Teachers' Attitudes towards Integrating Students with Disabilities with their Peers in Salfit Governorate Schools

Abstract

This study aims to examinethe teachers' attitudes towards the integration of students with disabilities with their peers in the governmental schools of Salfit Governorate,and also to recognizethe level of their acceptance of this integration processon the basis of some variables: (gender, academic qualification, years of experience, marital status, and the existence of a student with disability in the teacher's family). For achieving the studyobjectives, the researcher used the analytical descriptive approach, and she developed a questionnaire which included (45) paragraphsdistributed into three fields. The first field: the experiences and training of teachers; the second field: the attitudes towards the circumstances and the environment which support the integration of people with disabilities; the third field: the attitudes towards the social and psychological aspects of dealing with people with disabilities and their families. The study was applied to a stratified random sampleconsists of (200) male and female teachers representing (52.3%) of the study population which consists of (382) male and female teachers of the lower primary stage at thegovernmental schools of Salfit Governorate, according to the statisticsof the Directorate of Education. After questionnaires were collected, they were statistically processed by using arithmetic means, percentages and standard deviations as well as level of significance. The study concluded thatthe total degree of teachers' responses to all paragraphs of the questionnaire was positive; as the percentage of participants’ responses to these paragraphs was (66.4%), and there were no statistically significant differences in the teachers' attitudes towards the integration of students with disabilities with their peers in governmental schools to be attributed to the variables of academic qualification and years of experience, as well as the existence of a student with disability in the teacher’s family. The findings indicated that there are differences in teachers' attitudes towards the integration of students with disabilities with their peers in the governmental schools of Salfit Governorateto be attributed to the gendervariable; as differences were in favor of females. Furthermore, the findings indicated that there are differences in teachers' attitudes towards the integration of students with disabilities with their peers in the governmental schools of Salfit Governorate to be attributed to marital status variable, and the differences were in favor of the “married” category. Based on discussing these findings, the researcher recommended to carry out further studies on the philosophy of integration, preparing and qualifying teachers in advance with regards tothe integration process, providing special resource rooms in the schools for students with disabilities, as well as increasing incentives for teachers working in the field of education for people with disabilities.