The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to investigate kindergarten teachers’
attitudes towards inclusion in the Nur-Sultan city. The data was obtained by
interviewing Russian and/or English speaking kindergarten teachers. Kazakh speakers were not for the interview as the researcher is not confident in speaking Kazakh. The researcher chose a qualitative research method as it is better suited to answering the research questions. The main goal of the research is to investigate the current situation of preschool inclusive education The chapter is organized into sections: (a) research design and rationale, (b)research site, (c)sample and sampling procedures, (d) participants (e) data collection procedures, (f) data analysis methods, (g) ethical concerns and risks of research, (h) significance.
Research Design & Rationale
The main focus of this research was based on collecting data by interviewing on the participants' attitudes towards inclusion of children with special educational needs into the general kindergarten setting. The peculiarities of the research justify using a qualitative approach (Hatch, 2002; Creswell, 2007). A qualitative research design gives an opportunity for participants to reflect on their professional experience, share their thoughts, and raise concerns on the problem in question. The study approach is interviewing preschool teachers as a research tool, allowing one to look at the subjective opinions and thoughts of the participants (Seidman, 2013).
Research site
The research site of this study is preschool educational organizations and kindergartens.
The researcher conducted research in both private kindergartens and public kindergartens in the city of Nur-Sultan. The difference between private kindergartens in a state kindergarten primarily
depends on the form of ownership. Private kindergartens are run by private individuals. Public kindergartens are managed by authorized persons. This study aims at investigating preschool teachers' attitude on the local level by recognizing teachers' attitude towards children with special educational needs. The research offers insight about the conditions of inclusive education in the field of preschool and about the kindergarten policy for children with special educational needs.
The researcher interviewed 8 different representatives from 8 different kindergartens.
Sample and sampling procedures
The participants of the study are teachers from local kindergartens; the choice of the participants was done through snowball sampling.
Sampling is the method of picking a part of the population to represent the whole and make a generalization in the study (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011). The researcher planned the sampling process and determined the method of study. According to Wiersma & Jurs, (2009) snowball sampling is an adequate method when there are difficulties in reaching the participants of the study, and where the researcher is asking the contacts of the other participant as a “chain method”. This is an efficient and cost-effective way to access people who would otherwise be very difficult to find. The reason for using snowball sampling is because the researcher does not have the contacts for kindergarten teachers throughout the city and therefore researcher asked for the contacts from the nearest circle of the subjects’ associates to participate in the research. The planned number of participants was 8 kindergarten teachers. For the research, a sample was one representative from each kindergarten.
Participants
All the interview participants were women. They had different teaching experience and educational background. As a researcher, it was hard to reach for the participants. The reason for
it was that not many people wanted to participate in the interview. The researcher asked for the contacts of the participants from the principal of the kindergarten or colleagues working in this area of education who already had the contacts with kindergarten teachers.
All participants are working in the local kindergartens in the city of Nur-Sultan in the position of a teacher, and one participant was employed as both a principal of the kindergarten and a teacher.
By extrapolating the data to the group of teachers working in kindergartens at present, we can see that these are mainly people with a short experience of working with preschool children:
about 30% have minimal professional experience (from one to three years), the same - a short experience (from four to six years). Approximately 10% of teachers have sufficient experience working with children (seven to fourteen years), and other employees have solid professional experience (31 years working with children).
Thus, among teachers in this study working in groups with inclusive education and upbringing, teachers with minimal or little professional experience prevails (see Table 1)
Table 1 Participants
Coded Name Teaching Experience Type of Early Childhood Facility
T1 4 years Public kindergarten
T2 3 years Public kindergarten
T3 2 years Public kindergarten
T4 5 years Public kindergarten
T5 11 years Public kindergarten
T6 2 years Public kindergarten
T7 31 years Public kindergarten
T8 3 years Private kindergarten
Data collection procedures
As this study is based on a qualitative approach, the data was collected through face to- face interviews. This method of data collection is used in order to understand opinion and beliefs of the participants, where according to Patton, “We interview to find out what is in and on someone else’s mind, to gather their stories” (Patton, 2002, p. 341). There was flexibility in questions because it helped to create a dialog between interviewer and participant, so the researcher would have a deeper understanding of the situation. By recognizing and choosing appropriate instruments and materials to collect that data, the field issues and ethical considerations were acknowledged.
