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Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 535–542

Contents lists avai

Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ tate

Preparing teachers for inclusive classrooms

Anne Jordan a,*, Eileen Schwartz a, Donna McGhie-Richmond b,1

a Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1V6b Educational Psychology & Leadership Studies, University of Victoria, A555, MacLaurin Bldg., P.O. Box 3010, Victoria, B.C., Canada V8W 3N4

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 27 July 2008Received in revised form28 October 2008Accepted 4 February 2009

Keywords:Teacher opinionsTeaching skillsTeacher effectivenessSpecial needs studentsInclusive schoolsMainstreamingElementary

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 416 978 0067; faxE-mail addresses: ajordan@oise.utoronto.ca (A. Jo

s.com (E. Schwartz), donnamr@uvic.ca (D. McGhie-Ri1 Tel.: þ1 250 721 7817; fax: þ1 250 721 6190.

0742-051X/$ – see front matter Crown Copyright � 2doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.02.010

a b s t r a c t

Effective teaching skills consist of high levels of student engagement based on good classroom and timemanagement skills; the ability to scaffold learning that is adapted to students’ current levels of under-standing; cognitively engaging students in higher-order thinking; and encouraging and supportingsuccess. The research reported here suggests that in elementary classrooms, effective teaching skills areeffective for all students, both with and without special education needs.Drawing on a research programme extending over nearly two decades, we make the case that effectiveinclusionary practices, and therefore overall effective teaching, depend in part on the beliefs of teachersabout the nature of disability, and about their roles and responsibilities in working with students withspecial education needs. Elementary classroom teachers who believe students with special needs aretheir responsibility tend to be more effective overall with all of their students.We provide evidence to suggest that teachers’ beliefs about disability and about their responsibilities fortheir students with disabilities and special educational needs may be part of a broader set of attitudesand beliefs about the nature of ability and about the nature of knowledge, knowing and how learningproceeds; that is, epistemological beliefs.The implications for these findings are considerable for teacher training and development. Little isknown about how skills for effective inclusion are developed, or about how changes in teachers’ beliefsabout disability, ability and their epistemological beliefs may be reflected in changes in their practices.The literature on these topics is examined and implications drawn for teacher preparation for inclusiveclassrooms.

Crown Copyright � 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

There is a popular opinion among regular classroom and subjectteachers that inclusion of students with special needs in theirclasses is a policy doomed to fail. The complaints about the policyinclude; students with special education needs detract fromteachers’ instructional time with students who are more likely toachieve, teaching students with special needs requires specializedteaching skills, and teachers are not trained to deliver the special-ized instruction that students with special education needs require.

Despite these opinions evidence suggests the contrary. Booth,Ainscow, Black-Hawkins, Vaughan, and Shaw (2000) and Kalam-bouka, Farrell, Dyson, and Kaplan (2005) provide evidence thatstudents with special education needs included in the generaleducation classroom consistently benefit from such settingscompared to students in segregated and withdrawal settings. Ina study of 11,000 students in the United States, Blackorby, Wagner,

: þ1 416 926 4744.rdan), eileenschwartz@roger-chmond).

009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All

Cameto, Davies, Levine, and Newman (2005) report that studentswith disabilities (special education needs) who spend more time inregular classrooms have higher scores on achievement tests, areabsent less, and perform closer to grade level than their peers whoare withdrawn for instruction. At the secondary level, Blackorbyet al. (2005) corroborate the findings of Wagner, Newman, Cameto,and Levine (2003) that students with disabilities in inclusivesettings perform closer to grade level on standards-basedachievement tests than their more segregated peers. Overall,students with disabilities performed less well on achievement teststhan those without disabilities. Some subgroups of students clusterat the low end of the achievement spectrum, such as those withlearning and sensory disabilities, cognitive disabilities and autism.Even so, students with disabilities in inclusive settingsoutperformed their segregated peers with disabilities.

The performance of students without special education needsmay even be slightly enhanced in classes where students withspecial education needs are included. Demeris, Childs, and Jordan(2007) concluded that the number of students with special needsincluded in Grade 3 classrooms has no negative influence on the

rights reserved.

A. Jordan et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 535–542536

provincial test achievement scores of the students without specialeducation needs. Indeed the presence of students with specialneeds might be related to slightly improved scores of the rest ofthe class.

In the U.K., Dyson, Farrell, Polat, Hutcheson, and Gallannaugh(2004) found that schools that are effective in inclusion developunique ways to adapt to their local communities. Dyson, Polat, andFarrell (2004) suggest that effective schools develop an ‘‘ecology ofinclusion’’ (p. 14). Florian and Rouse (2001) note that, when schoolshave access to a variety of supports and teaching strategies, theycan be effective both in inclusion and in sustaining high levels ofstudent achievement.

