engleski

Student Teachers’ Perceptions of an Inclusive Future

Contemporary societies are characterized by stronger connections and influences between different cultures, opinions, and ways of seeing the world. Due to the recent migrant crisis which is affecting Europe, diversity among the population is growing and therefore social inclusion is necessary more than ever. In this changing society, future teachers need to be prepared to meet the needs of diverse students. Our study examines student teachers’ attitudes towards social inclusion, perceived attributes of information and communication technologies (ICT) usage, and perceived information literacy self-efficacy. We administered a survey to 300 future teachers studying at the graduate level within the university system in Croatia at the University of Zagreb and University of Split). The randomness of the selection process ensured a representative sample. The research study results are situated in the context of current literature on social inclusion in the modern technology society where the focus is on people’s ability to use technology in order to engage in meaningful social practices. Social inclusion is influenced by the ability to access, adapt, and create knowledge using ICT (Warschauer, 2004). A role of teacher preparation programs is to develop students’ attitudes and beliefs in order to prepare them for inclusive education. Since education is taking place in both physical and virtual environments, student teachers should be prepared for inclusion using ICT (Beacham & McIntosh, 2012). In order to understand the attitudes of student teachers towards social inclusion and technology’s role in that process, we used three validated scales with strong metric properties: Information Literacy self-efficacy (ILSE) scale (Kurbanoglu, Akkoyunlu, & Umay, 2006), th Attitudes Toward Disability and Social Inclusion (ATDSI) scale (Novo-Corti, 2010) and the Perceived Attributes of ICT (PAICT) usage scale (Usluel, Askar, & Bas, 2008). We selected the scales based on satisfactory metric properties and the alignment of the dimensional structure of the scales with our research question. The results of the statistical correlation indicate a relationship between future teachers’ attitudes towards social inclusion, perceived attributes of ICT usage, and information literacy self- efficacy.

student teachers; social inclusion attitudes; information literacy self-efficacy; attributes of ICT usage

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