General education teachers' perceptions of their ability to teach students with disabilities: A secondary data analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Title I schools

This study examined teacher and school characteristics and professional development activities associated with general education teachers' perceptions of their ability to teach students with disabilities in Title I schools, and whether professional development influenced their teaching practices.; The research design for this study was a secondary data analysis of principal and teacher survey data collected for the National Longitudinal Survey of Schools (NLSS) in school year 1999-2000. The analyses focused on data collected from second grade, third grade and fourth grade general education teachers who taught reading or mathematics in Title I schools. T-tests, multiple regression analysis, one-way analysis of variance and the Chi-square test of association were used to analyze and compare data.; The study found that general education teachers in Title I schools who had more years of teaching experience, higher degrees, more years of experience in their current school, and who were older and fully certified, perceived that they were better prepared to teach students with disabilities. The professional development activities positively related to teachers' perceptions of their ability to teach students with disabilities were time for teachers to plan instruction together, a formal mentoring relationship among teachers, participation in a network of teachers outside the school, and participation in an out-of-district conference, workshop or institute. The study also found that when general education teachers used certain instructional strategies to teach students with different achievement levels, such as homogenous grouping, extra time with low performers, instructional materials at different levels, one-on-one instruction, frequent assessments of student performance, higher achieving students working with lower achieving students, and enrichment instruction; the better prepared they felt to teach students with disabilities.; Overall, these findings indicate that the efficacy of general education teachers to teach students with disabilities in Title I schools depends on a number of factors, including professional development, use of instructional strategies, as well as the impact of certain teacher and school characteristics.