With such evidence, why are teachers so reluctant to includestudents with special education needs in their general educationclassrooms? Could it be based in part on a misunderstanding of theroles of teachers in inclusive settings? The evidence in favour ofinclusion challenges at least one of the opinions commonly held byteachers; that inclusion detracts from the time available to teachersto instruct their students without special education needs. Ineffective inclusive classrooms, teachers may generate moreinstructional time than those in less effective classrooms (Jordan &Stanovich, 2001; Jordan, Lindsay, & Stanovich, 1997). Teachers’ fearthat they may not have the specialized knowledge and skills towork with students with special education needs in regular(general education) classrooms may also be a cause of reluctance toaccept inclusion. However, we have suggested that specializedskills for such students may not be crucial for effective inclusion.Teachers who are effective overall with all their students are alsomore likely to be skilled in inclusive practices (Stanovich & Jordan,1999, 2000, 2002).

In this paper, we make the case that effective inclusion is akin toeffective teaching practices overall, and that enhancing inclusivepractices will benefit all students. We support our case by drawingon research conducted in general education elementary classroomsduring the past 16 years, in the Supporting Effective Teaching (SET)research programme. The research programme consists of a seriesof studies that examine the factors contributing to effectiveteaching in inclusive elementary regular (general education)classrooms.

Second, we examine teachers’ beliefs about their roles andresponsibilities in working with students with special educationneeds included in their classes. Drawing on our work withelementary classroom teachers, we demonstrate the link betweenteacher beliefs that they either have or do not have responsibilitiesfor instructing students with special education needs in theirclassrooms and the overall quality of their teaching practices.Elementary classroom teachers who believe students with specialneeds are their responsibility tend to be more effective overall withall their students.

Third, we make the case that teacher beliefs about the natureof disability and their responsibilities for inclusion may be partof a broader set of assumptions, attitudes and beliefs about thenature of ability, and beliefs about knowledge, knowing and howlearning proceeds; i.e., epistemological beliefs. We presentevidence to show the relationship between teachers’ beliefsabout their roles with students with special education needs andtheir more broadly-held epistemological beliefs. If this is thecase, then the relationship between inclusive practices andeffective teaching may depend in part on a cluster of teachers’underlying epistemological beliefs about the nature of ability, ofknowing and knowledge, the process of acquiring knowledge,and therefore about the relationship between teaching andlearning.

If effective teachers subscribe to inclusion then it follows that itis important to prepare teachers for inclusive settings, not only for

the benefit of students with special education needs but for all theirstudents. In the final section, we examine what is known about thepreparation of teachers for including students with special educa-tion needs in their classrooms. We ask what might be needed inorder to increase the effectiveness of teaching practices throughchanging teachers’ beliefs about their roles and responsibilitiesfor the range of students in their classes, and changing theirepistemological beliefs.

1. Effective inclusion is effective for all students

We have argued that effective teaching is effective interventionfor all students (Jordan & Stanovich, 2000/2004). The basis for thisassertion is a model of the characteristics of teachers in elementaryschools that espouse a philosophy of inclusion. The model (Fig. 1)proposes that the school norm (the expectations of the principaland staff) about inclusion in the school, individual teachers’ beliefsabout their roles and responsibilities for including students withspecial education needs, and the teachers’ sense of teachingefficacy predict teaching practices, which in turn predict studentoutcomes. Over the course of studies in the Supporting EffectiveTeaching (SET) project, we examined various aspects of this model.Earlier findings that examined each component of the 1994 modelhave been reported elsewhere (Jordan & Stanovich, 2003, 2004;Stanovich & Jordan, 1998a, Stanovich, Jordan, & Perot, 1998). Two ofthe components of the model, teacher beliefs and teaching prac-tices, have recently been extended through a series of studies thatare reported here (Fig. 2).

Our primary measure of teachers’ practices is a third-partyobservation tool: the Classroom Observation Scale (COS; Jordan &Stanovich, 2004; McGhie-Richmond, Underwood, & Jordan, 2007;Stanovich, 1994; Stanovich & Jordan, 1998a). This observationtakes place during a half day of core lessons (i.e., language arts,mathematics, science) in the regular classroom when students withspecial educational needs are present. The scale consists of fourparts:

1. Total COS score. Trained observers rate teachers on 32 itemsbased on Englert, Tarrant, and Mariage’s (1992) checklist ofeffective teaching practices in inclusive classrooms. The itemscover time management, classroom management and lessonpresentation. While most items are derived from process-product research, there are items that address constructivistteaching, and scaffolding instruction.

