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Background. The regulation of the Minister of National Education (Permendiknas) No. 70/2009 about inclusive education (IE) states that every citizen is entitled to receive an education. Permendiknas defines inclusive education as an education system that provides opportunities for all learners who have abnormalities and have the potential of intelligence and/or special talents to follow education or learning in an educational environment together with learners in general. These open a wide and non-discriminatory opportunity to all learners to get an education in regular classes regardless of their limitations or potential intelligence/talents. Several studies have suggested that teachers are an important element to the success of IEs because they interact directly with students. Teachers' attitudes impact on productivity, performance, and acceptance or rejection of inclusive education. Teachers should have positive attitudes toward students in enhancing their good interactions among them. Students who perceive their teachers have positive attitudes toward IE exhibit success in learning and have low anxiety.

An attitude is a disposition to respond favorably or unfavorably to an object, person, institution, or event. A person's attitude is the result of an evaluation of attitude stimulus. The evaluation results are based on the components of attitude; cognitive, effective, and conative. The cognitive component of attitudes expresses knowledge, opinions, beliefs, and thoughts; effective components describe feelings; and the conative component describes the willingness to behave and act to the attitude stimulus. These three components can be used to infer the tendency of one's attitude. Individuals who have a positive attitude tend to show positive actions towards perceived objects, and vice versa.

Factors that may affect teacher attitudes related to IE are the type of disabilities, gender, teaching experience, grade level taught, experience with students with Special Educational Needs (SENs), training experience, teacher beliefs and views of social politics. Teaching experience, training, and contact with students with SENs became the focus of this research because these three factors found to be the most influence on teacher attitudes. Teachers with 5 years and above teaching experience have positive attitude toward IE than teachers with experience of 6 to 11 years and above. Teachers who had interacted with SENs students had positives attitude toward IE compared to those who did not. Regarding the training experience, research indicates an increasing knowledge of IEs and students with SENs brings a change of attitude among teachers. The research also shows that well-prepared teachers have positive attitudes toward IE and students with SENs and are more willing to engage students with SENs in regular classes.

This study aims to find out how the attitude of in-service and pre-service teachers to the IE based on the contribution of those three factors. Previous research have measured factors that influence attitudes separately in which a comparison is hard to be made and a clear evidence of the interactions among these factors in order to know which factors contribute most to attitudes also unknown. In addition, most of the previous only measured single or both dimensions of attitudes. Also, studies of teacher's attitudes in Indonesia had only done at the level of elementary to high school education, yet to preschool and pre-service teachers.

 

Methods. Participants of this study are in-service teachers from preschool in IE settings and college studentas and undergraduate who in semester 6 and above, majoring in early educational and special education. Purposive sampling technique will be use to gather 300 participants (150 in-service and 150 pre-service teachers). This study is cross-sectional and non-experimental study. An attitude will be measure using Multidimensional Attitudes toward Inclusive Education Scale Indonesian Version (MATIES-IV) from Kurniawati et al. Questioner consists of 18 items with 6 items for each component in 6 scale response from STS (Strongly Disagree) to SS (Strongly Agree). MATIES-IV has good coefficient of validity (0.26 – 0.80) and all three components of attitudes have good alpha coefficient; cognitive (α = 0.77), effective (α = 0.80), conative (α = 0.81). Data will be analyzed statistically using independent t-test.

 

Results. The collected data is still on going.

 

Conclusion. This research is still in progress.

 

Added-Values. Results of this study will give wide understanding in term of teachers and pre-service attitudes, so that the appropriate interventions/training, policy, and curriculum could be created to the succeeding of IE. Keyword : inclusive education, attitude, in-service, pre-service, students with special educational needs

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