Attitudes of secondary vocational and pre-vocational teachers in Virginia toward integrating visually and hearing handicapped students into regular classes

This study's major purpose was to examine attitudes of Virginia's pre-vocational and vocational teachers toward integrating visually and hearing handicapped students into their regular classes. The research questions consisted of five inquiries into the nature of attitudes toward: (1) selected characteristics of the visually and hearing handicapped, (2) integrating hearing and visually handicapped students, (3) their own competencies to teach these students, (4) their willingness to work with resource and support personnel, and (5) the potential for success in the world of work of these students. Also, the extent to which these students who were enrolled in vocational and pre-vocational classes were attending regular classes was examined. Finally, strategies which have been found helpful in integrating these students into regular classes were solicited. Four hypotheses of no difference between six vocational service areas were stated for research questions #2-5 and were tested at the .05 level.

The Vocational Teacher Attitudinal Inventory was constructed and pilot tested. Research question #1 was addressed by a semantic differential section and the four hypotheses by a Likert portion. Open-ended questions were posed to secure suggested strategies and direct questions were asked concerning enrollment during 1975-76. Questionnaires were mailed to a stratified, proportional, random sample of 261 teachers and a 67 percent response rate was achieved.

The Likert items data pertaining to the four hypotheses were analyzed by using the BMD 08M program which performs factor analysis. The semantic differential data were analyzed by employing the Condescriptive program of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. The enrollment data and responses to open-ended questions were manually analyzed. The general nature of attitudes across vocational service areas was examined by inspecting mean scores and direction of the fifty-eight Likert items.

The data supported the retention of the four research hypotheses. Concerning the general nature of attitudes toward integration across service areas, analysis of results indicated that: (1) respondents expressed mixed attitudes toward integration in general and as it pertains to their own regular classes for the visually and hearing handicapped, (2) respondents expressed mixed attitudes toward their own competencies to teach the hearing and visually handicapped, (3) respondents expressed generally positive attitudes toward their willingness to work with resource and support personnel concerning the visually and hearing handicapped, and (4) respondents expressed positive attitudes toward the potential for success in the world of work for the hearing handicapped, but they expressed negative attitudes concerning the visually handicapped.

Factor analysis resulted in four non-hypothesized findings, which were that: (1) Teachers of Vocational-Industrial Education tended to express more positive attitudes toward (a) their personal adequacy to teach the hearing handicapped, (b) the success of methods to cope with hearing and visual problems, (c) their ability to individualize instruction for the visually handicapped; (2) Those teachers with more experience instructing the hearing handicapped tended to express more positive attitudes toward the integration of the hearing handicapped; (3) Teachers who expressed negative attitudes concerning selected characteristics of the hearing handicapped tended to express negative attitudes toward the potential for success in the world of work for the hearing handicapped, but expressed positive attitudes for the employment success of the visually handicapped; (4) Teachers with more experience instructing hearing handicapped students tended to express more positive attitudes toward (a) the integration of the hearing and visually handicapped students into regular classes, (b) the potential for success in the world of work of the hearing handicapped, (c) the success of methods to cope with hearing and visual problems.

Those few teachers who reported teaching visually and/or hearing handicapped students indicated that all but one were being taught in regular classes.

Conclusions were made and long-term and short-term recommendations were offered based upon these findings.