Running Head: INCLUSIVE EDUCATION SCALES ABROAD 1

Inclusive Education Abroad: Scales That Tell Us About It

Carlos Lavin

GMU
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION SCALES ABROAD 2

Abstract

Inclusive education is a debated topic worldwide. For this reason several scales have been

created in order to measure teacher perceptions and attitudes toward inclusive education in

different countries. This review analyzes the scales on inclusive education from 2000 to 2018.

The focus of the review was to analyze which scales had a more thorough development process

and therefore can be more helpful to other researchers.

INCLUSIVE EDUCATION SCALES ABROAD 3

Inclusive Education Abroad: Scales That Tell Us About It

Teaching students with disabilities in the regular classroom is a an important topic

debated across the world. In the past few decades, this debate resulted in changing educational

policies and making regular education the standard provision for all students, including those

with special education needs (SEN) in many countries (de Boer, Timmerman, Pijl, & Minnaert,

2012). In 1994 the Salamanca Statement declared the right of people with SEN to study in

general schools, proposing a child centered pedagogy. Across the world people with disabilities

have significantly lower elementary completion rates and fewer years of education than people

without disabilities regardless of age group or country (Romero-Contreras, Garcia-Cedillo,

Forlin, & Lomelí-Hernández, 2013).

Inclusive Education (IE) is concerned with all students. It focuses on the transformation

of school cultures to (a) increase access or presence of all students, (b) enhance the school’s

acceptance of all students, (c) maximize student participation in various domains of activity,

and (d) increase the achievement of all students (Artiles, Kozleski, Dorn, & Christensen, 2006).

For the purpose of this review, we understand inclusive education as the inclusion of children

and young people with SEN, disabilities, or special needs within the general education setting

(Ewing, Monsen, & Kielblock, 2018).

Even though countries across the world have embraced the idea of inclusive education,

implementing inclusive education practices in daily school activities is difficult. To examine

these difficulties, researchers across the world created different scales to measure attitudes

and perceptions of teachers, parents and other stakeholders about inclusive education(de Boer

et al., 2012).
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The attitude of teachers toward inclusive education is highly related to successful

implementation. Teachers who hold positive and open attitudes towards creating an

environment of inclusion for all students in the classroom, were found to have been more

successful in implementing inclusive practices. It has also been found that maintaining a

positive attitude towards inclusive education was even more important than either knowledge

or skills (Costello & Boyle, 2013).

Given the range of factors that facilitate or constrain teachers’ positive attitudes about

inclusive education, the use of robust questionnaires that explore teachers’ perceptions about

inclusive education, is an effective method of capturing data (Ewing et al., 2018). Because

there are several scales to measure inclusive education, it is recommended that instead of

developing a new scale, an existing scale should be refined, revised and updated.

This review examines surveys or questionnaires of attitudes toward inclusive education

by parents or teachers outside the United States. The aim of this review is to provide a useful

resource to help researchers and practitioners identify the most appropriate questionnaire to

measure attitudes toward inclusive education by highlighting key elements of the scale

development process.

Method

Systematic literature search

As the researcher, I searched for scales and surveys that addressed inclusion through a

systematic literature search. I conducted the search using the following databases: Education

Research Complete, Academic Search Complete, ERIC, Fuente Académica, Psychological and
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Behavioral Sciences Collection and Teacher Reference. I conducted a text search for keywords

using the following search terms: “inclusive education” AND “scale” AND “International”.

The search generated 268 articles considered for review. After refining the search for

peer reviewed articles, the pool of articles reduced to 258. After the database sorted articles

that were repetitions, the sample was reduced to 137 articles. I used the following

inclusionary/exclusionary criteria to identify articles appropriate for this review:

Inclusionary criteria

 The study mentioned the use of a scale, or Likert-type question in the abstract.

 The study mentioned inclusive education in the abstract.

 The study was published between 2000 and 2018.

 The study was written in English or Spanish.

