Factors underlying regular classroom teachers' attitude toward mainstreaming

Nearly 1000 regular classroom teachers were administered a scale designed to assess attitude toward mainstreaming. To determine the underlying dimensions of teacher attitude, a factor analysis of the intercorrelations of the items was conducted. Five dimensions were isolated that accounted for 52.4% of the variance. They were defined as attitude toward: (a) general philosophy of mainstreaming, (b) classroom behavior of special needs children, (c) perceived ability to teach the special needs child, (d) classroom management with special needs children, and (e) academic and social growth of the special needs child.