Teachers' Views of Integrated Preschools

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate integrated preschool teachers' views of integrated preschool settings for young children with and without special needs to see what might be contributing to the difficulties they and others face in designing and implementing integrated programs at the early childhood level. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 teachers to probe their thinking about their roles and settings. The narrative data were analyzed to describe the prototypical experiences and concerns of the teachers. Findings suggest that the conditions under which teachers implemented integration vary considerably from community to community and that teachers experienced more difficulty with sociopolitical variables than pedagogical factors in fulfilling their responsibilities.