2. Predominant teaching style. The observers rate the teachers’practices on a 7-point scale of the type of teacher–studentinstructional interaction during the seatwork part of a lesson.One or more students without exceptional learning needs areobserved in order to rate the level of teacher–student interac-tion. Teachers are not aware of which students are beingmonitored. Non-academic interactions between the teacherand student such as managerial and disciplinary interactionsare not coded. The lowest score on the scale is ‘no observedinteraction’ with the students. Midpoints include ‘teacherchecks student work and moves on’ and ‘teacher transmits’instructions or questions. At the top rating, teachers engagestudents in dialogue that extends the students’ thinking at highlevels of cognitive engagement. This scale proves to be a shortversion of the student engagement variable, correlating with it(r (34)¼ .61, p< .01, Glenn, 2007).

3. Interaction with a student with a disability. Using the same7-point scale as the scale of Predominant Teaching Style,observers rate the teachers’ instructional interaction with onestudent who has been formally designated as havinga disability. Again the teacher is not told which student is being

.504

.321

.169

SCHOOL NORM:

Administrator beliefs aboutstaff responsibility forstudents with special needs

TEACHER P-I BELIEFS:

Nature of disabilityRole and responsibilitiesfor students withdisabilities

TEACHERS' PRACTICES:

Classroom Observation Scaletotal score

STUDENT OUTCOMES:

Student academic self concept,Social closeness

Teacher Efficacy

Fig. 1. Elements of the model of teacher characteristics for effective inclusion (Stanovich, 1994; Stanovich & Jordan, 1998a, 1998b) (simultaneous regression Beta weights predictingteacher practices indicated).

A. Jordan et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 535–542 537

monitored. This scale is a measure of the extent to whicha student receives instruction geared to his or her needs,a measure that we think may reflect the inclusivity of theteachers’ practices.

4. Interaction with a student at risk. This scale uses the same7-point scale as Predominant Teaching Style and Interactionwith a Student with a Disability. However, the studentobserved is one who is designated by the teacher as being at-risk, with the potential to fail the grade. This measure indicatesthe extent to which students at-risk are receiving instructiongeared to their needs, and therefore the extent to which theteacher attends to the needs of students whose slide intodifficulties might be prevented.

5. Student engagement. A discriminant functions analysis of thescores of 63 teachers on the 32 items of the COS (McGhie-Richmond et al., 2007) showed that five items discriminatedthe highest scoring from mid and lowest scoring teachers.These items collectively addressed how teachers engaged alltheir students in the lesson; telling students what to expect,gaining student attention, monitoring lesson transitions, andmaintaining high student response rates in teacher-led

Teacher beliefs aboutAbility

(The Entity-Incrementfactor of the BLTQ)

Teacher beliefs aboutDisability

(Pathognomonic-Interventionist Interview

Scores)

Fig. 2. Recent additions to the beliefs and practice components of

activities. These 5 items became the student engagement sub-score in subsequent studies.

The COS was used as the observation tool of the teachingpractices of elementary teachers in general education classroomsfrom grades kindergarten to 8. Previously, we had noted thatteachers vary widely on the amount of instructional time theyallocate to instruction (Jordan, Lindsay, & Stanovich, 1997). Thosewho allocate more instructional time demonstrate better classroomand time management routines and are able to focus on individualstudents and groups while the rest of their class is engaged withgroup and seatwork. They also use their instructional time todifferent ends. Teachers with high scores on the COS measure aredistinguishable from lower scoring teachers in their skills ofengaging students in learning (McGhie-Richmond et al., 2007).They focus their questioning and instructional interactions to elicithigher-order thinking, and they devote considerably more time toall their students, including those with special needs, than teacherswho are less effective (Jordan, Lindsay, & Stanovich, 1997). In effect,the most effective teachers are also the most efficient in termsof conserving and using time to deliver instruction to the majority

Teacher reported practices(Factors in the BLTQ):

Intrinsic / Extrinsic motivationStudent centred methodsTeacher directed learning

Observed Teaching PracticesClassroom Observation Scale – (COS

total score)Predominant teaching style

Teacher Interaction with a studentwith a disability / at-risk

Student engagement

the model of teacher characteristics in inclusive classrooms.

A. Jordan et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 535–542538

of their students and in providing higher quality instruction. Theyuse this time more effectively to engage students in learning.Consequently, students both with and without special needsreceive more instructional time from their teachers, often duringwork in small groups and individually, and instruction that isgeared to their individual needs.

2. Teachers who believe students with special needs are theirresponsibility tend to be more effective overall with all theirstudents

Teachers differ in their beliefs about their roles and responsi-bilities for students with special education needs included in theirclasses. In the SET project model, teacher beliefs were predicted toinfluence teaching practices (Fig. 1).

The measurement of teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about theirstudents and about how best to teach them is difficult and fraughtwith problems of definition, validity and reliability (Clarebout, Elen,Luyten, & Bamps, 2001; Schommer-Aikins, 2004). Methodologicallybeliefs must be inferred from what individuals say, intend to do,and do (Pajares, 1992). Hofer and Pintrich (1997) propose thatseveral sources of evidence of intention or decision to act, of actionand of related behaviours are needed if the inferences drawn aboutbeliefs are to be reliable and valid.

