Postsecondary English Language Teachers’ Concerns about Teaching Students with Disabilities

The implementation of inclusive education—education for all—is complicated in language learning contexts due to the unique barriers that students with disabilities (SWDs) can encounter when learning a foreign language. In addition, teachers’ views on inclusive education are critical in ensuring its full and proper implementation. Therefore, there is a clear need to understand English language teachers’ (ELTs’) concerns about teaching such students. This study used the critical incident technique (Flanagan, 1954) to interview 13 ELTs working at the postsecondary level in Japan about their concerns about teaching SWDs. Thematic analysis using the constant comparative method (Glaser, 1965) revealed 12 concerns, with the two most common being concern for issues related to diagnosis and/or disclosure and curricular constraints, both of which were frequently connected to concern for institutional barriers to inclusion. A discussion of local contextual factors and suggestions on how to reduce these concerns conclude the paper.