Bridging Inclusive Education in Multicultural Settings: A Data-Driven Approach to Analyzing Elementary Student Attitudes Toward Children with Special Needs

<p>This research aimed to investigate elementary school children's cognitive, emotional, and behavioural views towards their handicapped children, especially through students’ writing and reading skills. This research included 30 students aged 11–13 from a district. The research data were acquired with the Chedoke-McMaster Attitudes Towards Children with Handicaps (CATCH) scale for children. This research is distinguished by its innovative processing of qualitative data through a quantitative lens, employing topic modelling techniques with Python utilising LDA-malet within the frameworks of Google Colab and Excel applications. The quantitative data of this research is also interpreted with descriptive quantitative methods, so a quantitative research design with data triangulation is used in this study. Based on their interactions with these children and the presence of impaired persons in their surroundings, students' views towards children with disabilities were markedly disparate. Female pupils had greater proficiency in empathy skills toward their handicapped classmates. We identified a substantial and positive correlation between students' views towards children with disabilities and their cognitive and emotional empathy abilities. The "involvement and acceptance" and "avoidance" sub-dimensions of the attitude scale positively influence empathy abilities, whereas the 'pity' sub-dimension has a little negative impact on empathy skills. This research also concludes that inclusive education may become exclusive in the absence of narrative expanse for everyone. Respecting differences has the potential to cause polarization. Consequently, the awareness of each individual is essential. Writing and reading skills can serve as a conduit for teachers to reflect and for students to acquire knowledges and skills, among other benefits.</p>