Upon receiving approval from NUGSE research ethics committee, the I began collecting data for the present study. In recruiting participants, I highlighted the importance of the research and provided a cover letter from the university. I also shared with my participants and the principals about possible risks related to the research, and the confidentiality of the participants was explained prior to starting the interview. The participation in the interview was completely voluntary and they had a right to withdraw at any stage of the research. The data collection started in December and lasted two months. Every interview was scheduled before hand and each participant was interviewed individually at a preferred location. The duration of the interviews was 20-40 minutes. Before the interview, the researcher asked the participant to sign a consent form and then researcher asked for permission to tape the interviews and to take notes
for later reference when coding and analyzing the findings. Upon completion of the interviews, the researcher thanked the participants for their immense contribution to the study. After a few days, they received the transcription to ensure validity, eliminate any misconceptions and ask for clarifications.
Data analysis methods
The study described kindergarten teachers’ attitudes toward the inclusion of children with special educational needs. As an instrument for the data collection, the researcher devised
interview protocols in English and/or Russian (see Appendices A and B). In order to audio record the conversations, a mobile phone was used. As an example of developing interview questions, I took as a reference the research conducted by Shaikheslyamova in her work named
“Faculty attitudes toward disability-inclusive education at one national university in
Kazakhstan”. While the participants were answering the questions, I recorded the answer, and to made further notes regarding the interview. In the way of analyzing received data, I have
followed the steps that were advised in the article LeCompte (2000). In that article, the process of collecting data was portrait as puzzle pieces, where every part of the research should be connected. After collecting the data, I listened to the recordings multiple times and coded common words and phrases that were repeated in the interviews by the interview participants. I have made copies of the recorded interviews. I have categorized my participants on the category of teaching experience and then looked at the similarities and differences in their responses. In the process of analyzing data, I was doing an interview transcript (see Appendix C) with teachers’ answers and finding key points in their responses and comparing them with other interviews of other teachers. After coding the data, there was created distinct common themes and codes which can be seen in Appendix D.
Ethical concerns and risks of research
Consideration of ethical issues is an essential part to be considered in conducting this research. As a researcher, I thoroughly understand the importance of ethics, because this research is including human subjects and I understand my duty to do everything in my control to ensure that the teachers and principals who participated in this study were protected from ethical risks. Those factors include physical, psychological harm, emotional harm or discomfort. I understand the value to recognize the rights and concerns of the participants of the research. As this research includes human beings as a resource of information, the researcher must consider participants’ confidentiality and avoid causing any harm to them. According to Torrance (2010), the ethical aspects of the research must be considered by the researcher, and the researcher must provide all the conditions to the participants to feel secure that their confidentiality will be kept.
Inclusion of children with special educational needs is a sensitive topic, especially in preschool education. As a researcher, I made efforts to protect the confidentiality of the respondents. In terms of conducting my research, I made sure that participation in the research was entirely voluntarily and that the participants were told they could stop the interview whenever they wanted to. Before doing the interview, I sent to the participant's an interview consent form with information for the participant in terms of confidentiality. At the beginning of the interview, I made sure that the personal information about the participants was kept as confidential information that would not be revealed in the research. As for my interview procedure, I told participants of the approximate time the interview would take, and I requested permission to record the interview to enable further analysis and coding. The voice records of my participants are kept on a password-protected USB-drive. The USB-drive is kept in a folder in my house, and it has been kept as confidential information that nobody except me will have access to.
Summary
In the methodology, the chapter has presented the information on how the research was conducted. The researcher followed all the given instructions from NUGSE and research ethics while conducting the interviews. In this chapter, given information on the research design, the procedure of how information from the participants was received during the semi-structured interview. The researcher had a chance to ask an additional questions for better understanding teachers' attitudes towards inclusion.