[ attitudes of fifth level students' elementary schools toward peers with disabilities and related factors]

ABSTRACT

Inclusive education tries to enhance education of students with disabilities among regular students. The attitude of regular students toward peers with disabilities is an important challenge for inclusive education. This study aims at exploring the attitudes of fifth level students at elementary schools toward peers with disabilities. Hence, 300 fifth level students were selected at elementary schools affiliated to 10 districts of education organization in Tehran in academic year 2010-2011. "The children attitude toward people with disabilities questionnaire" designed by Kamali and solimani was utilized to determine the participant's attitudes. Correlation coefficient was detected as 0.73 which shows a high reliability of the questionnaire. Also, this study explored the effect of friendship with people with disabilities and demographic variables on student's attitudes to peers with disabilities. Approximately, half of participants had negative attitudes and the other half had positive attitudes toward peers with disabilities [The negative attitudes were a little more than the positive attitudes]. There weren't significant differences between the students' attitudes and demographic variables including sex, job and parents' studies. Also from three switch under examination for friendship and fellowship variables including having handicaped friends, talking to handicaped people and friendship to feature of handicaped people, only having handicaped friends had a significant difference with attitudes of students [P=0.045]. The findings showed having friends with disabilities leads to attitude improvement towards them. This study highlights that communication experience and friendship with students with disabilities can effect on attitudes toward them. Limitations of this study indicate the necessity of conducting further studies especially appropriate interventions to attitude improvement.