Kindergarten Teachers’ Social Representations of Inclusive Education in Romania
Kindergarten Teachers’ Social Representations of Inclusive Education in Romania

Summary/Abstract: The current study aimed to explore Romanian kindergarten teachers’ social representations of inclusive education based on the structural paradigm and to identify how the internal structure of the social representation of inclusive education fluctuates between the “normal” and the “substitution” context, thus underlining the existence of a mute zone, given that inclusive education may be one of the sensitive objects that are conducive of the development of a mute zone (Deschamps & Guimelli, 2002). A number of 58 kindergarten teachers participated in this study and filled in an associative map task (Dafinoiu & Crumpei, 2013) and a questionnaire. This questionnaire assessed the social representation of inclusive education in the “normal” setting, in which participants provided answers according to their own perspective and in the “substitution” context, in which they filled in the same questionnaire as if they were a typical member of their social group. Results showed that kindergarten teachers’ social representations as identified in this study were mainly comprised of positive elements, as they described integrative practices and attitudes of acceptance of inclusive education. However, the presence of the mute zone had a significant effect on the positive valence of the elements of the social representations, revealing that in the substitution context, kindergarten teachers’ social representation of inclusive education contained significantly more negative elements as compared to the normal context. Results are discussed in the light of their contribution to the field of social representations and inclusive education.

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