The Effectiveness of the SERASI Intervention Program in Improving Parents’ Positive Attitudes towards Students with Disabilities

Abstract

Improving parents’ positive attitudes towards students with disabilities is the first step in increasing their role in inclusive education. The SERASI (Sekolah Ramah Inklusi) intervention program was designed to improve the attitudes of parents of general education students towards students with disabilities in inclusive primary schools. This study aims to examine the SERASI intervention program’s effectiveness. Twenty-three mothers of general education students from inclusive schools participated in this study. Before and after receiving two days of training, the parents filled out the PATCH questionnaire developed by Rosenbaum, Armstrong, and King (1987) in order to measure their attitudes. The results showed a significant increase in the parents’ attitude scores after completing the intervention program. The pre-test scores were M = 77.35 and SD = 6.766, and the post-test scores were M = 83.65 and SD = 9.393 (t(22) = -5.182, p = 0.000). Based on these results, we conclude that the SERASI intervention program appears to be generally effective in improving parents’ attitude scores, suggesting that the program could improve parents’ attitudes towards students with disabilities. We suggest further studies, such as a measurement of the attitudes of general education students towards students with disabilities prior to and following their parents’ participation in the SERASI intervention program.