Support, Self-efficacy, and Burnout in Teachers of Children with Special Needs

Abstract

Students with disabilities tend to perform academically below their peers and so require the best quality of teacher that they can get (Brunsting et al., 2024). In general, students perform better when their teachers have higher self-efficacy (Mahmoodi et al., 2022), but teacher self-efficacy decreases when teaching children with disabilities (Guo et al., 2021). Additionally, teachers can experience burnout, which is associated with low self-efficacy (Brunsting et al., 2014) and poorer learning outcomes (Alqahtani et al., 2023). Both burnout and low self-efficacy have been linked to a lack of resources and struggles adapting to novel or unique teaching methods, which may indicate a relationship between teacher support, self-efficacy, and burnout (Brunsting et al., 2014; Cerbin-Koczorowska et al., 2023). This study analyzed how teacher support correlated with both teacher self-efficacy and burnout. This was an online study in which 113 teachers completed questions about school support, self-efficacy in teaching students with disabilities, and burnout (specifically emotional exhaustion). We hypothesized that teacher support would be positively correlated with teacher self-efficacy and negatively correlated with teacher burnout/emotional exhaustion. Teacher support was positively correlated with teacher self-efficacy, r(111) = .34, p \u3c .001, r2 = .12. Teacher support was negatively correlated with burnout, r(112) = -.53, p \u3c .001, r2 = .28. Results suggest that teachers of students with disabilities may have higher self-efficacy levels and lower burnout levels when they receive greater support from their schools. These findings could have implications for how to maximize academic achievement for students with disabilities