In order to examine teachers’ beliefs about student ability anddisability in the SET project and how these related to the decisionsthey made and to their practices, several sources of data werecollected. Our purpose was to look for clusters of beliefs that couldbe related to teachers’ observed and described practices. Theprimary tool for measuring teachers’ beliefs about student disabilityand about their responsibility for working with students withdisabilities is the Pathognomonic–Interventionist (P–I) Interview,an individual one-on-one interview that avoids the transparency ofstandard paper and pencil measures (Kagan, 1992). ‘Pathogno-monic’ (P) perspectives focus on the pathological characteristics ofthe learner, while ‘interventionist’ (I) perspectives consider thelearner in terms of how they best learn (Jordan & Stanovich, 2004).Requested to relate their work over the preceding school year withtwo students with special education needs, teachers revealeda range of beliefs about disability as well as understandings of theirroles and responsibilities for students with special education needs,and a diversity of practices. Teachers described in chronologicalsequence the steps they have taken over a school year, in themanner of a narrative story. According to Engel (1993), during theirretelling, teachers reconstruct their recalled experiences to reflecttheir beliefs about their roles and responsibilities in meeting theneeds of their students with special education needs. They reporttheir students’ characteristics, the decisions they made, theirintentions and reasons for doing so, and their judgements about theresults, in the context of their broader beliefs (Polkinghorne, 1988).The interviewer uses question probes to elicit the teachers’justifications for the decisions they made, and their rationale forwhat they believed and how they acted.

Those teachers with the more pathognomonic perspectives tendto attribute to their students with special education needs internal,fixed and unreachable characteristics that are beyond the teachers’expertise and therefore beyond their help. As a result, theseteachers frequently refer such students for support outside theclassroom, expect parents to undertake the majority of classroomlearning as an after-school remedial ‘catch up’ activity, and seeklittle information from and do not collaborate with parents,teachers and professionals who also work with their students withspecial needs. In effect, they tend to blame the students and theirfamilies for failure to learn, and they do not see themselves asresponsible for the students’ progress. In contrast, teachers who

express the view that they have responsibility for instructing alltheir students also express Interventionist beliefs that they areresponsible for reducing barriers to access for those students withdisabilities and special needs. This involves adapting theirinstruction to allow students to participate, accommodating howstudents respond, and providing multiple opportunities forstudents to learn in a variety of ways (Jordan & Stanovich, 2003;White, 2007). Teachers with Interventionist beliefs also seek moreinformation about their students from parents and colleagues,work more collaboratively with teaching assistants and resourceteachers and are more systematic about keep track of studentprogress.

The P–I Interviews are tape-recorded, transcribed and scoredalong a dimension of beliefs ranging from ‘pathognomonic’ (P) to‘interventionist’ (I) by independent scorers using 20 scoringcriteria. The P–I interview has been reported in several studies,with good internal construct validity and reliability among scorers(Jordan & Stanovich, 2003). The inter-rater reliability for scoring theP–I interview ranged from .88 (Jordan et al., 1997) to .91 (McGee,2001, 2004). Stanovich and Jordan (1998a) reported a Cronbach’sa of .89, and the mean Pearson correlation between interviewtopics of .53. A principal components analysis of the scores on the20 criteria yielded a first component that accounted for 36.9% of thevariance. About 25% of general education classroom teachers in ourstudies held pathognomonic beliefs, while 20% held interventionistbeliefs. Approximately 55% of the teachers held beliefs that hadcharacteristics of both ends of the spectrum and that tended tovacillate between them. These ‘‘mid-range’’ beliefs are at timesindicative of teachers’ struggles to resolve the paradox betweentheir beliefs and the policies and procedures that favoured one orthe other end of the P–I continuum.

Interesting relationships emerge when patterns of P–I beliefsare mapped onto teachers’ practices, as observed in their generaleducation classrooms and as described by the teachers themselvesin the P–I interviews. Stanovich and Jordan (1998a) reported thatthe P–I beliefs dimension of 32 elementary classroom teacherscorrelated positively with scores on their total scores on theClassroom Observation Scale (Beta¼ .321, Fig. 1). In Glenn’s (2007)study of 33 teachers (Jordan et al., in press) there was a strongpositive association between overall teaching practices (total COSscores) and Predominant Teaching Style, (r (32)¼ .766, p< .01).That is, teachers’ classroom management, time management, andlesson presentation skills were significantly related to theirindividual interactions with students both with and withoutdisabilities in their classrooms. Examination of the relationshipbetween Student Engagement and Predominant Teaching Style alsorevealed a strong positive correlation, (r (32)¼ .595, p< .01).Predominant Teaching Style with students overall and Interactionwith a Student with a Disability were correlated with overall COSscores (r (31)¼ .766, p< .01; r (30)¼ .372, p< .05).

