TITLE:
Suggestions for a Teacher Training Program for Inclusive Education in a Japanese University
AUTHORS:
Junichi Takahashi
KEYWORDS:
Inclusive Education; Developmental Disorders; Intellectual Disability; Adult AttachmentTheory; Teacher-Child Relationships
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.4 No.8,
August
6,
2013
ABSTRACT: Inclusive education has been recently proposed in primary and secondary educations in many countries. Children who need special education support should be educated together with typically developing children in general classes. Although many studies have examined the effectiveness of inclusive education, researchers have pointed out that some general education teachers experience problems in their relationships with children who have disabilities such as developmental disorders and intellectual disabilities. In this paper, we review teacher training programs in a Japanese university and offer suggestions to enhance teachers’ relationships with disabled children. In our discussion, we focused on adult attachment theory, which is an affective connection and interactions between self and others. First, we reviewed the importance of teachers’ relationships with disabled children. Second, we reviewed attachment theories with respect to the quality of teacher-child relationships, and lastly, we proposed that adult attachment theory is a mediator in the quality of teacher-child relationships. We proposed a direction for the application of these conceptual assumptions to the teacher-training program for inclusive education in a Japanese university.