Attitudes Toward Inclusion and Benefits Perceived by Families in Schools with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Cecilia Simón, Gabriel Martínez-Rico, R A McWilliam and 1 others
PMID 35461465WHAT IT FOUND
Families of children with special needs in inclusive schools held more positive attitudes and saw more benefits from including students with autism than families of children without special needs.
School collaboration and teacher satisfaction were linked to more positive views.
Key findings
01Families of children with special needs had more positive attitudes toward including students with autism spectrum disorder than families of children without special needs.
02Families of children with special needs also perceived greater benefits of inclusion for classmates and for the school and teachers.
03Greater collaboration with the school was associated with more positive attitudes and perceived benefits, and greater satisfaction with the teacher was associated with more positive attitudes.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The schools had already made inclusion and continuous assessment an important topic in their educational project, so the results may not apply to schools without that commitment. Families volunteered and reported their own attitudes and perceptions, so the study does not show what happened in classrooms or how children were affected. The behaviour subscale of the attitude questionnaire had low reliability, so its specific results were not discussed. Attitude and benefit scores were already high, creating a ceiling effect that made differences hard to detect. Many demographic values were missing, including child gender and parent information, so the sample description is incomplete.
Declared interests
Funded by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that inclusive education improves outcomes for children with autism. The study measured families' attitudes and perceived benefits, not child outcomes, and the schools were already committed to inclusion.