Pre-service teachers’ empathy and attitudes toward inclusive education—The chain mediating role of teaching motivation and inclusive education efficacy

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321066 April 29, 2025 6 / 18 Materials and methods This study is a cross-sectional survey conducted using pre-service teachers (18–24 years old) from Heze University, China, as respondents, after obtaining approval from the Ethics Committee of Heze University. The researchers contacted them via WeChat and sent them the link to the questionnaire star. When they opened the link, a consent form message appeared, and they could complete the questionnaire. This research was conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Heze University. The study followed the basic principles of academic ethics, with particular emphasis on the anonymization of the data collected, confidentiality, and non-discrimination of participants. Participants A total of 550 questionnaires were distributed by the researcher, out of which 87.27% (n = 480) were available for data analysis. Among them, the majority are female 84.58% (n = 406) while the rest are male 15.42% (n = 74); 33.54% (n = 161) were first-year students, 32.08% (n = 154) were sophomores, 24.79% (n = 119) were juniors, and remaining 9.59% (n = 46) were seniors. There were 38.75% (n = 186) primary education majors, 27.29%(n = 131) preschool majors, 3.33% (n = 16) psycho-education majors, 18.54% (n = 89) special education majors, 5.84% (n = 28) art education majors, and 6.25% (n = 30) education majors. Measurement

Empathy. In this study, empathy refers to the teachers’ ability to understand and share the feelings of students with special need. This study adopted the empathy dimension of Davis’s (1996) Interpersonal Response Indicator Questionnaire [46]. It consists of seven question items on a 7-point scale, ranging from 1 to 7, representing complete disagreement to complete agreement. Teachers used self-evaluations such as “I often feel soft and caring toward those less fortunate than me,” the higher the score on this scale, the higher the level of empathy. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the empathy scale is 0.80 [46]. Teaching motivation (TM). Teaching motivation in this study includes the teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to teach, particularly in a challenging and diverse environment. The revised Motivation for Teacher Education Questionnaire by Schepens et al. (2009) was used in this study [47]. The questionnaire consists of four items and two dimensions: professional love (PL) and educational interest (EI), respectively, which indicate the level of an individual’s love for the teaching profession and the level of interest in education. The scale was based on a 6-point Likert scale from 1–6, representing very unconformable to very conformable. The higher the score on the questionnaire, the higher the level of teaching motivation. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the two dimensions of the scale were 0.85 and 0.74, respectively [47]. Inclusive education efficacy (IEE). This study defines inclusive education efficacy as the teachers’ belief in their

own ability to effectively teach in an inclusive setting. This study employed the Teachers’ Efficacy of Inclusive Education Practices Scale developed by Sharma, et al. in 2012 [48] and revised by Chinese researcher, Li (2018) [36]. The scale consists of 18 questions and includes three elements: inclusive teaching efficacy (ITE), collaborative efficacy (CE), and behavioral management efficacy (BME). Each factor consists of 6 questions. The scale was based on a 6-point Likert scale from 1–6, representing strongly disagree to strongly agree. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the inclusive education efficacy scale was 0.94 [36]. Attitude toward inclusive education (ATIE). This study used the Scale of Sentiments, Attitudes, and Concerns about Inclusive Education (SACIE-R), a 15-question scale revised by Forlin et al. (2011) [49], to examine the attitudes of the teacher group toward inclusive education in three dimensions. The three dimensions were attitudes (5 questions), concerns (5 questions), and sentiments (5 questions). The scale was based on a 6-point Likert scale from 1–6,