Various national movements have a profound effect on the teaching of science to special needs children in the regular classroom. The mainstreaming of handicapped children has become a nationwide practice. The support for the merger of special education and regular education, known as regular initiative (REI), the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the call for full inclusion of all types of handicapped children, place more demands on the regular classroom teacher. From 1987-1992, three hundred sixty (360) public school elementary teachers, from Eastern Massachusetts, received instruction at in-service workshops in teaching children with special needs via current practices that are commonly used in today's classroom.
The purpose of the study was to investigate these workshop participants as to their perceptions of these current practices and to compare their perceptions of these current practices and to compare their perceptions to 117 non-workshop public school elementary teachers in Eastern Massachusetts.
Using an instrument designed and validated for the study, data was collected to determine whet effect longevity of teaching, grade level, and type of elementary science program had on the teachers' perceptions of the current practices. An attitude scale, ascertaining the attitudes towards teaching science to special needs children, was part of the instrument. Data was analyzed descriptively by percentages, means, standard deviations, standard error, etc. Inferential analysis was by analysis of variance (ANOVA), Chi-square, and Spearman rank correlation.
No significant differences were found for the effects of longevity, grade level and types of science program on the perceptions of the teachers. Significant differences were found, however, between the attitudes of the teachers. The results for the ranking were mixed.
