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ABSTRACT

Background. Inclusive education is a program to provide students with special needs along with typical students in one class. In some studies, inclusive education plays an important role in early childhood with special needs. As a new system for education in Indonesia, surely the implementation of inclusive education is not easy. According to Montgomery, one of the challenges in inclusive education comes from teachers teaching in schools. The success and quality of inclusive education cannot be separated from the teacher's role in supporting inclusive education. What contributes to the success of inclusive education is the teacher's attitude toward inclusive education.

Attitudes are defined as evaluative dimensions indicating individual likes or dislikes toward the object of the attitude. Attitude can also be interpreted as an idea or idea that contains emotions and influences one's actions in a social situation. In inclusive education, attitudes are defined as a learned and stable disposition to respond well or poorly to objects, people, institutions, or events in a consistent way in the situation of inclusive education. Attitude consists of three important components namely cognitive, affective, and behavior. According to Scruggs & Mastripieri, there are several factors that influence teacher attitudes toward inclusive education, including demographic factors such as gender, teaching experience, age, severity of children, and interaction with individuals with special needs.

There is research that says a teacher and student interaction is an important experience for early childhood. Teacher and student interaction consist of three aspects: emotional support, classroom organization, and instrumental support. The results of Malecki & Demaray research on inclusive preschool, emotional support is the most unique and strong support for the development of social skills and academic ability of students when compared with other types of support. Someone who has a positive attitude towards an object, they tend to have affective and positive behavior toward the object. This is in line with the importance of social affection and social development in early childhood. The early childhood education period, which is known as the critical period and the period in which the personality foundation is built, is expected that inclusive education can improve it.

 

Methods. This study aims to look at overview of teacher’s attitude and emotional support in inclusive preschool. This research uses quantitative research method. There are two variables in this research, namely attitude variable and emotional support variable. Attitude variables were measured using a Multidimensional Attitudes Towards Inclusive Education (MATIES) questionnaire constructed by Mahat. This questionnaire has been created in the Indonesian version of MATIES-VI and has been adapted by Kurniawati. This measuring instrument is a self-report questionnaire that measures the three components of an attitude that is cognitive, affective, and behavioral. The reliability of each component on the MATIES gauge is .707 (cognitive component), .778 (affective component), and .849 (behavioral component). The items from this measuring instrument amount to 18 items, each of which consists of 6 response options, 1 ("Strongly Disagree") to 6 ("Strongly Agree").

While the emotional support variable was measured using a Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) questionnaire consisting of 11 items with 4 response options, 1 ("Very Unsuitable") to 4 ("Very Suitable"). This questionnaire has been created in the Indonesian version and has been adapted by Kurniawati, with reliability and validity of goodness of fit (p = 0.11333, RMSEA = 0.051, GFI = 0.91). The questionnaire consisted of three aspects: positive climate, teacher's sensitivity, and student perspective consideration. Number of samples for this study amounted to 250 teachers of inclusive preschool in Jakarta and Depok. Sampling technique in this research uses accidental sampling method. Sampling using this method is a sampling method in which researchers recruit participants based on the ease of reaching the sample. The research process is still ongoing and in the data retrieval phase. Later the data will be processed using statistical Correlation analysis method.

Results. Data collection is still ongoing.

 

Conclusion. This study is still ongoing.

 Added-Values. Through this study, the inclusive preschool can know the teacher's attitude and emotional support towards student with special needs, for improve the quality of educator resources, further is expected to contribute to success implementation of inclusive education.

 

Keywords: inclusive preschool, attitude, emotional support, teacher.

 

Word count: 684