Changing teachers’ social attitudes toward inclusion: transformation together with students

Abstract

Educational trainings for inclusive education usually deal with technical and conceptual  aspects. It happens that teacher’s personal variables, like social attitudes, are decisive in the inclusive educational process. In this article, the effects of an innovative intervention are evaluated. 52 Elementary School teachers from two public schools in medium city  took  part in a training to be qualified to apply an informative program about disabilities and inclusion to their students using pedagogical and ludic strategies whose purpose was to change their social attitudes toward inclusion. Social attitudes of all teachers were evaluated using Escala Likert de Atitudes Sociais em relação à Inclusão (Likert Scale of Social Attitudes toward Inclusion). The evaluations were made in three proper moments during the experiment. The training strategy was effective, since the teachers changed their own social attitudes while they are involved in the attempt to change their students' social attitudes, becoming more favourable to the inclusion.