Examining Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Students With and Without Specıal Needs

Abstract

Recently, the studies about teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs have been grown in the literature. However, teachers’ sense of efficacy of children with special needs have been searched less. In this study, self-efficacy beliefs teachers’who work with students with and without special needs were investigated in terms of some demographic varables by using an instrument developed for Turkey. Participants of this study were teachers working with disabled and nondisabled children (N= 234). Of the participants, 133 %56.8) were special education teachers while 101 (%43.2) were general education teachers. Means and stardart deviations of the teachers’ age were 37.16 and 9.43 correspondinly. To collect data of the study the Teachers Self-Efficacy Scale developed by Kaner et all. (Kaner, Şekercioğlu and Yellice-Yüksel, 2007a, 2007b; Kaner, Şekercioğlu and Yellice-Yüksel, 2008) was used. The data were analyzed by independent group t-test. Results showed that teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs do not differ according to the type of student they work with, the teachers’ gender, teaching context and teaching experience as well. The data were discussed in terms of Turkish and international literature