Assessing General Education and Special Education Majors’ Self-Efficacy for Teaching Reading

Abstract

In an era of teacher quality reforms, one overlooked area for assessing readiness for teaching is education majors’ self-efficacy for teaching reading. This gap is unfortunate, as teaching reading is a common responsibility among general and special education teachers. In the current push for RTI—one in which more general education teachers are increasingly called upon to provide reading support to students with learning disabilities, in addition to the support received from special educators—it is important to determine preservice teachers’ self-efficacy for teaching reading. Self-efficacy is an important construct to consider as it is related to eventual teacher attrition. The purpose of the current study was to develop a scale to measure elementary and special education majors’ self-efficacy for teaching reading. With a sample of 110 education majors, a three-factor scale was developed and demonstrated strong psychometric properties. Implications for the future of teacher education programs are discussed.