Trainee teachers' attitudes to inclusive education for children with Down's syndrome.
Almost every trainee teacher feels unready to include children with Down's syndrome, but hands-on contact reverses that fear.
01Research in Context
What this study did
LeSage et al. (1996) asked trainee teachers how ready they felt to teach children with Down's syndrome.
The survey was done in the UK. Most trainees liked the idea of inclusion.
Yet almost all said they lacked the skills to make it work.
What they found
Ninety-six percent of the trainees felt unprepared.
They also thought children with Down's syndrome could learn less than they really can.
Support for inclusion stayed high, but confidence stayed low.
How this fits with other research
Hassanein (2015) shows the fix: give teachers real contact plus facts, not facts alone. After this two-part training, attitudes rose and stayed up at 12 weeks.
Welsh et al. (2019) found the same confidence gap in mainstream teachers facing autism. Specialist teachers felt far more ready.
Jackson et al. (2025) repeated the pattern with lockdown drills. Staff who practiced more felt more able to teach autistic children during drills.
Together these studies say: low confidence is common, but hands-on experience turns it around.
Why it matters
If you train teachers, add live practice with learners who have Down's syndrome or autism. Short lectures will not budge the 96% unprepared rate. Pair each trainee with a learner for guided activities and watch confidence grow.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The attitudes of 231 trainee teachers towards inclusive education for children with Down's syndrome were surveyed in two UK colleges of education, one in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland. While the right to educational integration for children with special educational needs was widely endorsed, considerable reservations were expressed about its implementation in practice. Only 13% of respondents indicated that they would welcome the opportunity to teach in an integrated setting and 96% felt that their professional training did not prepare them to meet this challenge. Many underestimated potential levels of achievement in children with Down's syndrome and over half wrongly associated the condition with very short life expectancy.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 1996 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.1996.tb00603.x