Perception of some secondary school educators towards inclusive education in Maokeng

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions of secondary school educators towards inclusive education in Maokeng.”Inclusive education defined as schools, centres of learning and educational systems that ensure that all children learn and participate” (Van Rooyen & De Beer, 2006). Two secondary schools were chosen for this study, with eight respondents who are mainstream educators. There were four male educators and four female educators in the sample.

The qualitative methodology, in particular Textual Orientation Discourse Analysis (TODA), was used as the tool to obtain information from the respondents. The respondents, as educators at secondary schools, were selected according to their level of education, experience at work, their age and the way that they perceive inclusive education in secondary schools.

The main finding shows that there are educators who favour inclusive education and there are those who are not in favour of inclusive education. Some contributing factors for not being in favour were reported as, lack of information regarding inclusive education, the time factor, lack of resources, inadequate knowledge and skills of educators, need for training, lack of teacher support, efficiency of the support teacher, disruptive and unchallenged learners and their impact on schools.

Given the above findings and conclusion, the study recommends that educators should be sufficiently supported by well informed para-professionals, in order to make inclusive education a success. Resources should be well distributed to various institutions where inclusive education is going to be instituted. Government experts should work in collaboration with experts from the university with regard to the attainment of skills, in order to improve the work of educators at schools, particularly those who work with disabled learners. At school level, specialized educators and those who are able to identify learners with problems should be hired. The number of educators needs to increase, in order to reduce large numbers of learners in each class, which will enable educators to reach each learner.