EDUCATIONAL PERSONNEL’S PERCEPTIONS OF MAINSTREAMING AND RESOURCE ROOM EFFECTIVENESS

STEVE GRAHAM

Auburn University NANCY B. BURDG

Auburn University

FLOYD HUDSON

Kansas University Medical Center DALE CARPENTER

Western Carolina University

Equivalent forms of a questionnaire were administered to elementary classroom and resource room teachers. The questionnaires were designed to elicit teachers’ attitudes and perceptions as to the effectiveness and appropriateness of mainstreaming, regular classroom teachers’ level of skill competency, assistance from the resource room, and communication between the resource room and regular classroom teachers. Results indicated that resource and regular teachers evidenced differential perceptions as to all factors investigated. Educational implications of the findings were discussed and specific recommendations were proposed.

Recent litigation and legislation at the state and national level require that han- dicapped students receive a free education commensurate with their needs, and, where appropriate, be educated with their nonhandicapped peers. Such goals necessitate that the majority of students presently labeled handicapped receive their education within the mainstream of the regular school program. Because these children exhibit a diverse and unique range of problems, their education and remediation require the combined resources and energies of both special and regular educators. Consequently, if the mainstreaming effort is to be facilitated, educational personnel must work together har- moniously.

Although few have questioned the philosophical and humanitarian goals underlying integration, empirical evidence directly supporting the mainstreaming rationale is not substantial (Keogh & Levitt, 1976). Despite this fact, and because of the legislative pressure of PL 94- 142 and recent court decisions, mainstreaming programs have mushroomed in schools across the nation. Unfortunately, the quality of many of these programs is unknown. It would be naive to assume that legislative action and legal decisions will insure the development and implementation of appropriate mainstreaming programs.

The success of integration is, in part, contingent upon the attitudes of the individuals directly or indirectly involved. Of primary importance is the willingness of regular and special educators to accomodate the mainstreaming principle. In a recent study, Hudson, Graham, and Warner (1979) found that regular classroom teachers were not supportive of the mainstreaming concept. Teachers believed that they did not have the time, support services, or necessary training to effectively teach handicapped learners in their classroom. Class size, inaccessibility of materials, time restraints, and the unavailability of immediate and long-term support services were related to unfavorable attitudes.

One aspect of the Hudson, et al. (1979) study that bears further investigation in- volves the unavailability of immediate and long-term support services. If adequate sup- port services are insufficient or not available, the likelihood of providing a mainstreamed handicapped learner with an appropriate education is greatly diminished. Furthermore,

Based in part on a Master’s Thesis completed at the University of Kansas by Judy Lockwood.

128

Mainstreaming and Resource Room Efectiveness 129

future investigations should consider the attitudes, opinions, and needs of both regular and special educators. Without such an analysis, it is doubtful that problems associated with an effective mainstreaming effort can be appropriately resolved.

Although a variety of support service models have been implemented within public school settings, the resource room concept is presently the most popular service arrange- ment designed to facilitate integration of handicapped pupils (Wiederholt, Hammill, & Brown, 1978). Resource programs provide supportive educational services aimed at successfully sustaining and maintaining the handicapped student within the mainstream of the regular school environment. In an appropriate mainstreaming effort, integration, educational planning and programming, and clarification of responsibilities should be an integral part of the process (Kauffman, Gottlieb, Agard, & Kubic, 1975). This requires that resource program personnel and regular classroom teachers establish effective lines of communication, work together cooperatively, and coordinate their instructional plans. In addition, mainstreaming participants must have access to a variety of materials, possess specific remedial skills, and demonstrate appropriate attitudes.

To date, research has failed to consider the attitudes of both special and regular educators with regard to mainstreaming and resource room support services. If mainstreaming programs are to be successful, it is essential that the needs, opinions, and cooperative efforts of educational personnel be analyzed. Therefore, the present study ex- amined educational personnel’s perceptions as to the effectiveness and appropriateness of mainstreaming, regular classroom teachers’ level of skill competency, assistance from the resource room, and communication between the resource room and regular classroom teachers.

