PURPOSE: to check teachers' knowledge about hearing loss, their opinion about the students with this kind of sensorial privation and to know about their attitudes towards the inclusion proposal. METHODS: four groups of teachers from primary and secondary school, with and without experience with hearing loss students, took part in this research. The instruments utilized on this data were Lickert Scale of Attitudes toward Inclusion (ELASI) and a questionnaire, comparisons between different groups, by means of proper statistical tools, whenever the data features recommended it. RESULTS: the primary school teachers, with and without experience on hearing loss students, showed similar responses related to social attitudes about inclusion, both in under the ideological and operational dimension. The secondary school teachers, with and without experience, showed similar responses on the ideological items, however, they disagreed on the operational items. Related to the knowledge about hearing loss aspects, when compared with the group without experience and all groups emphasized the communicative aspects. CONCLUSION: the analysis revealed that different data collection procedures produced complementary data and suggested that teachers were ideologically favorable to inclusion, but they had not enough knowledge to make it feasible.
Education; Rehabilitation of Hearing Impaired; Deafness; Hearing Loss
