Student teacher attitudes and beliefs towards using ICT as part of inclusive practice

In recent years there have been concerns in initial teacher education regarding the lack of attention given to developing students’ attitudes and beliefs to prepare them for inclusive education. New Scottish initiatives, such as the Inclusive Practice Project (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/education/ipp/), have recently been carried out to address such issues and reform teacher education. Although it is too soon to determine the extent to which these initiatives have been successful, observational evidence suggests that Newly Qualified Teachers’ (NQTs) effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) within their inclusive practices is mixed. Since both physical and virtual environments can convey affordances of educational exclusion, it is important that student teachers are prepared for inclusion using ICT. This paper describes a pilot survey which was conducted to develop a clear picture of student teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards inclusive education when using ICT. The findings from the survey suggest that student teachers’ perceive their inclusive practices as not affected by the use of ICT. However, the findings also show that they are unsure about the extent to which ICT can affect inclusive pedagogies.