Fostering Social Inclusion and Justice: Barbadian Students' Attitudes Toward Peers With Disabilities

• In Event: 46.086 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 46.086-30 - Access, Equity, and Inclusion: Interrupting Normalized Discourses of Exclusion

Abstract

The purpose of this quantitative research is to investigate how regular education students’ attitudes either promotes or hinders the promotion of justice and social inclusion of peers with disabilities in Barbados.Findings support mostly positive attitudes overall, but, there is a contradiction between students’ scores on the affective, cognitive and behavioural sub-scales of the Chedoke McMasters Attitude Towards Children with Handicap Scale (CATCH). Given the ambivalence expressed by students in how they think about disability, education researchers must partner with schools to make a concerted effort to intervene and change the thinking of our students to create a more socially just and welcoming school environment. Other findings are discussed in the paper

Author

• Stacey Natasha Jillian Blackman, University of the West Indies