Education for all in action: Measuring teachers’ competences for inclusive education

factor on general school policy (# = 5, α = .74), and factors with initiatives geared specifically towards ethnic minority students (# = 4, α = .70), and students with a disability (# = 4, α = .73). Scale-scores. With regard to beliefs, analysis of variance showed that there were signifi- cant differences on in-service teachers’ belief scores depending on the dimension (V = .825, F(6, 514) = 101.26, p < .001). More specifically, teachers’ scores varied on average between 3 and 5 on scales ranging from 0 to 6 (see Table 4), indicating that teachers’ beliefs varied from a neutral position to “agree” depending on the specific scale. The post-hoc Bonferroni test revealed that, with the exception of teachers’ beliefs on SES students and their beliefs on school policy specifically geared towards disability students (p < .887), all scale scores dif- fered significantly from each other. Hence, teachers scored highest on their belief on schools’ responsibility to have a general policy on diversity, followed by holding most favourable beliefs with regards to students’ gender and sexuality, and students with a dis- ability, followed by ethnic minority students. Teachers held the least positive beliefs on the responsibility of a school to have a policy specifically geared towards ethnic minority stu- dents, and scored somewhat higher on their beliefs on SES students and the responsibility of a school to have a policy specifically geared towards disability, which did not differ signif- icantly (as reported above).

As shown in Table 4, in-service teachers tended to score on average between 5 and 6 on the efficacy-scales ranging from 0 to 8, indicating that teachers feel more or less “reasonably” effi- cacious. Analysis of variance showed that there were significant differences on efficacy scores depending on the dimension (V = .438, F(4, 520) = 101.26, p < .001). The post-hoc Bonferroni test revealed that teachers did not differ significantly in their efficacy in enabling high-quality interactions between students and collaborating with colleagues. These were the dimensions on which teachers tended to feel most efficacious when compared to the other dimensions (p < .001), with creating stimulating learning environments taking a middle position (p < .01), while noticing student diversity and collaborating with parents did not differ significantly from each other and were the dimensions that teachers rated themselves least efficacious on (p < .01). Table 2. (Continued) To what extent are you able to. . .? Notice diversity High-quality student- interactions Stimulating learning environment collaborate with parents collaborate with colleagues C5.03 Involve the parents of students with special needs in their children’s educational career. 0.885 C5.04 Adapt the way you communicate with different kinds of families (e.g. single parents, LGBT+ parents, non-native speakers. . .). 0.760 C5.06 Use the insights that parents give you about their child. 0.706 C5.07 Establish a good relationship with all parents, even if you do not like them. 0.720

C5.14 Always be available for questions from parents during school hours. 0.480 C5.15 Allow parents to give some input about my lessons. 0.451 C5.11 Integrate lesson ideas from colleagues into your own teaching practice. 0.769 C5.12 Ask colleagues for feedback to improve your teaching. 0.801 C5.13 Create new teaching methods or materials together with colleagues in order to support students with learning difficulties. 0.800 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291033.t002 PLOS ONE Measuring teachers’ competences for inclusive education PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291033 November 8, 2023 14 / 22