Teacher’s Professional Background and Competence in Inclusive Education

Inclusive education has been a remarkable paradigm shift in the Philippine educational system.

The main problem of this study was to determine the teachers’ competence in inclusive education in Maasin District II, Maasin City Division handling learners with special educational needs for the school year 2019 – 2020. This study focused on 30 teachers from different schools of Maasin District II who were able to handle mainstream classes of special education. A checklist on teachers’ professional background and level of competence in 3 key areas; Social Regard, Learners’ Diversity, and Knowledge in Inclusive Education were given to the respondents. The researcher used both quantitative and qualitative methods as the research design in this study. Research findings revealed that only teachers’ training significantly relates to their teaching competence in the correlation test between teachers’ professional background (education, training, years of teaching) and their level of competence to teach inclusive education. It would be easier to address or prevent possible new challenges for teachers in mainstream classes if they improve their level of competence. Increasing the competence among teachers in teaching Learners with Special Educational Needs (LSEN) relies significantly on building instructional capacity through training. Thus, the level of competence of teachers is realized through the provision of enough training and professional technical assistance. The school may opt to invest resources in training and the development of teachers to further bring out the output of the study, which is a division training workshop on teaching approaches and classroom management techniques for inclusive education teachers.

Keywords – Challenges, Competence, Inclusive Education, Teachers’ Background