Measuring students’ and teachers’ perceptions of resources in inclusive education – validation of a newly developed instrument

Previous research suggests that the perception of available resources has a major influence on teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education (Avramidis, E., and B. Norwich. 2002. “Teacher’s Attitudes Towards Integration/Inclusion: A Review of the Literature.” European Journal of Special Needs Education 17 (2): 129–47; Schwab, S. 2018 (in press). Attitudes Towards Inclusive Schooling. A Study on Students’, Teachers’ and Parents’ Attitudes. Münster: Waxmann). On the side of the students, no similar studies exist that examine the impact of insufficiently perceived resources on inclusive education. To assess the extent to which students – and their teachers – perceive that the resources at their school are adequate or meet their needs, the ‘Perception of Resources Questionnaire’ (PRQ) was developed.To analyse the psychometric quality (factor structure, reliability, validity) of the instrument, data were collected from 42 inclusive classes (n = 701 students, n = 27 teachers) of lower secondary level in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The main component analysis showed a single factor structure. The reliability of the scale (cronbach's alpha .67) can nevertheless be considered acceptable, since it is a short scale which comprises heterogeneous items in terms of content. For the purpose of validation, multilevel regression analyses were conducted. The findings show that only the teachers’ perception of resources – and not the resources actually available – is a significant predictor for students’ perception. Finally, the findings are discussed.