The Effect of Background Experience on School Counselor Self-Efficacy When Working with Students with Disabilities
Open AccessLicensure requirements for school counselors vary across the United States. Some states require school counselors to have prior teaching experience before they are eligible for licensure. With the limited literature, it is currently unknown if this requirement is needed for successful school counselors. Bandura’s self-efficacy theory was the base of this study as it compared school counselor self-efficacy and attitudes toward students with disabilities of school counselors who have taught and those who have not taught. Participants included 240 professional school counselors with at least one year of counseling experience. Participants were asked to complete the School Counselor Self-Efficacy Scale (SCSE) developed by Bodenhorn and Skaggs (2005) which is made up of five subscale: Personal and Social Development, Leadership and Assessment, Career and Academic Development, Collaboration, and Cultural Acceptance as well as the Educators Attitudes Toward Disabilities (EADS) scale developed by Freer (2018). Analysis of the data using a one-way MANOVA and t-Tests of independent samples showed no significant differences between school counselors with and without teaching experience on their self-efficacy in the school counselor role when supporting students with disabilities. An independent samples t-test was conducted to determine the relationship between counselors who have prior teaching experience and those who do not have prior teaching experience and their attitudes toward individuals with disabilities and found to not be statistically significant. A Pearson r showed that the attitude toward working with students with disabilities and school counselor self-efficacy were moderately positively correlated. Finally, a model using years of experience as a teacher as a mediating variable of the link between school counselor self-efficacy and attitudes toward students with disabilities as the outcome variable did not reveal a significant relationship. Results of the data analysis are discussed and implications and opportunities for future research are presented.
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