Future specialists' attitude towards persons with disabilities

The attitude towards people with disabilities plays an important role in specialists' work. This paper describes a research on the attitude towards disabled people in students of Pedagogy and Psychology of the Disability Department. As it was found in the research, the character of the attitude depends on the cognitive complexity and flexibility of the system of one's personality constructs that underlies one's perception and evaluation. The empirical part of the research included G. Kelly's role construct repertory test, modified method of free evaluation, and unfinished sentences test. One hundred and fifty-five first-year, third-year and fifth-year students participated in the study. It was discovered that the following characteristics were typical of students: creating a multidimensional image of a disabled person; having alternative schemes of perception and evaluation; accepting the idea that human individuality has various forms of revealing itself; being tolerant towards the differences that exist between people; admitting the ambiguity of the problem of attitudes towards disabled people; openness to other points of view. Three types of attitude towards people with disabilities were described in the research: negativistic, compassionate, and constructive. The second type was predominant among the participants.