Professional Development for Working with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Teacher Self-Efficacy

Abstract

The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the effect of teacher professional development for working with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and teacher (N = 56) self-efficacy in the general education classroom. A pretest/posttest quasi-experimental research design was implemented. Teachers in one randomly assigned school received professional development training on research-based practices in working with students with autism to determine if the training had any effect on their perceived selfefficacy ratings and teachers in the other school were randomly assigned to serve as the control (i.e., no additional professional development training was provided during the research phase). Results showed that the training had a large positive effect on teacher self-efficacy ratings regarding working with students with autism in the inclusion classroom. Findings tentatively show the need and importance for the provision of more professional development training to general education teachers for working with students with autism to improve teacher self-efficacy and to provide the most effective and inclusive educational experience possible.

Análise da Comunicação de uma criança com Peturbação do Espetro do Autismo: um estudo exploratório

“…Entre os autores referenciados, existe consciência de que o uso das tecnologias, em especial as digitais, são um complemento para o ensino e para a aprendizagem (pode existir intenção de ensinar e não haver aprendizagem) (Araújo et al, 2021;Banković et al, 2019;Cascella, 2005;Cascella & McNamara, 2005;Chelkowski et al, 2019;Kim et al, 2017;Ntalindwa et al, 2019), melhorando a interação dos alunos com os professores, aumentando os níveis de pré-disposição dos alunos para estar na sala de aula e, por conseguinte, aumentando a motivação (Alison et al, 2021;Banković et al, 2019;Lei et al, 2021;Su et al, 2021).…”

The Use of Professional Development to Enhance Education of Students with Autism: A Systematic Review

“…Most of the included studies (10) [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] were conducted in the USA. Two studies were conducted in Europe (UK [41] and Ireland [54]) and two studies in Australia [40,55].…”

“…One study was implemented in Hong Kong by Ho et al (2018) [56]. In nine of the studies, the focus was solely on general school placement [40][41][42][46][47][48]50,55,56], and in three studies, the focus was on special school/group [49,53,54]. In three cases, the studies included both general-and special school placement [45,51,52].…”

“…All studies included in-service teachers and/or SEN teachers. In seven studies [41,44,46,47,49,50,55], a combination of participating professionals (e.g., teachers, paraprofessionals, and school leaders) participated. Students with autism were involved in seven [45,[48][49][50][51][52]56] of the included studies.…”

“…Four studies [44,48,53,54] explored general and SEN teachers' views of how professional development efforts could be designed to support and develop practice. Seven studies [40,41,46,47,50,55,56] focused on developing teachers' learning, knowledge, skills, and teacher's efficacy to advance strategies to educate students with autism and develop an educational environment with increased wellbeing. As such, the focus was on teachers' attitudes and the development of their practice.…”