Teachers’ Involvement in Inclusive Education: Attitudes of Future Teachers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an excellent manuscript. It is concisely written and provides pertinent knowledge. I’m aware identifiers were removed, but it is important the university and country are stated early to give the reader context.

There are only two minor considerations I am recommending:

The term ‘functional diversity’ needs an explanation. It’s obvious to experts in the field but it is a new term. It might be helpful to explain that a disability has functional limitations but people learn and use disability-specific tacit knowledge to identify, circumvent or master disability-specific challenges. Here are two related studies:

Reiff, H. B., Ginsberg, R., & Gerber, P. J. (1995). New perspectives on teaching from successful adults with learning disabilities. Remedial and Special Education, 16(1), 29-37.

Jacobs, P. G. (2010). Psychosocial Potential Maximization: A framework of proactive psychosocial attributes and tactics used by individuals who are deaf. Volta Review, 110(1), 5-30.

I found your findings comparing males and females; young versus older participants; and pre-school versus elementary teachers intriguing. It matches my personal observations and your study is the first I’ve read on my hunch.

Line 260 – “It is during this educational …is developed more inclusively …” is not clear. Do the preschool courses have inclusive education and the elementary courses do not? Or is the former more extensive than the latter? This needs a sentence to clarify. If so, this is important evidence of educational content positively influencing the cognitive, affective, and behavioural outcomes. In addition, it shows that inclusive education policy is being actioned – which is mentioned on line 287.  

I first thought that the small male population size may explain higher empathy and confidence implementing inclusive education as mentioned. But I think this finding may be due to the male participants having more contact with people with disabilities. Hence the vital lived experience may be a contributing factor. May I suggest revisiting the data to see whether the males had greater prior exposure to people with disabilities? If so, this will be a significant finding. Scarce research has highlighted the value of prior exposure to the lived experience of disability in educational settings, service provision, and the workplace.

Once again, congratulations on this first-class research.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the paper, it complements the increasing number of research articles on teachers' attitudes towards diversity. 

The paper defines inclusion as an 'Education for All' approach - ensuring quality education for all regardless of any characteristics related to 'differences'. It also frames inclusion to equal opportunity to learn and participate in school.  In this way, the article highlights that the current education system is based on assumptions of homogeneity and the mentioned characteristics, such as social or cultural diversity, are often considered as 'different' and somewhat problematic for the system to address. This aligns well with the Special Issue description. The paper further argues that teachers must develop critical awareness of political, social and cultural factors that impact education and lives, requiring understanding of power dynamics, and transformation of oppressive structures and practices. I find this overall framework very relevant and important to enriching and strengthening the discussion on inclusion in education.

The study employs SACIE-R to measure student teachers' sentiments, attitudes and concerns related to including students with 'functional diversity' in the usual educational context. The paper does not define 'functional diversity' - does this include also aspects such as social, cultural or linguistic diversity? As far as I am aware, the SACIE-R focuses (in many language editions) a more traditional special needs education approach to inclusive education. This is also reflected in the examples (L130-134). How do you justify using this instrument in relation to your definition to inclusion?

The study adds to the studies using the SACIE-R for measuring the teachers' attitudes towards inclusive education - as relates to students with disabilities and 'special educational needs' - and reinforces the previous findings from different contexts. However, the Special Issue editors call for submissions located "within the local contours of cultural–historical understandings and practices", I do not see a strong response to the Call's concern of "Promoting inclusive education by adhering to SEN discourse is not responsive to diverse and unequal contexts of schooling. Instead, political and sociocultural structures that shape the meaning of education ought to be explicitly incorporated into the inclusive education agenda." 

I deem that the paper, despite its contribution to other discourse(s) around inclusive education, does not respond adequately to the Call description.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

This paper was clearly and well written. Also the results seemed fine, but not very surprising. In the end of the article the writer(s) take up families as key components for inclusion. This topic was not discussed in the earlier stage of the paper. Normally no new issues taken up at Conclusions part of the paper. I´d advice to remove that part, or write that the role of home and families must be important but the issue should be further investigated.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The work presented is very interesting for detecting training needs in the future teachers of early childhood and primary education.

Congratulations

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf