Regular Versus Special Streams within Teacher Education

Teacher educators need to have a clear picture of student teachers' attitudes towards diversity, disability, learning and teaching, because this knowledge can be helpful in designing teacher education programmes which can prepare future teachers better for work in inclusive settings. Therefore, the study presented in this paper was designed to explore the attitudes of student teachers enrolled in teacher education programmes in Slovenia (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education) and Serbia (University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Education in Jagodina) towards the factors which affect the learning difficulties of vulnerable pupils. The results of the study suggest that the majority of student teachers in the first and the fourth year from both countries rank a pupil's disability as the factor which has the greatest impact on his/her learning difficulties. The authors conclude that fragmentation between special teacher education and regular teacher education, that is, between special education and mainstream education may elicit student teacher attitudes which are not conducive to taking responsibility for vulnerable pupils, and might therefore hinder the process of inclusion. The implications of these findings for teacher education programmes are subsequently discussed.