Which inclusive teaching tasks demand the highest teacher efficacy in primary and secondary schools?

Contribution: Inclusive education has become an important long-term goal in education policies and reforms in many countries. Inclusion refers to educating children with special education needs (SEN) according to their specific needs in regular schools that they would attend if they did not have a disability (Rafferty, Boettcher & Griffin; 2001). Typical daily teaching practices include the use of inclusive instructions, managing student behavior, as well as collaborating with others in the context of inclusive education. Implementation of inclusive education has been reported to be highly challenging to teachers. There is very little knowledge about demands on teachers in relation to specific inclusive teaching tasks and the related efficacy level. We initiated the present study with an aim to derive the hierarchy of inclusive teaching tasks in terms of demanded teacher efficacy for primary and secondary school teachers. Method: The hierarchy of inclusive teaching tasks in terms of teacher efficacy required was constructed using Rasch rating scale model. The sample consisted of 536 in-service teachers (212 primary and 324 secondary school teachers) who attended a teacher professional development course. Measuring instrument used was the Teacher efficacy in inclusive practices (TEIP) (Sharma, Loreman & Forlin, 2012), which consists of three aspects of inclusive teaching, namely using inclusive instruction, collaboration and dealing with managing behaviors. There are 18 items in TEIP; for each item a six-point Likert rating scale from ‘strongly disagree=1’ to ‘strongly agree=6’ was used. The questionnaire was self-administered and completed by the participating teachers at the beginning of the training sessions. The Rasch analytic framework was employed to estimate the level of teacher efficacy required for each domain using Winsteps 3.81.0 (Linacre, 2014). Expected Outcomes It was found that collaboration tasks demanded the highest level of teacher efficacy in both primary and secondary school teachers. Managing behavior required the lowest level of teacher efficacy but slightly more in primary than in secondary school teachers. In this study, a more reliable hierarchy of tasks has been established. Results of the study also indicate that teacher training regarding inclusive practices should be revised and refined and specific to school level, i.e., primary or secondary. Future research could focus more on 3-way collaborations between school, parents and the community. Through achieving these, a bigger impact on the educational system could be made for enhancing future teacher training and ultimately benefit different stakeholders in our pursuit of inclusive education. Copyright © 2017 ECER.