Special education: Influence of preservice preparation on teachers' perception of their practice and intent to stay

There is growing concern surrounding the preparation received by teacher candidates as it relates to teacher effectiveness and teacher turnover in today's special education classrooms. Programs that include skills such as self efficacy address these concerns as it may promote quality educators which in turn could increase longevity of practice. The purpose of this study was to examine, a special education teacher preparation program that intentionally includes efficacy components. The research questions address whether or not there is a significant difference in self-efficacy scores derived from the Teachers Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) between beginning special education teachers that graduated from a specified program (Group 1) as compared to similar special education teacher preparation programs. (Group 2) Participants were invited via purposeful sampling to respond to a demographic survey and the TSES self-efficacy survey. Group membership was the independent variable for this research, and self-efficacy was the dependent variable. Results (n=22) from a Mann-Whitney U test showed that teachers from Group 1 demonstrated significantly higher efficacy scores than teachers from Group 2. The same result was obtained through a regression analysis. Finally, results from a z test of proportions indicated that teachers who graduated from Group 1 had a higher intention to stay beyond the beginning years of practice than teachers who from Group 2. The benefits of this study as it relates to social change is that with proper pre-service training children with disabilities can be taught by quality teachers, which could promote higher levels of student success.