These findings suggest that teachers who believe that it is theirresponsibility to instruct students with special education needs intheir inclusive classes are more effective overall with all theirstudents and are also more effective in working individually withstudents with special education needs. The overall picture suggeststhat, with the exception of the students at-risk (the measure ofTeacher Interaction with a Student at Risk), effective teachers whoscore high on the COS total score, and the Student engagementsub-score also score high on Predominant Teaching Style, themeasure of dialogical interactions with students that extends theircognitive understanding of the lesson. A weaker but still significantrelationship also exists with the measure of Teacher Interactionwith a Student with a Disability, the extent to which teachersengage in cognitively extending interactions with students withspecial education needs (r (33)¼ .38, p< .05). The lack of similar

A. Jordan et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 535–542 539

findings for students at risk but not designated as exceptional istroublesome, however, and seems to replicate other studies inwhich students at risk seem to miss out on teacher attention.

3. Teacher beliefs about disability and their responsibilitiesfor their students with special needs may be part of broadersets of assumptions, attitudes and beliefs about ability andthe nature of knowledge and knowing

3.1. Ability

Several researchers have documented how teachers’ theories ofknowledge and of how students acquire knowledge may befundamental components of their instructional planning anddelivery (Kagan, 1992; Pajares, 1992; Richardson, 1996). Kaganwrites:

The more one reads studies of teacher belief, the more stronglyone suspects that this piebald form of personal knowledge liesat the very heart of teaching. Teacher belief appears to arise outof the exigencies inherent in classroom teaching, it may be theclearest measure of a teacher’s professional growth, and itappears to be instrumental in determining the quality of inter-action one finds among the teachers in a given school (p. 85).

Our findings led us to speculate whether differences in teachers’P–I beliefs about their responsibilities for students with specialeducation needs might be more broadly reflecting their beliefsabout the nature of ability and how knowledge is acquired in alltheir students. To measure teachers’ beliefs about ability, Glenn(2007) developed the Beliefs about Teaching and Learning Ques-tionnaire (BLTQ), adapting it from the Beliefs about MathematicsScale developed by Stipek, Givvin, Salmon, and MacGyvers (2001).Stipek et al. had identified a factor that discriminated teachers ontheir beliefs about whether ability (in mathematics) was a fixed andstable trait or entity (E) that was internal to a learner, or malleableand flexible, amenable to learning that would result in incremental(I) gains. Stipek et al’s ‘Entity–Increment’ (E–I) factor for mathe-matical ability held similarities to teachers’ P–I beliefs aboutdisability, for example in reflecting a dimension of internal andfixed compared to environmentally influenced and fluid. Wetherefore adapted Stipek et al.’s instrument by broadening it toreflect teachers’ ratings of Entity–Increment beliefs about ability tolearn core subjects (mathematics, literacy and science). Stipek etal.’s original instrument also contained three factors that reflecteddifferences in teachers’ beliefs about whether learning wasmotivated by internal or external criteria such as marks, andwhether teachers preferred to instruct in a manner that is teacher-controlled or student-centred. In Glenn’s (2007) study, the analysisof 180 teachers’ responses replicated Stipek et al.’s original factorsolution.

We then asked whether the E–I factor in the BLT Questionnairecorrelated with differences in teachers’ responses to the P–I inter-view about their beliefs about the nature of disability, and theirresponsibilities for students with special education needs. Indeed itdid (r (33)¼ .37, p< .05), suggesting that teachers’ beliefs about thenature of both ability and disability may share a dimensional char-acteristics such as being fixed, internal and unlikely to be changedthrough learning compared to being malleable and amenable tolearning and therefore potentially influenced by instruction.

If this is the case, the cluster of beliefs about the nature of abilityand disability may also be related to differences in teachers’ prac-tices. Glenn (2007) reported that, teachers’ descriptions ofdisability in the P–I interview correlated with their views of abilityas incrementally developing (r (33)¼ .54, p< .01; Jordan et al., inpress). Thus a relationship was shown between beliefs about both

ability and disability as either a fixed entity internal to the learneror as incremental and malleable, developing through learning.Glenn further reports other correlations in the BLTQ resultsbetween teachers’ E–I beliefs and their teaching practices. E–Ibeliefs correlated negatively with self-rated teacher-controlledinstruction (r (33) ¼ �.69, p< .01), indicating that the moreteachers viewed ability as an incrementally-acquired characteristicrather than as a fixed entity or trait, the less they favoured teacher-controlled, transmissive methods of instruction. Also teachersholding Entity beliefs tended to favour extrinsic forms of studentmotivation such as grades, while teachers holding Incrementbeliefs favouring student-centred instructional techniques such asco-operative groupings and the use of intrinsic sources of studentmotivation.

