Abstract

The article presents the evaluation of an Israeli training program for in-service support-teachers of students with visual impairments (VI) focused on the social conduct of these children. The program combines interactive sessions of acquiring knowledge, teaching skills and professional tools with a process of empowering the teachers’ perceptions towards promoting the students’ social conduct. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the changes in the support-teachers’ perceptions of their Role, sense of Self-efficacy and Motivation to promote the social conduct of their students, following the teachers’ participation in the program. The research includes three studies in which data was collected sequentially from both quantitative and qualitative methods. This article presents only the quantitative findings, which were obtained before, at the middle and at the end of the program. The findings revealed significant increase in the teachers’ perceptions of their Role and sense of Self-efficacy during the program. The findings also show significant positive correlations between teachers’ perceptions of their role and sense of self-efficacy and positive correlations between teachers’ perceptions of their identified motivation and both sense of self-efficacy and role perception. The main conclusion arises from the research is that teachers’ perceptions of their role and self-efficacy towards promoting the social conduct of students with VI can be enhanced through an interactive and empowering training program tailored to the teachers’ needs. Another conclusion is that enhancing the teachers’ perceptions of their self-efficacy through training program can increase their perceptions of the importance of their role. The findings can contribute to advance programs in the social field for teachers in general and special education, and to encourage more studies in that important field. The research is a part of a PhD research.

Keywords: Identified motivation; role perception; self-efficacy; social conduct; students with visual impairment; training program