Date Approved

10-20-2003

Embargo Period

5-10-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A. in Special Education

Department

Interdisciplinary and Inclusive Education

College

College of Education

Advisor

Xin, Joy

Subject(s)

Special education teachers--Attitudes; Special education teachers--Rating of

Disciplines

Special Education and Teaching

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to design an evaluation instrument to reflect state standards and implementation of instructional performance criteria for special education teachers. It was designed to evaluate the performance of the specific job duties and instructional responsibilities required of special educators to determine if the instrument indicates teacher efficacy and provides adequate opportunities for feedback to improve performance. A total of 30 special education teachers from 4 different schools within the same school district participated in the study to evaluate the instrument. The respondents were categorized according to tenured or non-tenured status, and either co-teaching or self-contained classroom settings. Each teacher provided self-reported written responses to a questionnaire with 32 items indicating the extent to which they felt items were very appropriate, appropriate, somewhat appropriate or inappropriate. The responses were analyzed according to a rank of 4 to 1 indicating very appropriate to inappropriate and the mean and standard deviation of the questions ranked were calculated. An ANOVA was conducted to analyze the results to compare the responses of teachers in self-contained and co-teaching settings. The results indicate that there is no statistical significance of differences between the responses of teachers in those 2 different groups. The findings indicate that the evaluation instrument provides support for further research to develop an evaluation instrument for special education teachers to enhance their efficacy, and provide feedback to improve the quality of job specific performance.

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