3.2. The nature of knowledge, ability and how learning proceeds –epistemological beliefs

Epistemological beliefs are those beliefs about the nature ofknowledge, knowing and how people acquire knowledge. Schwartz(2008) inferred epistemological beliefs from an in-depth analysis ofteachers’ statements about their work with students withdisabilities and at risk of academic failure. In her doctoral thesis,Schwartz examines the epistemological beliefs and practices of 12elementary classroom teachers extracted from the P–I Interviewtranscripts. Her purpose was to code the teachers’ statements usinga framework of epistemological beliefs derived from the literatureon personal epistemological beliefs and teachers’ thinking.Schwartz applied the distinctions made by King and Kitchener(2002), White (2000), Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule(1986) and Schommer (1990) to the reasoning, justifications andexplanations made by the 12 teachers about their students withspecial needs.

King and Kitchener (2002) address beliefs about the nature ofknowledge in a seven-stage model of variations in the developmentof reflective judgement. In the early stages (1–3) people viewknowledge as certain or permanent and as coming from authorities.Knowledge is therefore viewed as unambiguous (termed‘absolutist’ by Dewey (1933, cited in King & Kitchener, 2002)).Problems are viewed as simple and have one right answer. In thelater stages of reflective judgement (stages 6–7), people termed as‘reflective’ believe that knowledge is uncertain, tentative andsubject to change. At these high levels in King and Kitchener’smodel, knowledge is regarded as situated in individual perspectivesand can be examined using the rules for knowing that are intrinsicto perspective. Reflective people draw on expert knowledgetempered with their judgements about its efficacy. The reflectiveindividual knows that knowledge is based only on informationavailable at the time and that with subsequent informationknowledge is subject to change. Between the first and seventhlevels of the model are relativist perspectives (stages 4–5), markingpeople who believe that knowledge is uncertain, but who have yetto integrate reasoning across varying perspectives. White (2000)applied King & Kitchener’s stages model to the beliefs of 20 pre-service teachers about how to solve problematic classroom situa-tions. White concludes that the teachers’ beliefs differ widely. Mostteachers expressed beliefs that were classified in the first two levelsof the King and Kitchener reflective judgement model. No teacher’sstatements were coded as being in the highest, reflective category.

Belenky et al. (1986) distinguish between connected or separateways of knowing. Connected knowing is a belief in an empathic andcaring approach to knowing involving adopting the perspective ofthe other’s way of thinking. Separate knowing is a belief in a way ofknowing that is detached or impersonal involving a neutralperspective about the other’s way of thinking. Teachers may need

A. Jordan et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 535–542540

to hold both perspective at different times and in the context ofdifferent instructional goals.

Schommer (1990) examines beliefs about the nature of learningor how knowledge is acquired. According to Schommer, teachersmay view knowledge as acquired gradually and incrementally overtime, implying that learning takes place over an extended orunlimited time frame. Alternatively, they may view knowledge asacquired all at once or quickly, and therefore within a short andlimited time frame. How teachers evaluate student responses andfor what purposes may be, in part, governed by how teachers thinkknowledge is acquired. For example, if learning is viewed asgradual, teachers may prefer formative evaluation, and use studentresponses as feedback to plan their instruction. If they viewlearning as acquired quickly, they may evaluate summatively,claiming that ‘either they’ve learned it or they haven’t’.

Applying the framework to the teachers’ P–I interviewresponses Schwartz (2008) indicates that teachers’ epistemologicalbeliefs tend to cohere into patterns that are related to their prac-tices. Five of the 12 teachers had above average scores on both theCOS and the three measures of teaching style and interactions withindividual students, indicating that their teaching practices wereeffective with students both with and without special educationneeds. They also demonstrated high scores on the measure ofPredominant Teaching Styles that engaged students in higher-orderthinking. The beliefs of these five teachers included that learningoccurs gradually in a limitless time frame, that knowledge is builtincrementally. They believed that knowledge can be bothconnected, in which one takes the perspective of the other, andseparate, whereby the teacher expects the students to reachcurricular expectations that are individual to their specific needs.

A further five of the 12 teachers attained low total COS and lowPredominant Teaching Style scores. They scored therefore at thelow end of the scales of effective teaching practices, suggesting lesseffective teaching skills and a style of transmitting informationrather than interacting dialogically with students. Three of thesefive teachers believed in the nature of knowledge as certain andunambiguous, to be memorized and recalled. They provided nocomments that indicated a belief in knowledge as uncertain or to beunderstood from differing and relative perspectives. This wasreflected in their practices which depended on ‘fill in the blanks’and other cloze procedures to assess students’ acquisition ofknowledge. They emphasised student performance in terms ofquantity of work accomplished and marks achieved. Four of theselow scoring teachers expressed connected ways of knowing,describing empathy for their students but without any belief ina separate way of knowing. One teacher in the group of twelverejected altogether that he had a role in academic learning,believing instead that his role was solely to develop students’ selfconcepts, or in Belenky’s terms, that knowing (and learning) issocially connected and empathic.