METHOD

Subjects and Settings Subjects were 169 elementary teachers from three metropolitan school districts in

Kansas City, Missouri, of whom 23 were resource room teachers, and 144 were regular classroom teachers. Each classroom teacher had at least one handicapped student in his/her classroom who was receiving resource room services. Questionnaire

Because of the unavailability of a standardized questionnaire capable of soliciting the wide range of information needed to evaluate attitudes toward resource room programs and mainstreaming, two forms of a scaled opinion instrument were designed. The two forms were identical except that one form was designed for regular classroom teachers and the other for resource room teachers. Each form consisted of 25 Likert-type items designed to measure the subject’s perceptions of: (a) regular classroom teachers’ skill competency, (b) communication between regular and resource teachers, (c) regular and resource teachers’ attitudes towards mainstreaming, (d) regular classroom teachers’ time restraints, and (e) availability of materials to regular classroom teachers.

In order to determine what factors were being sampled by the scaled questionnaires, a series of factor analyses were completed. The responses of the 169 subjects were analyzed through the use of the Factor Analysis subprogram in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Steinbrenner, & Bent, 1975). In each of the factor analyses, the Varimax and Oblique rotations were used.

130 Psychology in the Schools, January, 1980, Vol. 17, No. 1.

In the first factor analysis, the Varimax and Oblique rotations yielded similar results. Examination of the data revealed that five factors accounted for approximately 51% of the variance. Items were subsequently eliminated from consideration based on two criteria: one, if an item did not load at f.40 or higher it was eliminated; two, if the content and contribution of an item to the factor on which it loaded most highly would have obscured interpretability it was eliminated. One item that loaded close to criterion and would have aided in interpretation was retained. Based on the above criteria, eight items were eliminated from the scaled opinion questionnaires.

The second factor analysis consisted of applying the procedure to the remaining items and limiting the rotations to five factors. Examination of both the Varimax and Oblique rotations indicated that the five factors accounted for approximately 64% of the variance. Subsequently, the five factors were named: Factor I-Communication (two items), Factor 11-Attitudes on the Effectiveness of Mainstreaming (four items), Factor 111-Regular Teachers’ Mainstreaming Skills (three items), Factor IV-Assistance from the Resource Room (four items), and Factor V-Attit,udes on the Appropriateness of Mainstreaming (four items). The 17-item questionnaire is presented in Appendix A, while the mean, standard deviation, and factor score for each item are contained in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Means, Standard Deviations, and Factor Scores far Questionnaire Items

Oblique Factor Loadings Item No. M S D I I1 I11 IV V

1 4.78 2 5.02 3 3.51 4 4.36 5 3.79 6 2.89 7 4.20 8 3.86 9 4.98 10 1.54 11 1.70 12 1.87 13 1.92 14 2.33 15 2.21 16 4.71 17 5.05

Eigenvalue

Percent Total Variance

2.35 2.19 2.28 2.42 2.28 2.37 1.90 1.86 2.10 1.25 1.36 1.65 1.58 1.69 1.69 2.15 2.02

(.907) (.783) .095

- .054 - .061 .116 -084

- .057 .015 .029

-.182 - .040 .076 .001 .058

.084

- .058

3.68

21.7

- .019 .055

(.530) (.855)

(.770) (.488) --.051

.060

.031 -.018 -073

- .035 .07 1 .056

-.130 -.180

.05 1

2.22

13.1

.06 1

.022 - .072 .069 .125

-.151 (.672) (.788) (SW .037 .166 .048

-.144 .203 .069 .259 .lo6

2.07

12.2

.OoO

- .055 .185 .012

- .081 .073 .024 .031 .022 (.769) (.691) (.896) (.490) - .038 -.015 - .075 - .030 1.59

9.3

- .010

- .030 .080

- .027 .Ooo

.038 - .035 - .078 .025

- .075 .080 .125

-.137 (-37) (-.581) (.387) (.524)

1.28

7.5

Mainstreaming and Resource Room Efectiveness 131

Procedures The questionnaires were distributed by the special education directors in the par-

ticipating school districts, and subjects were instructed to respond to each item using a 1- 7 Likert Scale. A response of 1 indicated item agreement, while a response of 7 indicated item disagreement.

