| dc.description | The Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Inclusion Scale Adjusted (TAISA; Boyle, 2014) comprises 21 items that measure pre-service teacher attitudes towards inclusion. This survey instrument was adjusted from the original 27-item Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Inclusion Scale (TAIS; Boyle, Topping, & Jindal-Snape, 2013) whereby items were replaced, dropped or altered to be relevant to the examination of pre-service teacher attitudes rather than in-service teacher attitudes. The original scale was found to be reliable with a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.889 (Boyle et al., 2013). For the sample of 465 Australian elementary and pre-school pre-service teachers, the adjusted scale was found to have acceptable reliability with a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.74. A principle components analysis indicated five components with eigenvalues exceeding one. Parallel and scree plot analyses suggested the retention of three components that explained a cumulative variance of 40.27%. Item-component loading analyses resulted in the titling of the components: Positive affect (PA), Training and perceived competence (TAPC), and Negative affect (NA). Reliabilities for each component were found to be internally consistent. At the end of the attitude scale of the TAISA, participants were asked to provide their own definition of “inclusion.” Coded definitions were split into five categories: 0 = no answer, 1 = did not define integration or inclusion, 2 = defined integration, 3 = basic definition of inclusion, and 4 = advanced definition of inclusion. Inter-rater reliability between the researchers’ classification of definition was found to be kappa = 0.89. | |
