KAYNAŞTIRMA EĞİTİMİ İLE İLGİLİ DUYGULAR, TUTUMLAR VE KAYGILAR ÖLÇEĞİ’NİN TÜRKÇEYE UYARLAMA, GEÇERLİK VE GÜVENİRLİK ÇALIŞMASI

The purpose of this current study is to adapt the “Sentiments, Attitudes and Concerns about Inclusive Education Scale Revised (SACIE-R)” developed by Chris Forlin, Chris Earle, Tim Loreman, and Umesh Sharma (2011) to Turkish. The relevant scale consists of 15 items and includes 4-point Likert type ranking (“1” Strongly Disagree, “2” Disagree, “3” Agree, “4” Strongly Agree). Scores belonging to scale are aligned between 15 and 60 points. Increasing scores mean that individual shows high level of sentiment, attitude, and concern about inclusive education. A communication was established with Chris Forlin, one of the researchers that developed the scale via electronic mail primarily in the process of adapting the scale to Turkish and necessary legal permission is obtained by this way. In the first step, the English form of the scale was translated into Turkish by a commission consisting of five faculty members of Education Faculty in Amasya University who know English at a good level. After that, the scale was translated into Turkish and re-translated into English again. By doing so (back translation technique), the consistency between Turkish and English forms of scale was explored. Then, Turkish form of the scale was examined in terms of meaning and grammar and necessary corrections were made by researchers and five Turkish teachers. After that, trial Turkish form of the scale was obtained. For face validity, three faculty members who are the leading experts in areas of educational science and assessment and evaluation examined this form and some changes were made in line with those experts’ opinions. As a result, the last version of the translated scale from the point of face validity and translation was obtained. In order to determine the reliability and validity, the sample of this study has been randomly selected and it has been conducted to 100 pre-service teachers who have been studying in Guidance and Psychological Counseling and Turkish Language Teaching Departments. Participants were met in preplanned classrooms. Participants were asked to answer the scale. Responding the scale took time between 10 to 20 minutes. After implementing the scale, construct validity of Turkish form of the scale was explored. Before doing exploratory factor analysis (EFA) related to scale’s construct validity, the data was tested whether it is appropriate for factor analysis and it was approved that data was appropriate for factor analysis. As a result of factor analysis, it was determined that items of the scale loaded onto three factors. Examination of these three factors was made by Warimax Rotation and it was found that factor loads belonging to items in these three factors were high. The results of the Exploratory Factor Analysis clearly revealed that there were three subscales; Sentiments about Inclusive Education, Attitudes towards Inclusive Education, and Concerns about Inclusive Education, respectively. The first factor is comprised of five items and these items are the opinions of teacher candidates such as “I tend to finish a communication with a people with disabilities as soon as possible”, “I find it difficult to overcome my initial shock when meeting people with severe physical disabilities”, “I am afraid to look directly at a person with a disability”, “I would feel terrible if I had a disability”, “I dread the thought that I could eventually end up with a disability”. Because these thoughts reflect the feelings about inclusive education, this factor might be called as “Sentiments about Inclusive Education”. The second factor is comprised of five items and these items are the opinions of teacher candidates such as “Students who need individualized education program should be in regular classes”, “Students who are inattentive should be in regular classes”, “Students who frequently fail exams should be in regular classes”, “Students who require communicative technologies (e.g. Braille, sign language) should be in regular classes”, “Students who have difficulty in expressing their thoughts verbally should be in regular classes”. Because these thoughts reflect beliefs about the necessity of inclusive education, this factor might be called as “Attitudes about Inclusive Education”. The third and last factor is comprised of five items and these items are the opinions of teacher candidates such as “I am concerned that I will be more stressed if I have students with disabilities in my class”, “I am concerned that students with disabilities will not be accepted by the rest of the class”, “I am concerned that my workload will increase if I have students with disabilities in my class”, “I am concerned that it will be difficult to give appropriate attention to all students in an inclusive classroom”, “I am concerned that I do not have the knowledge and skills required to teach students with disabilities”. Because these thoughts reflect concern and anxiety about inclusive education, this factor might be called as “Concern about Inclusive Education”. By the end of Exploratory Factor Analysis, it is found that each item in the scale matches up with any of these three determined factor. Therefore, all items have been kept in the Turkish version of the scale. As a result, the final version of the scale includes 15 items like its original form In addition, these three factors describe the 61.454% of total variance. First factor describes the 27.860%, second factor describes the 18.481% and third factor describes the 15.113% of the total variance. The reliability of Sentiments, Attitudes and Concerns about Inclusive Education form was assessed by Cronbach Alpha and internal consistency found as .88. The reliability of subscales was assessed by Cronbach Alpha method as well and internal consistencies found as.86 for the first subscale, .88 for the second subscale, and .85 for the third and last subscale. All of the findings obtained from data analysis clearly show that the Turkish form of Sentiments, Attitudes and Concerns about Inclusive Education scale is valid and reliable for the use of teacher candidates. Despite findings show it, a number of limitations are in question related to this research. The number of participants in this research was limited to 100 people. In this context, it is suggested that studies should be done with more participants. In addition, teacher candidates belong to two different departments participated in this study. So, researches with more different branches should be made. Also, participants in this study are limited with the ones in Amasya University Education Faculty. This adaptation study should be made with the participation of different education faculties. In addition to these, research group where validity and reliability work has been carried out consist of only undergraduate students. Therefore, implementing this research on different samples for reliability and validity of the scale is quite important. Finally, researches using this Turkish adaptation form will make significant contributions to the strength of measurement.