TEACHER ATTITUDES TOWARD MAINSTREAMING

At risk students are those students with special needs who require programs and services over and above those provided to the general body of students. At risk students in the United States, therefore, may be those students who are handicapped (mentally or physically), those students with limited English language proficiency, or those students from lower socioeconomic groups who are susceptible to educational risk. This research is concerned specifically with the issue of mainstreaming at risk students who are handicapped mentally or physically.

Public Law 99-457 prohibited discrimination against handicapped persons in a variety of contexts including education. In the context of education, this law requires, to the maximum extent possible, that handicapped students receive the same educational opportunities as are available to all other students. Although there are important exceptions to the rule, to a great extent, education for the handicapped student tends to be assessed according to many of the criteria previously applied to cases that involved charges of discrimination based on race or ethnic background. One implication of this approach to the assessment of educational opportunity is that the concept of separate but equal, in and of itself, is not a justifiable basis for the exclusion of handicapped students from the general classroom. Thus, in the absence of cogent and supportable reasons why the integration of

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tor and teacher attitudes toward mainstreaming, assessed these attitudes within a multidimensional context, and explored possible differences in attitudes. The research sample was comprised of elementary school principals, special education administrators, and special education teachers. The sample of 247 respondents included 38 elementary school principals, 45 special education administrators, 84 elementary school teachers, and 80 special education teachers. Male administrators in the sample outnumbered female administrators approximately two-to-one, while female teachers in the sample outnumbered male teachers approximately seven-to-one. Respondents were asked to complete a 50-item mainstreaming questionnaire developed for use in this research (Garvar-Pinhas and Schmelkin (p. 40). Factor analysis was applied to the data collected through the administration of the survey to develop subscales related to academic concerns, socioemotional concerns, administrative concerns, and teacher concerns. Discriminant analysis was applied to assess differences between the groups represented in the sample. The only serious methodological limitation of this research concerned the sample selection. The researchers identified 10 schools
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Approximate Word count = 1372
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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