Supervisors info:
Κωνσταντίνος Μυλωνάς, Καθηγητής στη Μεθοδολογία Επιστημονικής Έρευνας και Στατιστική στην Ψυχολογία του Εθνικού Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών
Σπυρίδων Τάνταρος, Καθηγητής Αναπτυξιακής Ψυχολογίας του Εθνικού Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών
Αικατερίνη Γκαρή, Καθηγήτρια στην Κοινωνική Ψυχολογία του Εθνικού Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών
Summary:
The purpose of this research was the investigation of the attitudes of Special and General Educators towards the children with special needs and the connection of these attitudes to other variables. Specifically, these variables were the values, disengagement from work, empathy, and the tendency for social desirability. The sample consisted of 188 teachers of Special and General Educators from Athens and Chania of Crete.
The kind of attitudes that a teacher develops towards his/her students can have an impact in his/her behavior towards them. Attitudes reveal the feelings, the fears and the prejudices of teachers and can influence their behavior towards their students. In this particular research, it was important to study the attitudes in relation to some other variables which are significant aspects of personality.
According to previous research, values are associated with attitudes. For this reason, it was considered appropriate to study the relationship between values and attitudes of teachers towards children with special needs. Additionally, it was useful to study the relationship between Empathy and Αttitudes, as Εmpathy is an important aspect and a big advantage for every teacher. Furthermore, disengagement from work usually tends to be an obstacle for teachers. For this reason, it was also considered important to study the relationship between disengagement from work and attitudes. Finally, it was also considered appropriate to study the relationship between tendency for social desirability and attitudes, as the variable of social desirability can easily influence the statements of the respondents and for that purpose it is an important aspect of investigation for every research tool referring to attitudes.
The tools that were used in this research were 5 and the main tool was the «Attitudes Towards Disabled Persons» (ATDP) of Yuker, Block & Younng which has been translated in Greek by Hatira & Mantziou. It was also used the VPQ (Updated of AVL, Mylonas 2005), «the disengagement from work of OLBI» (Demerouti, Barker, Vardakou, & Kantas, 2003), «the scale of empathy» (Mylonas and Gari, under construction) and the improvised questionnaire of Τendency for social desirability (Mylonas, under construction).
In the Psychometric part of this research, Principal Component Analysis was used in the questionnaire of ATDP. Four factors were emerged from PCA. These factors were «Emotional attitude», «Social attitude», «the attitude of Comparison» and the attitude of Care». These factors interpret the 46,8% of the variance. Only the factors of «Emotional and Social attitude» were used for further investigation as they had higher reliability.
The main results of this research show that the teachers of General and Special education maintain neutral attitudes towards the children with special needs. As regards the teachers of general education, a positive correlation was found between emotional attitude and empathy. As regards the teachers of special education, a positive correlation was found between emotional attitude and Aesthetic value and a negative correlation between emotional attitude and disengagement from work. Additionally, it was found a negative correlation between empathy and disengagement from work for both special and general educators.
Furthermore, through linear multiple regression, it was shown that empathy is a predictable factor for emotional attitude as regards the two groups of teachers and general teachers separately. However, as regards the special educators, it was found that aesthetic value was a predictable factor for emotional attitude.
In conclusion, the results of this research show that both Special and General educators prefer to have neutral attitudes towards children with special needs and the variable of empathy can have a positive impact on attitudes. To the contrary, the variable of disengagement from work has a negative impact on the variables of attitudes and empathy of teachers.
Keywords:
Teachers, Attitudes, Values, Disengagement from work, Tendency for social desirability
