Prevalence of Self-Determination Content in Teacher Education Programs

Abstract

Self-determination, as it applies to special education, has been studied extensively. While the effects of self-determination for students with disabilities are established, there is still limited knowledge of the presence of the construct in preservice teacher preparation programs. This study begins to addresses this gap. In particular, a nationwide sample of secondary general education and special education teacher preparation programs was examined. Department chairs and program coordinators were surveyed and revealed a significant difference in the mean self-determination score of participants representing special education teacher preparation programs and participants representing secondary general education teacher preparation programs. Specifically, special education teacher preparation participants had a significantly higher mean score on the ‘Autonomy’ and ‘Self-Regulation’ sections of the survey across all participants, ‘Autonomy’ had the lowest mean of all of the sections. Participants identifying as a department chair had a significantly higher self-determination score than participants that did not identify as a department chair. Finally, participants representing a university located in a state with standards for secondary special education and self-determination had a significantly higher self-determination score than participants located in a state without a standard for secondary special education and self-determination.