Review Article Volume 1 Issue 5 - July 2017 DOI: 10.19080/GJIDD.2017.01.555575 Glob J Intellect Dev Disabil Copyright © All rights are reserved by Eric Shyman Perceptions of Social Justice and Attitudes toward Inclusive Education among Pre-Service Teachers in the USA: A Brief Report of an Exploratory Study Eric Shyman* and Jessica Scher Lisa Associate Professor of Child Study, St Joseph’s College, USA Submission: July 03, 2017; Published: July 17, 2017 *Corresponding author: Eric Shyman, Associate Professor of Child Study, St. Joseph’s College, 155 W, Roe Blvd, Patchogue, NY 11772, USA, Tel: ; Email: Introduction The movement toward inclusive education for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities is increasing steadily on a global level, as evidenced by the 21st century initiatives of Education for all as well as the UN Convention on Persons with Disabilities [1,2]. In order to ensure that the efforts toward more inclusive opportunities for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities is addressed with care and precision, increased attention in research must also be put forth in addition to policy and practice reforms. One area of potential research is the investigation of attitudes and perceptions of pre-service teachers, or teachers in training, toward inclusive education. There are a number of means by which inclusive education is conceptualized in the literature, including time spent in the general education classroom and including students during times of academic strengths. While these pragmatic conceptions are common and sensible from a certain perspective, a potentially more important and socially relevant means is to conceptualize inclusive education in terms of social justice [1,3]. That is, including individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in general education classrooms with non-disabled peers is not just an educational policy reformation, but rather a social justice policy reformation implemented to fulfill an individual’s social and civil rights. The elusive nature of measuring perceptions of social justice creates numerous challenges for researchers, causing many to pursue other more attainable avenues. For this reason, research on social justice in education is sparse. However, one’s sense of morality, especially in terms of perception of social justice, is an imperative factor in the effectiveness and the longevity of practicing teachers, especially those who work with marginalized groups of any kind [4,5]. Furthermore, while there are some very valuable qualitative inquiries into the nature of social justice across many disciplines, systematic quantitative inquiries are much less available. One reason for this sparsity is the difficulty in conceptualizing and quantifying social justice in a meaningful way. For the purpose of this paper, social justice will be conceptualized as working to elucidate social practices of domination, privilege, and oppression in which inequities are not addressed through redistribution of wealth or resources, but through the requirement of unjust processes to be scrutinized and transformed at a practicable social level [6]. Inclusive education is another element of 21st century schooling that is apt to present conceptual and methodological Glob J Intellect Dev Disabil 1(5): GJIDD.MS.ID.555575 (2017) 0096 Abstract With the signing of the Education for All initiative of 2000, as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of 2007 bolstering the call for inclusive education globally, research investigating attitudes toward inclusive education among education professionals has become exigent. This article reports the findings of an exploratory study which examined the correlation between and predictive validity of the perceptions of social justice and attitudes toward inclusive education for individuals with disabilities among 96 pre- service teachers at a school of education in the United States. Results suggested a significant positive correlation between affirmative perceptions of social justice and supportive attitudes toward inclusive education. Further, a hierarchical regression analysis revealed a small but significant level of predictive validity between perceived social justices on attitudes toward inclusive education. Implications and further directions for research are discussed. Global Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities ISSN: 2575-8586