Abstract
Inclusive education refers to an educational approach in which all students can learn and participate in the mainstream school system. The successful implementation of inclusive practices is strongly determined by teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education and teacher training is one of several factors influencing these attitudes. Given the diversity of such programs, the present narrative review investigated the optimal design for pre-service inclusive teacher programs in terms of its duration and content delivery mode. For this, we considered and analyzed 31 studies, comprising 36 international interventions. Although most studies did not adequately report statistics to draw unequivocal conclusions, our results suggest an overall positive effect of training on pre-service teacher attitudes toward inclusive education. The effects of the duration and delivery mode of such programs are discussed from the perspective of successful training design in the light of social psychological theories and empirical findings, thus providing novel avenues for future research.
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Data Availability
This study’s design and hypotheses were preregistered. The preregistration and all data have been made publicly available at the Open Science Framework and can be accessed at https://osf.io/4fmsu/?view_only=e2985c4b44354771bc4ed89617b315ea. Portions of this study were presented at 14e Congrès International de Psychologie Sociale d’ADRIPS, Bordeaux, France (2022).
Notes
The literature search also included gray literature. However, due to the limited timeframe and difficulties contacting master’s or PhD thesis authors (along with the lack of “file drawer” studies from several contacted authors), unpublished studies were not included in the final review.
The critical analysis of primary studies included in the present review was conducted by using an adapted version of Downes et al.’s (2016) AXIS scale.
It should be noted that the inclusion of narrative review is a deviation from the pre-registered protocol. Only systematic review method was pre-enregistered in the initial version that can be found on the OSF page of the project.
To illustrate the interventions’ success rate, we reported the number and relative frequency of positive, negative, and non-significant effects. The limitations of this “vote-counting” method (Borenstein et al., 2021) are discussed in the final section.
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The present study was funded by Caisse des Dépôts within the framework of the project Programme d’Investissement d’Avenir (PIA3) “100% IDT: Inclusion, un Défi, un Territoire” (France).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Literature search and data analysis were performed by KK, AS, and FC. The first draft of manuscript was written by KK, and all authors critically revised the work. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Khamzina, K., Stanczak, A., Brasselet, C. et al. Designing Effective Pre-service Teacher Training in Inclusive Education: a Narrative Review of the Effects of Duration and Content Delivery Mode on Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Inclusive Education. Educ Psychol Rev 36, 13 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09851-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09851-8