KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES OF GRADUATE STUDENTS IN EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION TOWARD PLACEMENT OF HANDICAPPED STUDENTS

The purpose of this study was to determine and compare the knowledge and attitudes of graduate students enrolled in educational administration and special education administration with respect to the placement of handicapped students in the least restrictive environment. In addition, it attempted to identify demographic and personal variables which are associated with knowlege and positive attitudes toward the handicapped.;The most significant findings revealed that taking special education coursework had no significant relationship with either knowledge or attitudes; and the mainstreaming experience was negatively related to the knowledge of and attitudes toward the handicapped.;Further research is needed to determine whether there is need to renorm the RGEPS to reflect the changing attitudes and knowledge towards alternative placement of handicapped children in light of recent legislation such as PL 94-142 and that other factors such as class size, teacher morale and school building learning-teaching environments be examined concerning their relationship to the placement of pupils in the least restrictive environment.;Data were collected by using the Rucker-Gable Educational Programming Scale (RGEPS) and a Personal Questionnaire developed by the investigator to obtain status information on the subjects. Correlation analysis was used to determine the relationships between the demographic and personal variables with each sample group's mean knowledge and attitude scores on the RGEPS.;The subjects of this study were 32 graduate students enrolled in courses in educational administration and 37 graduate students enrolled in courses in special education administration.;The results of this study suggested that graduate students in both educational administration and special education administration had lower knowledge scores than the experts and that there were no statistically significant differences between the groups with respect to their knowledge of the handicapped as measured by the RGEPS. The attitudes of both groups were essentially as positive as those of the experts, and there were no statistically significant attitude differences between the groups. Furthermore, the variables which were associated with high knowledge and/or positive attitudes were: being female; parents' education; having a liberal arts major; experience as a special education administrator; regular education teaching experience; high school experience and age.