Training Teachers in Social Skills: Does Self Efficacy Play a Role?

Background: Teachers who are certified in special education rarely receive specialized training in autism.  As teacher self efficacy has been related to many positive benefits in the classroom, research has begun to look at self-efficacy effects during teacher training (Ruble et. al., 2011).  Our training program is a state-wide, intensive training based on structured teaching principles.  The week long, interactive training provides an opportunity to receive in-vivo supervision and feedback from experienced trainers.  Through lectures and hands-on construction of visual supports and materials, participants create a classroom, work with children with ASD and teach the autism curriculum.  Preliminary evaluations of the training (IMFAR, 2009; BPS, 2010) have demonstrated that participants significantly increased their knowledge of structured teaching practices by attending our training.  Furthermore, once they returned to their home schools they implemented a multitude of structured teaching techniques.  However, teacher self report indicated social behavior goals were one of the hardest to implement.  To further study our training in relation to social behavior, we added a teacher self efficacy measure to our evaluation protocol.

Objectives: This study investigated the effectiveness of the training model to increase teachers competence in social skills instruction.  The study addressed:     (i) teacher change in self competence to teach social instruction and  (ii) the relationship of teachers self efficacy to outcome.

Methods: Participating teachers (n= 105) who attended the hands on 5 day training workshop completed a structured teaching competence questionnaire pre and post training.  The questionnaire was developed and piloted by the lead trainers to assess key aspects of structured teaching practice and principles.  In addition, teachers completed the Teachers Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES, 2001) pre-training.  We utilized the TSES subscale ‘Efficacy for Instructional Practices’ and the social behavior subscale of our questionnaire for this analysis.

Results: i) T-test revealed that for the whole group, there was a significant ( p<.01) increase in scores of self competence to teach social instruction pre and post training.   ii) TSES scores were divided by the mean score to create high and low self efficacy groups.  To compare group performance on the social behavior measure pre and post training, scores were entered into a repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance, with time (pre, post) as the within subjects repeated measure and group (high, low SE) as the between factor.  There was no significant group by time interaction effects.

Conclusions: These results indicate the effectiveness of our training program.  By attending the training, teachers increased their confidence in their ability to teach social behavior, at any level of social ability, to individuals with ASD.  However, teachers general self efficacy for instructional strategies appeared to have little relationship to increase in competence for teaching social skills.  This has important implications for teaching the autism curriculum.  Even teachers who have high self efficacy for general teaching instruction, should receive specific training in providing social skills for students with ASD.