To determine if differences existed between classroom and resource teachers’ perceptions, the Hotelling’s T was computed across all five factors and univariate t-tests were computed for each factor on the factor scores output from the Oblique rotation. These analyses were completed by means of the BMDP 3 D computer program in the Biomedical Computer Programs P-Series (Dixon & Brown, 1977).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Results from the Hotelling’s Tand univariate t-tests revealed statistically significant

differences between classroom teachers and resource teachers across all factors, T (5 , - 161)= 187.735, p<.OOl. Significance of this magnitude on the Hotelling’s T effectively protects against the possibility of a Type 1 error on each of the five univariate t-tests shown in table 2 (Harris, 1975).

TABLE 2

Results of t-tests Between Regular and Resource Teachers for Each Factor

Factor t df Factor Score: Ms Factor Score: SDs Regdar Resource Regular Resource

I. Communication -4.80.’ 28 -.096 .981 387 1.017 11. Attitudes on the

Effectiveness of Mainstreaming 20.38** 92 .227 -1.531 .778 .273

Mainstreaming Skills - 2.44* 32 .006 .430 379 .756

Resource Room -4.09** 31 -.088 .659 -884 301

Appropriateness of Mainstreaming -3.75** 33 -.037 .557 319 .684

111. Regular Teachers’

IV. Assistance from the

V. Attitudes on the

*p -05. p -.Ol. **

Factor I-Communication Observation of responses showed that in general, regular classroom teachers did not

feel that communication between the resource teachers and themselves was adequate. However, resource teachers responded that adequate lines of communication existed. The resource teachers exhibited substantial variability in their responses. Factor II-Attitudes on the Efectiveness of Mainsrreaming

Classroom teachers felt that mainstreaming was an effective educational alternative for handicapped students, while resource teachers did not. Furthermore, resource teachers did not believe that handicapped students gained more academically by staying in the mainstream, while regular teachers did.

132 Psychology in the Schools, January, 1980, Vol. 17, No. 1.

Factor 111- R egular Teachers’ Mainstream ing Skills Neither group believed that regular teachers possessed adequate mainstreaming

skills. Of the two groups, resource teachers were less confident of regular classroom teachers’ mainstreaming skills. Factor I V-Assistance from the Resource Room

Both groups agreed that assistance from the resource room was available. Yet, regular classroom teachers were more positive regarding the availability of these services for mainstreamed handicapped students. Factor V-Attitudes on the Appropriateness of Mainstreaming

The responses in Factor V were difficult to analyze. While both groups agreed on the need for integration, resource teachers were more emphatic in their belief that han- dicapped students would be happier in a mainstream program than in a self-contained classroom. Nonetheless, both groups strongly agreed that a handicapped student in a regular class would restrict the progress of other children.

Results from the questionnaire indicated that resource teachers believed that assistance from the resource room was readily available and that adequate communica- tion existed between the regular classroom teachers and themselves. They felt that mainstreaming was appropriate and that handicapped students would be happier in a mainstreaming program than in a self-contained classroom. However, they did not feel that mainstreaming was an effective educational alternative for two reasons: one, they did not believe that handicapped students would gain more academically by staying in the mainstream; two, they did not feel that regular classroom teachers possessed ade- quate mainstreaming skills.

Surprisingly, resource teachers were not convinced of the effectiveness of mainstreaming, but supported the trend to integrate handicapped students. Although the underlying values responsible for these conflicting attitudes were unclear, it was possible that their ambivalence was due, in part, to their opinion that regular classroom teachers did not have the necessary skills to work effectively with handicapped students. Hopefully, training designed to improve regular classroom teachers’ mainstreaming skills may alleviate their suspicions that handicapped students do not make adequate academic gains in mainstreaming programs.

Regular classroom teachers did not feel that adequate communication existed between themselves and the resource room. They believed that mainstreaming was ap- propriate and effective, but did not feel that they possessed adequate mainstreaming skills. They also indicated that assistance from the resource room was available.

