inclusive education and to consider their possible utility for understanding teachers’ inclusion-related intentions and behaviors. Specifically, the ISIS targets personal and ecological factors thought to influence intentional inclusive practice: beliefs related to the perceived benefits of inclusion, beliefs regarding administrative school support for the practice of inclusion. ISIS scale development, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses yielded discrete subscales addressing teachers’ ecological beliefs. Analyses of internal consistency and test-retest reliability data suggest the ISIS functions in a reliable fashion. Our construct validation procedures yielded evidence supporting the ISIS as a measure of pre-service and practicing teacher beliefs pertaining to inclusive education. Implications for the use of ISIS toward encouraging inclusive practices and enhancing a culture of inclusion are discussed.

Keywords:

• inclusion
• disabilities
• beliefs
• attitudes
• pre-service
• teacher education

Notes

1. The definition of inclusive practice varies with cultures and locales. A common definition used for inclusion is ‘students with disabilities are served primarily in the general education settings, under the responsibility of [a] regular classroom teacher. When necessary and justifiable, students with disabilities may also receive some of their instruction in another setting, such as [a] resource room’ (Mastropieri and Scruggs 2004, 7).

2. Professional development for teachers (i.e., staff development, in-service education, continuing education, teacher training) is the range of formal and informal processes and activities that teachers engage in both inside and outside of the school, in order to improve their teaching knowledge and skills (Jackson and Davis 2000).

3. Traditional route to certification is defined as the pre-service educator graduating from secondary school and immediately entering post-secondary education.

4. ‘Good fit’ conventions include CFI values around .95, SRMR values < .08, and χ²/df < 5. RMSEA values < .08 may be described as acceptable (see Kline 2004; Schumacker and Lomax 2004).