Abstract
There has been considerable debate in the 90s on the rapidly changing role of teachers. One major change in their role has occurred as a result of the increasing inclusion movement. Regular class teachers now find themselves needing to program for students with a considerably wider range of abilities than previously. In particular, teachers find increasing numbers of children with intellectual and other disabilities in their regular classrooms. This paper discusses the findings of issues that regular class teachers find stressful during inclusion and how they best cope with them. Data were obtained by employing the Teacher Stress and Coping questionnaire (TSC). Australian teachers (N=571) from all Queensland state primary schools who were involved with the inclusion of a child with a moderate or severe intellectual disability report on a range of potential stressors identified during inclusion. Further consideration is given to their selection of coping behaviours to help ameliorate stress. Although, generally, teachers did not appear to have an overall high degree of stress due to inclusion, some particular issues were reported as being significantly more stressful than others. Additionally, stress varied according to gender, previous involvement with inclusion and training in educating children with special needs.
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