Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Mainstreaming in education--Iowa; Mainstreaming in education; Teachers--Attitudes; Iowa;

Abstract

With the enactment of Public Law 94-142, the Education For All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, while most educators have been influenced by the requirement to meet the needs of youngsters in the "least restrictive environment," onus of responsibility generally filters down to the classroom teachers. It was the purpose of this study to determine just what are the attitudes of secondary teachers toward integrating the mildly educationally handicapped student into the regular class. The primary question was whether exposure to the concept of mainstreaming positively influences attitudes.

The investigation involved 501 secondary teachers selected by a stratified random sampling from across the state of Iowa. They were classified into three teaching groups: regular class, special class and special education. From each category, 167 were then randomly selected in order to equally represent each teaching category.

Instrumentation was accomplished through a questionnaire which solicited educator response to 20 items relating to the integration of mildly educationally handicapped students into the secondary classroom. Analysis of variance results were obtained.

Conclusions of the study, as taken from the selected population, indicated that attitudes were significantly associated positively with teacher assignment (special education), prior contact (yes), perceived adequacy of training (adequate) and gender of the teacher (female). Degree held, years of teaching experience and community service(d) affected attitudes only insofar as they were mediated by the four more dominant factors.

When all independent variables were paired with each other in 21 conditions, no instance of significant interaction effects were discovered. All independent variables were found to be operating independently of each other in their relationship to receptivity scores.

Year of Submission

1983

Degree Name

Specialist in Education

Department

Department of Special Education

First Advisor

Thomas L. Little

Comments

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Date Original

1983

Object Description

1 PDF file (136 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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