Teachers’ beliefs about people with disabilities and their social situation and role

Abstract

A major barrier to the social inclusion of people with disabilities is the lack of relevant information about disability in mainstream society. Since promoting the social inclusion of people with disabilities is an educational goal in Hungarian public education, as seen in the National Curriculum and in the teacher competencies that define successful teaching, the content related to people with disabilities is included in the everyday educational system. In examining the process of professionalization of teaching, particular attention is paid to views. Teachers' views of people with disabilities can determine their attitudes towards inclusion in schools, their behaviour and the effectiveness of teaching about disability, which in turn can influence students' views and behaviour towards people with disabilities. Our research, therefore, aimed to explore teachers' views on people with disabilities and their social situations, using metaphor analysis. Our results show that the majority of teachers in the survey see people with disabilities as people who need to be cared for and for whom they feel a sense of responsibility. However, teachers' views of the social situation of people with disabilities tend to reflect exclusion, vulnerability and marginality. Thus, teachers' views of people with disabilities are inclusive at the individual level, but they perceive that inclusion of people with disabilities is not achieved at the societal level.