Forming Special Education Teachers during the Pandemic: New Teachers’ Sense of Self Efficacy

This paper examines special education new-teacher perceptions about the impact of shifting from teaching children with disabilities in person to a remote learning delivery. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted formal education and shifted special education service delivery to a ‘remote modality’. Health restrictions and community lockdowns literally pushed teachers into online delivery systems beyond their own learning experiences and into their students’ homes. The research methodology employed is a mixed methodology approach, where the responses from a six-open-question survey were coded and quantified. Based on these results, administrators and policy makers have to consider changes to accommodate this paradigm shift to better serve students with disabilities, a matter of educational equity and social justice.