 The study created and validated a scale.

 The study was from a country other than the United States.

Exclusionary criteria

 The study did not report on the scale properties.

 The study used a scale validated on a previous study.

 The paper was not written in English or Spanish.

I screened the titles for eligibility (titles including the words inclusion or inclusive

education), which resulted in excluding of 74 studies, leaving 63 articles to review. Following

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this stage, I reviewed the abstracts and compared them to the inclusion and exclusion criteria,

and eliminated 23 more articles. For the 40 studies left for review, I read the full texts of these

40 articles and conducted a more detailed screening. I discarded another 24 articles because

they used a previously validated scale, leaving 16 articles to review. I removed two articles

because they did not include clear methods for validating their scales. Finally, I removed two

more articles that did not measure the perceptions of teachers, or pre service teachers or

educators For this paper I reviewed the remaining 12 studies on international inclusive

education.

Results

The table below summarizes findings from each of the different scales (table 1). It is

important to note that several scales used a 4 point Likert-scale to gauge the perceptions of

their sample (Forlin, Earle, Loreman, & Sharma, 2011; Hsieh, Hsieh, Ostrosky, & McCollum,

2012; Loreman, Earle, Sharma, & Forlin, 2007).

Although there is ongoing debate on whether a 4 point scale or a 5 point scale provides

more reliable results, both sides make strong cases for why it is valid, and why it is not (Tsang,

2012). Through this review, I found Loreman et al. (2007) scale SACIE, and Forlin et at. (2011)

revised version SACIE-R, to be the most prominent scales used to measure teacher perception

about inclusive education around the world (Ahsan, Deppeler, & Sharma, 2013; Main,

Chambers, & Sarah, 2016; Murdaca, Oliva, & Costa, 2018; Oswald & Swart, 2011; Romero-

Contreras et al., 2013; Savolainen, Engelbrecht, Nel, & Malinen, 2012). Another thing to note

about the SACIE scale is that their sample was gathered from different countries. It included
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Table 1. Scales Developed to Measure Perceptions of Inclusive Education Internationally

Reliability
Number (internal
Author(s) Date Country Scale Name Sample of items Scale consistency)
Ahmed, M 2013 Bangladesh Perceived school support for 708 primary school 14 5 point .86
Inclusive Education (PSSIE) teachers
Bailey, J 2004 Australia Principal’s Attitudes Toward 639 school principals 24 5 point .92
Inclusive Education (PATIE)
Caputo, A., & Langher, V. 2015 Italy Collaboration and Support for 276 special education 12 5 point .876
Inclusive Teaching (CSIT) teachers
Deng, M., Wang, S., Guan, W. & 2017 China Inclusive Teachers 515 teachers 18 5 point .88
Wang, Y. Competency Questionnaire
(ITCQ)
Forlin, C., Earle, C., Loreman, T., & 2011 Hong Kong, Sentiments, Attitudes, and 542 pre service teachers 15 4 point .85
Sharma, U. Canada, India, and Concerns about Inclusive
Unites States Education Revised (SACIE-R)
Hsieh, W., Hsieh, C., Ostrosky, M., 2012 Taiwan First Grade Teachers 321 first grade teachers 20 4 point .87
& McCollum, J. Perception of Inclusive
Education
Loreman, T., Earle, C., Sharma, U., 2007 Australia, Canada, Sentiments, Attitudes, and 996 pre service teachers 19 4 point .83
& Forlin, C. Singapore, Hong Concerns about Inclusive
Kong Education (SACIE)
Mahat, M. 2008 Australia Multidimensional Attitudes 115 teachers 18 6 point .77-.91
toward Inclusive Education
Scale (MATIES)
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Table 1. Scales Developed to Measure Perceptions of Inclusive Education Internationally