In summary, in various studies in the SET project we haveconfirmed that teachers differ in their practices with both studentswith and without special needs included in their classrooms. Thesedifferences are evident at the level of classroom and timemanagement as well as in engaging students in the learningmaterials and concepts and promoting higher-order thinking.Differences appear to be related to sets of beliefs that sharea common theme. One theme is that ability and disability areassumed to be either fixed, internal to the learner and notaccessible to learning or to the influence of instruction, andtherefore how and how much students learn cannot be attributedto the efforts of the classroom teacher. The second theme is thatability and disability may be malleable and develop incrementally,influenced in part by the opportunities to learn that teachers areresponsible for providing. Furthermore, teachers’ epistemological

beliefs about the nature of knowledge, knowing and how learningoccurs may be related to their assumptions about ability anddisability.

The studies that indicate these trends have been conducted forthe most part with small numbers of teachers, and are subject tothe context of Canadian schools and school systems that havepolicies about inclusion that are permissive rather than mandatory(McLaughlin & Jordan, 2005). While further research is clearlydesirable, the series of studies suggests that there are significantrelationships between what teachers believe about ability,disability and the nature of knowledge and how learning isaccomplished, and their beliefs about their roles and responsibili-ties for instructing all their students. These beliefs in turn influencehow they teach and how effective they are in reaching theirstudents with and without special education needs. These findingshave important implications for how we prepare teachers, not justfor inclusion but for effective teaching overall.

4. Teacher preparation for effective teaching in inclusivesettings

Research with teachers during their pre-service preparation andin-service development presents a complex picture of howteachers can be assisted to develop effective teaching skills. Verylittle is known about how skills for effective inclusion are devel-oped, or about how to influence teachers’ epistemological beliefs inorder that they might be reflected in their practices.

We know that teachers enter the profession and the initialperiod of preparation with beliefs about teaching and learning thatare intransigent and hard to change (Pajares, 1992; Richardson,1996; Tillema, 1995). In this section, implications are drawn fromthe findings of the SET project and other sources for how teacherpreparation might be designed to influence beliefs.

Teacher beliefs are likely influenced by the school and schoolsystem’s approach to inclusion. One might speculate that, overtime and with in-service support, teachers would alter their beliefsto be consistent with the prevailing norm or ethos of the school.Stanovich and Jordan (1998a) noted that the beliefs of the headteachers (principals) about inclusion and about the roles andresponsibilities of their staffs in promoting inclusive practice wasthe most influential variable in the model of effective inclusion(Fig. 1). In contrast, White’s (2007) study revealed the intransi-gence of teachers’ beliefs. White reasoned that the beliefs andpractices of five teachers, who were part of the SET project in 1999and continued to participate in 2004, would change over thislength of their experience. The teachers taught in two schools withstrong policies of inclusion and in which considerable resourceswere spent in providing in-service education and on-site supportto teachers to promote inclusive practices. White found that thechanges in thinking of the teachers over the five-year time periodwas largely dependent on their beliefs when they entered theproject. Teacher 1, the mother of three children with disabilities,commenced the project with strong interventionist views, andcompleted the exit interview with similar beliefs, and withconsiderably more confidence and a broader repertoire of teachingskills that accommodated a wide range of learners. The samecannot be said for three other teachers who expressed doubtsabout inclusion at the outset of the study, blamed the studentswith special education needs for not working harder, assignedinstruction to parents to undertake at home as their primarymethod of adapting instruction to learner differences, and failed todraw upon readily available resources to assist them to meet therequirements of the students’ IEPs and their classroom needs. Fiveyears later, they described the same beliefs and similar patterns ofintervention.

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In developing the skills of teachers during their careers, onepossibility is that teachers may need to make explicit their implicitbeliefs before they are able to deal with them (Bendixen, 2002;Bendixen & Rule, 2004; Howard, McGee, Schwartz, & Purcell, 2000;Nesbitt, Bright, & Bowman, 1998). Tacit beliefs can become explicitwhen teachers have the opportunity to reflect on them and todiscuss them, and to be challenged by feedback from colleaguesand peers (Howard et al., 2000). Several studies have investigatedhow teachers’ epistemological beliefs can change and become moresophisticated through reflection about teaching and learning(Brownlee, Purdie, & Boulton-Lewis, 2001; Howard et al., 2000;Stanovich & Jordan, 1998b; Stuart & Thurlow, 2000).

