Inclusive Education in Indonesia: Teachers’ Perceptions

Abstract

In recent years, extensive research has been conducted on the management of inclusive education. Globally, ensuring equal educational opportunity for all continues to be a significant challenge, and inclusive education continues to be a complex issue. In regard to inclusive education, teachers’ perception, to our knowledge, is surprisingly understudied in the Indonesian context. Therefore, this paper aimed to investigate teachers’ perceptions of inclusive education in Indonesia. This study, which enrolled a total of 157 teachers as research subjects, adopted a quantitative approach and collected data via a questionnaire. The collected data were descriptively analysed through descriptive statistics, which was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 25 for Windows, summarising responses of participants to the questionnaire items. The findings indicate that this current study has finally unravelled teachers’ perceptions of inclusive education in Indonesia. They have a positive perception of inclusive education regardless of their demographic backgrounds. The findings also imply that it is crucial to continue and expand teacher education as inclusive education is still in its infancy. Professional development for teachers to improve their knowledge of inclusive education, benefiting all students, is required. Suggestions with recommendations for future research are also discussed.