Teachers' Perceptions of the Barriers to Inclusive Education of Kindergarten Students with Disabilities in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Despite Saudi Arabia's national and international commitments to adopting inclusive education to educate students with disabilities, there is a lack of research on teachers' perceptions of the barriers to inclusive education. The current study explores teachers' perceptions of the barriers to successfully including children with disabilities in Saudi kindergarten settings. The present study applied a convergent mixed-methods design involving both quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (interview) approaches. The interviews involved four special education teachers and four general education teachers working in inclusive public kindergartens in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Thematic analysis was performed for the interview data, using NVivo v 14.0, whereas Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted for the survey data, using SPSS v 25.0 to group barriers into different factors. The findings of this study indicate that the most important reported barriers included the nature and severity of the child's disability, the absence of special education aides in inclusive classrooms, large class sizes, and a perceived lack of effective professional training. EFA extracted three factors based on Eigenvalues of more than 1, contributing 56.638% covariance. The present study's findings provide meaningful recommendations for developing an education system that provides the necessary support and resources, so that teachers can meet the needs of children with disabilities in inclusive kindergarten settings.