Guskey (2002) suggests that teachers need to acquire evidenceof improvements in student learning before any significant changein teachers’ attitudes and beliefs will occur. Giangreco, Dennis,Cloninger, Edelman, and Schattman (1993) indicate that teachers’beliefs change when they have positive experiences working withthe students in their classroom. Giangreco et al. (1993) propose thatteachers who are most resistant to change are those who have hadpast experiences that are negative and who question whether thegeneral education placement was of any benefit.

Preparing teachers at the pre-service level presents furtherchallenges. White (2000) notes that it is not surprising thatpre-service teachers’ beliefs appear to be little affected by theirteacher education programmes. The majority of pre-serviceteachers in White’s study believe that it is a matter of opinion onhow best to deal with problematic classroom situations and whatknowledge might inform the solution. Most of them lacked theunderstanding of the nature of knowledge or ways of reasoningthat would have enabled them to make judgements that weredefensible. Lacking such understanding they fell back onto veri-fying credibility and making judgements on the basis of their ownexperiences and prior understandings. White suggests thatchanging this mindset requires the ‘‘disposition to seek and assesscritically and honestly all available information and to reason dia-logically with that information, all the while refraining fromrushing to conclusions’’ (p. 302).

Working with 26 pre-service teachers, Stuart and Thurlow(2000) concluded that, when challenged to reflect on their beliefsabout mathematics and their classroom practices, many of theteacher candidates re-evaluated and changed their beliefs aboutteaching mathematics. Raising their awareness of the underpin-nings of their beliefs about knowledge and learning allowed themto see how this may be affecting their teaching practices with theirstudents.

Silverman (2007) administered surveys to measure the beliefs of71 pre-service teachers about the complexity and certainty ofknowledge, speed of learning, omniscience of authority, andlearning ability as innate or learned. The participants alsocompleted Antonak and Larrivee’s (1995) survey of their attitudesabout the integration of students with disabilities. There wasa strong relationship between levels of epistemological beliefs andattitudes to inclusion. Those participants who endorsed beliefs in‘‘gradual, effortful learning and improvable learning ability’’ alsoexpressed positive attitudes toward the benefits of inclusion.Schwartz’s (2008) study reflects this finding.

It is challenging to transform teachers’ beliefs. The developmentof pedagogical skill in the interactive aspects of teaching is leftalmost entirely to field experiences, the component of professionaleducation over which we have little control. Feiman-Nemser(2001) contends that schools are not organized for teachers to worktogether on teacher inquiry or experimentation in serious orsustained ways. The challenge for teacher educators is to ensurethat pre-service teachers have practicum experiences in whichthere are opportunities to examine and foster their beliefs and

learn desirable lessons about how to address the needs of diversityin the classroom.

The results of the studies reported above highlight a dimensionof teaching that is neither typically nor rigorously addressed inteacher education programmes. Yet, this dimension is criticallyimportant in the development of effective teaching practices. Thepropensity and skill to engage each student in the classroom andthereby to develop a teacher–student relationship that promoteslearning at each student’s level of engagement is essential foreffective teaching overall and for effective inclusive practices.Curiously, we argue that the pedagogical skills are not appreciablydifferent from those that are needed for effective teaching ingeneral. Such skills counter the concern that teachers express aboutinclusion, that there is not enough time to address the needs ofstudents with disabilities. Clearly, effective teachers are able toallocate generous amounts of time to instruction, which they use toattend to the individual learning characteristics and needs of themajority of the students in their inclusive classes.

The fear of some teachers that they are not trained in thespecialized skills that are essential to work with students withspecial needs is also challenged. Effective practices in general maybe applicable to the majority of students with special needs,especially those with curriculum-related difficulties, sinceproviding instruction geared to each student’s level of experienceand understanding is evidently possible in effective inclusivesettings. The difference between effective and ineffective inclusionmay lie in teachers’ beliefs about who has primary responsibility forstudents with special education needs. Beliefs in the locus ofresponsibility as belonging to the classroom teacher may beprerequisite to teachers’ development of effective instructionaltechniques for all their students. What may be needed in bothteacher education and in-service preparation is to challengeteachers’ beliefs about ability and disability as immune to learning,and their resulting beliefs about their roles and responsibilities, aswell as their epistemological beliefs about the nature of knowing,knowledge and the process of acquiring knowledge. Opportunitiesfor reflection and discussion of the implications and corollaries ofone’s perspectives, conducted in a supportive context, maydemonstrate for teachers how a change in beliefs and attitudes canlead to more effective teaching practices with all their students.

Stipek et al. (2001) commented that ‘‘It is clear that beliefsand practices are linked, and emphasis in teacher professionaldevelopment on either one without considering the other is likelyto fail’’ (p. 225).

Acknowledgements

The research reported here was supported by research grantsfrom the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ofCanada to the lead author and colleagues. Our gratitude isexpressed to Paula Stanovich, principal investigator on Grantnumber 3010325, 1996.

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