Impact of COVID-19 on Teachers’ Quality of Life and Attitude toward Inclusion

The pandemic outbreak led to economic, health, and social crises, which shaped an ever more complex and challenging context, such as the school environment and specifically in students with disability. Even before this pandemic, students with disabilities or vulnerability are at greater risk for school exclusion than their peers without disabilities. Indeed, students with disability or vulnerability are predominantly left behind during disasters, crises, and emergencies, such as in the case of COVID-19. In particular, teachers’ attitudes are a critical element to make school inclusion successful. Analysis and reflection on teachers’ attitudes in COVID-19 time may constitute the basis for the school’s continuous development to implement inclusion. This contribution focused on Italian teachers’ attitudes toward students with disabilities or vulnerability as potential social contextual factors favoring or hindering more complex school inclusion processes during COVID-19. Overall, the results of these studies showed as COVID-19 can implement negative teacher attitudes toward inclusion and negatively influence a vision of the more conservative, less cooperative, and supportive future. These results underline the importance of investigating the relationship between environmental and personal variables, such as attitudes toward disability inclusion, with the teacher and all actors that can support inclusive school contexts.