Treffer: Measuring preservice foreign language teachers' attitudes toward inclusive education through a newly developed scale.

The Challenge: Nowadays, it is usual to find students with special educational needs in almost every classroom. Are foreign language teachers ready to teach them? This article provides a newly developed scale to measure their perception of inclusive education, focusing on three dimensions: training, conception of diversity, and support. As a consequence of the inclusion of students with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms, there is a need to measure the attitudes of language teachers toward inclusive education. This study used an exploratory sequential mixed methods research design to validate the construct of a newly developed scale. After exploratory qualitative analysis in which 11 experts took part, the instrument was developed and administered to 952 preservice English teachers from Spain and Portugal. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis performed confirmed a three‐factor structure interpreted as: training, conception of diversity, and support. Results confirm good psychometric properties for the scale and a reliable tool to assess teacher training programs from the perspective of the teaching staff. Moreover, a preliminary analysis of the survey carried out with the Mann–Whitney U test showed statistically significant differences across countries in eight out of 17 items. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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