Beliefs and attitudes of preservice secondary history teachers toward inclusion and collaboration

The purpose of this study was to determine preservice secondary history teachers' beliefs and attitudes toward inclusion and collaboration. This study also addressed the extent of the relationship between these prospective teachers' perceptions of the importance of teaching history to students with disabilities and their beliefs and attitudes toward inclusion and collaboration.;Participants were 138 preservice secondary history teachers in their senior year of undergraduate education. These participants completed an attitudinal instrument to determine their beliefs and attitudes toward inclusion and collaboration, and their perceptions regarding the importance of teaching history to students with disabilities in general education classrooms.;This study was descriptive and correlational. Descriptive statistics were computed to determine these prospective teachers' beliefs and attitudes toward inclusion and collaboration, and their perceptions of the importance of teaching history to students with disabilities. Canonical and multiple regression analyses were performed to determine both general and specific relationships between the importance of teaching history to students with disabilities and inclusion and collaboration. A content analysis was performed to complement the quantitative analyses of these prospective teachers' perceptions about the inclusion of history in the curriculum of students with disabilities.;The most notable results pertained to the following: Preservice secondary history teachers are most willing to teach students with the following disabilities: gifts and talents, physical impairments, and learning disabilities. The prospective teachers generally favor inclusion for the socialization of students with disabilities. These prospective teachers generally perceive themselves as having the necessary communication skills to collaborate with special education teachers in inclusive settings. Preservice secondary history teachers generally believe that history is an important discipline for students with disabilities, although English, mathematics, and vocational are more important disciplines for students with disabilities. The results also strongly indicate an overall relationship between preservice secondary history teachers' perceptions regarding the importance of teaching history to students with disabilities and their beliefs and attitudes toward inclusion and collaboration.