Teacher attitudes and behavior toward the inclusion of children with social, emotional and behavioral difficulties in mainstream schools: An application of the theory of planned behavior
Highlights
► The study examined teacher beliefs and behaviors with respect to children with SEBD. ► Perception of head teacher expectations was a key influence. ► Teachers who attended more INSET sessions were more positive. ► But more experienced teachers were less willing to work with this group.
Section snippets
Applying the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to investigate teacher attitudes and behavior
The theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) provides a useful framework for addressing the relationship between attitude and behavior. It is an extension of the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) and proposes that in order to predict a specific behavior, attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and behavioral intention in relation to that behavior need to be taken into consideration. Subjective norm is an individual's perception of how significant others will
Participants
General classroom teachers in mainstream schools from a convenience sample of 24 Scottish school districts were invited to participate in the study, out of 32 school districts in Scotland. Twelve districts granted permission and all 483 schools were invited to participate. Following up those 61 schools who responded positively, two hundred and eighty-three questionnaire packs were distributed, of which 92 were completed and returned. An email with the link to the online survey was forwarded to
Results
Log transformations were applied to deal with outliers. The variable, teaching experience, had one outlier (‘reporting 42 years experience’), subjective norm had two outliers (both with a low score of 5), behavioral intention had two outliers (low scores of 5.05 and 5.15), and INSET had three outliers (a high number of 15, 16 and 20 sessions). Log transformation was applied, as suggested by Tabachnick and Fidell (2007) which pulled outliers from the variables teaching experience (SEBD), INSET
Discussion
The present study employed TPB to examine teachers' attitudes and behavior toward children with SEBD. It was found that teachers who held more positive beliefs and higher levels of perceived behavioral control (teaching self-efficacy) had a higher level of behavioral intention to engage in inclusive practices in working with children with SEBD. These findings support those of Oh et al. (2010) and Palou and Norwich (2002). Furthermore, subjective norm, as measured by teachers' views of their
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