Abstract:

One of the most urgent challenges facing education systems all over the world is how to provide quality education to every student. This means changing their structures and school culture so as to enable an approach that can better assess and respond to human diversity. It is in this context that inclusive schools, in their role as real host communities, are shaping up to be one of the most suitable models for guaranteeing not only the right to learning and participation in school life, but also equality and social justice. Bearing this in mind, the aim of our study is to identify the attitudes of pre-service infant teachers towards these types of school. To this end we were able to count on the voluntary participation of 56 students enrolled on the Degree in Infant Education at the Faculty of Education of the University of Alicante (Spain). Data were collected using a Likert-type scale designed to find out their opinions of the inclusive school. The information obtained was processed using SPPS .25 software and then used to carry out a basic descriptive study. It can be deduced from the results that, although pre-service teachers of this educational stage seem to be well-disposed towards inclusive education, they are somewhat more reticent when it comes to endorsing some of the specific characteristics that define inclusive schools, such as the presence of support teachers and students with special educational needs in the ordinary classroom. In the light of these results and with the aim of protecting the universal right to quality education for all students, it would appear that there is a definite need to take action as regards the shaping of pre-service teachers’ attitudes, giving them the necessary skills to attend to diversity from the earliest stages of their training.

Keywords:

Inclusive school, initial teacher training, attention to diversity, infant education, teacher attitudes