General education classroom teachers need more training to be able to fully include students with disabilities in their classrooms. Often, general education teachers feel uncomfortable teaching students with disabilities if they haven’t been trained in how to address their specific needs.

Time and again, research has found that there is a serious need for additional training and support for classroom teachers. This issue is magnified for teachers who have students with disabilities in their class; they may already feel underprepared, and that can make them hesitant to meaningfully include students with disabilities who present their own set of teaching challenges.

Additional training can provide teachers with experience and educational techniques in working with students with disabilities and can reduce their hesitance to meaningfully engage them in their learning. Teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion of students with disabilities has also been found to improve with increased teacher preparedness and increased prior experience with students with disabilities. This is promising since a strongly held belief in inclusion is often the first step towards actively including others. Even when teachers have circumstances working against them, such as low self-efficacy, those who have received training in teaching students with disabilities still held positive attitudes toward inclusion.

These findings support the need for more extensive training and experiences working students with disabilities for general education teachers. After all, most students with disabilities in the U.S. spend more than half of their time in general education classrooms and teachers should be equipped to best serve all their students.

By Afrina Rohani, Graduate Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education.