Social inclusion through attitudinal change in Singaporean teachers

The development of positive teacher attitudes towards students with disabilities is a catalyst for their social inclusion. It is therefore important that the foundations for positive teacher attitudes be laid in pre-service teacher education programmes. This article reports a pilot study that investigated the impact of a disability awareness course on the attitudes of mainstream pre-service teachers in Singapore toward disability and inclusion. A researcher constructed survey was developed to enable the pre-service teachers to report their perspectives of the changes in their awareness and attitudes at the end of the course. The results indicated that the course had a positive impact on the pre-service teachers' knowledge, awareness and attitude towards disability and inclusion. The pre-service teachers reported greater consciousness of their own prejudices and misconceptions about people with disabilities and more positive perspectives of people with disabilities in terms of their capabilities and capacity to learn at the end of the course. They also expressed an increased realization of the difference they could make in the lives of people with disabilities, their personal agency in creating a more inclusive society as well as greater openness towards inclusion and acceptance of students with disabilities into their own classrooms.