The role of school communities 123Results
Teacher Attitudes Survey
Two hundred and one primary regular education teachers completed the Teacher
Attitudes Survey. Using SPSS, the Cronbach Alpha returned a figure of 0.842 indi-
cating good internal reliability. An initial overview of teachers’ attitudes toward
inclusion, their effectiveness in supporting students with an Autism Spectrum
Disorder, the academic climate in which they were employed, and their under-
standings of social inclusion was made by comparison of means of each of the
research constructs. Results showed that three of the constructs (attitudes toward
inclusion, academic climate, and social inclusion) returned positive mean scores
(Table 9.1). Teacher effectiveness, however, returned a mean score of 1.97, placing it
on the negative side of the scale, indicating teachers felt less positive in supporting
students with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.
The mean score for the social inclusion construct was 3.10, indicating teachers
had an overall very strong, positive response to this construct, and an awareness
of ‘The social well-being of students’ (mean 3.37) and ‘The individual social needs of
students’ (mean 3.07); this also demonstrated their recognition of the importance
of ‘Facilitating opportunities for enhancing social engagement’ (mean 2.88), and ‘Providing
socially inclusive opportunities’ (mean 3.24) for students with an Autism Spectrum
Disorder.
Table 9.1 shows a difference between the mean scores for the social inclusion
(3.10) and teacher effectiveness (1.97) constructs. A paired sample t-test was under-
taken using these two constructs to examine the difference between teachers’ per-
ceptions of their knowledge of and effectiveness in supporting students with an
Autism Spectrum Disorder and their attitude toward the social inclusion of these
students. The paired t-test returned a statistically significant difference between
these two constructs. The mean teacher effectiveness result (M = 1.09, SD = 0.60)
was statistically lower than the mean social inclusion result (M = 3.10, SD = 0.38),
t(189) = −24.99, p < 0.0001 (two-tailed). The mean difference in constructs was
1.12 with a 95 percent confidence interval ranging from −1.21 to −1.03. The eta
TABLE 9.1 Teacher Attitudes Survey construct means
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Teacher effectiveness 194 0.29 3.57 1.9794 0.60469
Attitude toward inclusion 197 0.83 4.00 2.3291 0.59867
Academic climate 196 0.40 3.80 2.4214 0.62573
Social inclusion 194 1.17 4.00 3.1091 0.38500
Valid N (listwise) 187