Reliability
Number (internal
Author(s) Date Country Scale Name Sample of items Scale consistency)
Paju, B., Räty, L., Pirttimaa, R., & 2016 Finland Perceptions toward teaching 187 teachers admin & 18 5 point .92-.94
Kontu, E. SEN students aids
Roy, A., Guay, F., & Valois, P. 2013 Canada Differentiated Instruction 125 elementary teachers 12 5 point .70-.86
Scale (DIS)
Sharma, U., Loreman, T., & Forlin, 2012 Canada, Australia, Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive 609 pre service teachers 18 6 point .80
C. Hong Kong, India Practices (TEIP)

Wang, Y., Mu, G. M., Wang, Z., 2015 China Classroom Support 1703 teachers 24 5 point .94
Deng, M., Cheng, L. & Wang, H.
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teachers from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The SACIE-R included teachers

from Canada, India, Hong Kong and the United States.

Although most of the scales were validated through factor analyses, Sharma, Loreman,

and Forlin (2012), Roy, Guay, and Valois, (2013), and Ahmmed (2013) only performed an

exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Two studies, Hsieh et al. (2012) and Paju, Räty, Pirttimaa, a

Kontu (2016) did not include any information on whether or not they performed a factor

analysis. The rest of the studies performed EFA and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). This is

important for two reasons.

1. Their sample needed to be larger to divide into EFA and CFA, and

2. Their results confirm a particular pattern of relationships predicted on the basis of

previous results (DeVellis, 2017).

Finally, one other big difference between the scales was the sample size used. DeVellis

(2007) explains that size does matter depending on the number of items on your scale. He

explains that if the sample does not include at least 300 participants, it is important to adopt

the “at least 5 participants per item” rule (p.203). In this sense, Wang et al., (2015) has the

largest sample. They divided into two groups in two groups. With the first groups’ results they

performed an EFA and with the second one, they conducted a CFA. Even when the sample was

divided in two, each group had more participants than almost any other study in the review.

The most comprehensive development of a scale was performed by Forlin et al. (2011)

when they revised the Sentiments, Attitudes, and Concerns about Inclusive (SACIE) scale. Their

review consisted on a 4 stage process, while Hsieh et al. (2012), only mention adapting some

questions from other questionnaires, using experts, and translating them to Chinese.
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Discussion

This review analyzed scales that measure perceptions about inclusive education from

educators from 2000 to 2018. Only original scales were included in the review. Several scales

were developed using thorough measures and following the steps Devellis (2017) mentions in

his book. Using experts to eliminate items before it goes out for preliminary findings is essential

if one wants to avoid redundancy and confusion. Except for Wang et al. (2015), and Paju et al.

(2016), all other scales were reviewed by an expert panel. The scale developed by Weng et al.

(2015) had the most participants, however they did not use experts to analyze their questions

first hand. As with the differences in definition of inclusive education between the United

States and other countries around the world, it may be interesting to analyze the manuscript

guidelines to different international journals. It may be that some of these scales did in fact

include the input from experts in the field, but due to limited space they chose to not report on

that. On the other hand, for those scales that did not perform or include an EFA, it is hard as a

consumer to understand how they decided which items were important, and which ones they

could have eliminated and still gotten similar results. One thing that all scales reported on was

their reliability or internal consistency. This is important especially for those that did not include

a detailed description on how they created the scale. All the scales and their different factors

were within the acceptable alpha range of .70 to.95.

Conclusion

This review analyzed the field of international inclusive education in order to find scales

that measure teacher perception on inclusive education. Out of the 12 scales, Forlin et al.
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION SCALES ABROAD 11

(2011) had the most detailed explanation on how it was validated. In the end however, it is the

researcher that must choose which scale measures the construct they are trying to understand

the best. Although this list attempted to be expansive, due to different search engine

logarithms, it may be that there are other studies that may be of importance. The review of

inclusive education scales by Ewing et al. (2018) provides a different point of view. While this

review focused on different aspects of each scale were developed, Ewing et al. (2018) review

the different domains each questionnaire measures.

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