Its Greatest Benefit of Inclusion Is Its Challenge”: EFL Teachers' Attitudes towards Inclusion of Learners with Disabilities

Year 2018, Volume: 8 Issue: 2, 262 - 292, 20.08.2018

Mohammad Javad Rezaı Ali Akbar Jabbarı Masoume Ahmadı

Abstract

Inclusion has long
been a hotbed for debate in many educational fields but TEFL (Teaching English
as a Foreign Language). To the best knowledge of the research, no study has
been conducted on the issue of inclusion in Iran, especially considering EFL
learners with special needs. Considering teachers as the central pillar of the
inclusive education, the present study sought to investigate EFL (English as a
Foreign Language) teachers' attitudes towards the inclusion of
physically-impaired EFL learners in English language classes. To this end, a
comprehensive survey was conducted using the 25-item Opinions Relative to
Mainstreaming (ORM) scale (Antonak & Larrivee, 1995) to collect data from
254 Iranian EFL teachers, of whom 30 teachers were subsequently interviewed to
guarantee the triangulation of the findings. The data were analyzed
quantitatively and qualitatively, with the SPSS Software version 20 being used
for the quantitative analysis. Findings indicating the Iranian EFL teachers’
neutral-to-positive attitudes are thoroughly discussed in this paper. The paper
also contains some information about the perceived benefits/challenges of
inclusion, its pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research.

 

Keywords

Inclusion, EFL learners with disabilities, attitude, perception, inclusive class

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