Representation of disability within the school textbook: primary school teachers’ attitudes

The school textbook is a cultural artefact capable of conveying a particular cultural and social imagery that clearly affects the attitudes of teachers and learners towards disability. This paper presents an exploratory-descriptive study that aims to investigate the attitudes of primary school teachers towards the representation of disability within the school textbook. Correlation between attitudes and teaching qualifications and experience were also sought. For this purpose, a questionnaire was constructed starting from macro-themes that emerged from semi-structured interviews during the previous qualitative phase. Findings have shown that teachers, while aware of the low educational value of the textbook and the scarcity of images and texts related to disability, have positive attitudes towards inclusive representation, use and design of materials related to special needs. Finally, teachers with the specialization for support activities were found to have more positive attitudes towards the representation and management of materials representing the reality of disability.