Inclusive Teachers’ Concern and Rejection Toward Their Students

Abstract

This article reports two related studies. In the first study, concern and rejection ratings of 14 inclusive teachers toward 26 students with disabilities were correlated with teacher—student interactions. Partial correlations, controlling for severity of disability, indicated that instructional-academic interactions corresponded significantly with teachers’ concern ratings and noninstructional-behavioral interactions corresponded significantly with teachers’ rejection ratings. In the second study, the authors compared teachers’ concern and rejection ratings of students with learning disabilities ( n = 77), cognitive disabilities ( n = 44), attention-deficit disorder ( n = 20), behavioral disorders ( n = 19), and no disabilities ( n = 1,153) in 65 inclusive classes using ANOVAs and Scheffe post hoc tests. Students in all disability categories received significantly higher concern ratings than nondisabled students, students with learning disabilities and behavioral disorders received significantly higher rejection ratings than nondisabled students, and students with behavioral disorders received significantly higher rejection ratings than students with cognitive disabilities.