PhD Ceremony Ms. F.Kurniawati: Teachers’ attitudes, knowledge, and teaching strategies towards students with special educational needs in primary inclusive education in Indonesia

Nowadays, the inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN) in regular education (known as inclusive education) should ensure the rights to ‘education for all’ and is a global trend.  Following this international trend, inclusive education was formally introduced into the Indonesian educational system in 2003. Teachers have been found to play a central role in the success of implementing inclusive education. Attitude, knowledge about SEN, and teaching strategies are seen as prerequisites for teachers to accommodate students with SEN. An evaluation of the implementation of inclusive education in Indonesia, however, found the following factors which challenge its success, namely: 1) limited and varied understanding of teachers of the concept of inclusive education and 2) very low ability of teachers to educate students with SEN. Therefore, the general aim of this study was to obtain more knowledge about attitudes, knowledge about SEN, and teaching strategies of teachers in regular primary schools in Indonesia and to improve these three factors by means of a teacher training program.

The study reveals that in general, teachers do not have positive attitudes towards the inclusion of students with SEN. They also hardly use effective teaching strategies in daily practice. By means of an intervention study, an attempt was made to improve teachers’ attitudes, and knowledge about SEN and about teaching strategies. The training program showed to have positive short-term effects on most dependent variables (attitudes, knowledge about SEN and about teaching strategies) with medium to large effect sizes.