Abstract:

Competencies for inclusive teaching play an important role in the implementation of inclusive education policy. In Croatia, the inclusive setting is predominantly associated with the placement of students with disabilities in regular classes where teachers also work with gifted students and must provide appropriate learning opportunities to both groups. Most research is focused on the competencies of teachers or students in teacher education study programs for teaching children with disabilities, and less on the competences for teaching gifted students. Also, in Croatian initial teacher education there are scarce opportunities to prepare students for teaching children with disabilities and even fewer opportunities to prepare them to work with gifted students, so we expect that students will be more critical of their competences to work with gifted students.

The main aim of the research was to examine students cognitive and emotional components of competence for inclusive teaching separately for students with disabilities and gifted students. Also, we wanted to investigate if these components are correlated and whether students differ in their assessments on these components concerning gifted children and children with disabilities.

The study included 218 participants enrolled in teacher education study programs at two departments that offer such programs in the Croatia: the Faculty of Teacher Education at the University of Rijeka and the Faculty for the Educational Sciences at the University Juraj Dobrila in Pula. Cognitive and Emotional Components of Inclusive Teaching Scale (CECITS) was modified and used to assess different components relevant for teacher self-assessed competence to teach children with disabilities and gifted children.

When participants assessed components of their ability to conduct inclusive teaching with this two specific groups of children, for both groups the relationship between the cognitive and emotional component was not established. This is a replication of previous findings obtained on children with disabilities, and the same finding has also been confirmed in this research that included gifted children. On the other hand, high positive correlations were found between students’ assessments of cognitive components regarding children with disabilities and gifted children. Also, high positive correlations were found between students assessments of emotional components regarding children with disabilities and gifted children. We also found that participants had significantly lower scores for both cognitive and emotional components when evaluating their ability to work with gifted children and higher scores when children with disabilities were in focus.

This finding reflects the content and opportunities provided by teacher education study programs in selected Croatian universities. In these study programs, the learning outcomes related to teaching students with disabilities are predominantly contained in only one compulsory course, and learning outcomes for teaching gifted students are even less represented as they are offered only to some students who choose an elective course about gifted students. The results obtained are consistent with previous research and point to the need for changes in initial teacher education.

Keywords:

Children with disabilities, Gifted children, Emotional components, Cognitive Components, Competencies.