Background: Teacher’s positive attitudes in class towards special needs student is one of the important factors in determining the success of implementing inclusive education. It relevant with teacher’s role in school as authority, to be student’s role model and becomes the basis of student’s value for special need student. In addition, the teacher’s positive attitudes towards special needs student can support teacher to implementing proper and relevant teaching strategies with special needs student. Knowledge about special needs student, appropriate teacher’s experiences and discussion about implementing inclusive education can be an effective way to increase teacher’s positive attitude and it can be done as a training programme. However, teacher from inclusive school in Indonesia rarely get training programme about special needs student or inclusive education. So, this present study tries to examine the effectiveness of ‘Sekolah Ramah Inklusi’ or SERASI training programme for the teacher to increase their positive attitudes. The hypothesis of this study is SERASI training programme on the teacher effective to increase teacher’s positive attitude regarding special needs student.

Methods: SERASI training programme was set up for 19 primary teachers in one of inclusive school and had the experience to teach special needs student in inclusive class. The selection of the school is based on the pra-research’s result which states that the teacher feels less understand about special needs student and never attending special needs' training programme.

In order to know the effects of the SERASI training programme, teacher’s positive attitude were measured using the Multidimensional Attitudes Toward Inclusive Education Scale (MATIES) at two moments, before and after the training programme was performed. MATIES measuring tool consists of 18 items covering dimension of attitude (cognitive, affection and psychomotor). In addition, data retrieval through self-reflection, open-ended questions, observation, and an interview is also done as a step to enrich the data.

SERASI training programme consisted of 8 hours of face-to-face training sessions in 2 days. On the first day, covering topics about special needs students, such as definition, characteristics in the variety of disabilities that usually found in inclusive school and how to handle each variety of special needs student. Meanwhile on the second day, the training programme focus on implementing inclusive school and teaching strategies. The teacher from other elementary schools which have experiences to side the special needs students be a guest on inclusive education to share their experience.

Results: Based on T-test analysis, the outcomes revealed that there is no significant differences teacher’s positive attitude toward special needs student. This result showed that the teachers already had a positive attitude towards special needs student before SERASI training programme was performed. As a result of the observation and interview with some participants showed that the teacher feels helped by SERASI training programme. Furthermore, this programme made teacher able to express the difficulties encountered and the importance of facilities from school to support the teacher in applying effective teaching strategies for special needs students.

Conclusions: Teacher’s positive attitude towards special needs student is one of the important factors in determining the success of implementing inclusive education. However, limited studies have evaluated the effectiveness training programme to increasing teacher’s positive attitude. Based on analysis, the outcomes revealed that there is no significant differences teacher’s positive attitude towards special needs student. But, this programme made teacher able to express the difficulties encountered and get knowledge about special needs student and inclusive education.

Added-Values: These finding are additional evidence of training programme to increase teacher’s positive attitude in Indonesia. In order to know the effects, this study use self reflection, open ended questions, observation and interview to enrich the data. Based on the result, this study can describe teacher’s opinion about inclusive education and special needs student more clearer.

Contribution to the society: These findings are additional evidence of primary inclusive school intervention programme since the research about this topic still very limited in Indonesia. So, implications and outcomes can be the suggestions for future research to strengthen the effectiveness of intervention programme that can improve teacher’s positive attitude in inclusive school.

Keywords: Attitude, special needs student, inclusive school, training programme

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