We investigated the influence of the learning disability label on performance expectations among prospective teachers in Germany. Using an experimental design with 276 participants, they read a description of a student with academic problems, with only the experimental group having the student labeled as having a learning disability. Results revealed no significant main effect of the learning disability label, but prospective special education teachers had partially lower performance expectations than regular education teachers.
We conducted a meta-analysis of 342 studies to examine the effectiveness of professional development for teachers regarding inclusive education. We found positive effects on all outcome categories, including large effects on teachers' knowledge and moderate effects on teachers' skills. Long-term training with high practical relevance and active learning opportunities was found to be most effective.
We examined how a short-term training on autism affected the attitudes of 50 pre-service teachers towards students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Results showed that explicit attitudes significantly improved after training, while implicit attitudes remained neutral. The study suggests that future research on sensitive topics should combine both measures, and that explicit attitudes may be more susceptible to bias than implicit attitudes.