If mainstreaming programs are to be successful, communication between regular classroom teachers and support service personnel is essential. Nonetheless, regular and resource teachers did not agree on the effectiveness of communication between the two parties. For the most part, resource teachers felt that communication was adequate, while regular classroom teachers did not. These findings suggest that resource teachers need to increase their efforts to converse, cooperatively plan, and share information with regular classroom teachers.

The results of the present study did not validate the findings of Hudson, et al. (1979) that regular classroom teachers were not supportive of mainstreaming handicapped students. The contradictory findings of the two studies may be a result of differential cir- cumstances. Teachers in the Hudson, et al., study did not believe that immediate and long-term support services were accessible, while teachers in the present study felt that

Mainstreaming and Resource Room Effectiveness 133

assistance from the resource room was available. Although the relationship between positive attitudes and adequate resource room assistance was correlational and should be interpreted with caution, it would appear that regular classroom teachers’ attitudes toward mainstreaming were, in part, dependent upon the availability of adequate support services. Therefore, immediate and long-term support services should be part of an effec- tive mainstreaming program.

Results of previous research also have indicated that regular classroom teachers believed that they do not have the necessary skills to work effectively with handicapped students (Harasymiw & Horne, 1976; Hewett & Watson, 1975; McGinty & Keogh, 1975). The present study supports these findings. If regular classroom teachers are to be an effective part of the mainstreaming process, they must be provided with in-service and preservice training designed to improve their mainstreaming skills.

In conclusion, the present investigation revealed that resource and regular teachers evidenced differential perceptions with regard to mainstreaming and the effectiveness of resource room services. If mainstreamed handicapped students are to receive an ap- propriate education, regular classroom teachers must be provided with training designed to improve their mainstreaming skills. Furthermore, it is imperative that resource room teachers attempt to improve communication and support services between the resource room and the regular class setting. If both groups pool their resources in a cooperative effort, the likelihood of a successful mainstreaming program is greatly increased.

APPENDIX A

Questionnaire * Please respond to the following questions. Circle the numeral which most appropriately identifies your feelings.

1. Do you notify the resource teacher when a method you have been using does not appear to be effective with the student any longer?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 N O

2. Do you and the resource teacher conference with the parents of the exceptional child?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NO

3. Are you able to remediate the exceptional child’s educational deficits while he is in your classroom as well as work with the other children?

Y E S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 N O

4. Does the resource teacher help you in offering suggestions to the parents for working with the child at home?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 N O

5. Do you believe that the exceptional child gains more academically by staying in the mainstream?

Y E S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 N O

6. Do you believe that the exceptional child gains more socially by staying in the mainstream?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NO

7. Are you able to accurately identify the specific deficits of the exceptional child’s learning patterns without the aid of the resource teacher?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I O N 0

8. Are you able to accurately identify the specific strengths of the exceptional child’s learning patterns in your classroom without the aid of the resource teacher?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I O N 0

134 Psychology in the Schools, January, 1980, Vol. 17, No. 1.

9. Are you able to interpret individual diagnostic tests on the exceptional child without aid from the resource teacher?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I O N 0

10. Are you able to correlate materials from the resource room with the specific needs of the exceptional child in your classroom?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 N O

1 1 . Is the resource room available to you for checking out materials to use in your room?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I O N 0

12. Does the resource teacher work to remediate the educational deficits of the exceptional child while she is working with him in the resource room?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I O N 0

13. Do you feel free to seek out the resource teacher for obtaining advice in dealing with the academic program of the exceptional child while he is in your room?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I O N 0

14. Do you believe that the exceptional child in your classroom restricts the program of the other children?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I O N 0

15. Do you believe a more effective means could be utilized in mainstreaming the exceptional child than the resource room plan?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 N O

16. Do you have enough time in your schedule to locate materials for the exceptional child as well as plan for the other children?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 N O

17. Do you believe the children who are mainstreamed would be happier in a self-contained special educa- tion classroom?

YES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I O N 0

* An equivalent set of questions were administered to resource room teachers.

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