Browsing by Author "Ramoutar, Amanda, Michelle"

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    Exploring Educators’ Perceptions about Necessary Supports for Inclusive Practice: Development and Assessment of a Conceptual Model
    (2023) Ramoutar, Amanda, Michelle
    This study addresses an area of research that has not been well described within inclusive education. In the ethic march towards inclusion in schools in the CARICOM region, educators have been left feeling less than confident in their ability to fulfill their responsibilities in meeting students’ needs due to the lack of facilitating conditions. The purpose of this two-phase, exploratory sequential mixed-methods study was to explore participant views about the provision of supports and to use this information to develop and test a model of necessary supports for educators’ inclusive practice. The first phase was a qualitative exploration of which supports are deemed essential to improve inclusive practice, in which individual and focus group interview data were collected from a sample of 10 education directors. Since there are no existing instruments to assess the provision of supports for inclusive practice, the themes from the qualitative findings were used to develop an instrument so that a series of hypotheses could be tested that relate to educators’ views about the key categories of supports necessary, and the relationship between supports and inclusive practice. Quantitative data collection for the second phase of the study was from a larger sample group of educators consisting of education directors, principals, and classroom teachers. Survey data were analyzed using basic and inferential statistical methods. The study found that five categories of supports are necessary for inclusive practice: an administrative plan of action, an educator efficacy mechanism, a coordinated response to student functionality, ecological infrastructure, and sensitization and advocacy. Further, the study revealed that these all impact educators’ inclusive practice.