The Self Perceived Level of Preparation of Pre-service General Education Teachers to Instruct Students with Disabilities in an Inclusion Setting

Abstract

The number of students with disabilities being served in the general education classroom is growing each year. General education teachers often feel ill-equipped to appropriately address the needs of students with disabilities because doing so requires more specialized instruction than they have been trained to provide. Teachers who are confident that they are adequately trained believe that they can prevail over external factors that may impede student learning. Teacher preparation programs are charged with the challenge of making sure that general education teachers feel prepared to work with student with disabilities. However, currently there is no consensus on how general education teachers should be trained to work with students with disabilities. Holland et al. (2008) found that the most commonly used method by teacher preparation programs to prepare pre-service general education teachers to work with students with disabilities is to require only one disability-focused course. This study examined the perceived level of preparedness pre-service general education teachers have for working with students with disabilities at the end of a teacher education program which required only one disability-focused course. The results of this study suggest that the most commonly used practice by teacher preparation programs, requiring one disability-focused course of all majors, is sufficient enough to provide pre-service teachers with the confidence that they are prepared enough to work with students with disabilities in an inclusion setting.