Chapter 10: Special Educators’ Efficacy and Exceptional Students’ Future Trajectories: Informing Barbados’ Education Policy

This study examines special education teachers’ teaching efficacy, beliefs about their students’ post-school outcomes, and its implications for education policy in Barbados. Teacher efficacy is an important psychological variable influencing a teacher’s perceptions or beliefs about the trajectories of students with special needs in Barbados. This study investigated the questions: (1) What are teachers’ levels of efficacy at schools providing special education in Barbados? and (2) What are teachers’ perspectives about the future trajectories of students with special education needs? The research design used mixed methods to investigate variables such as teacher efficacy. Teachers at four case sites expressed a high level of Perceived Teaching Efficacy with respect to teaching students with special education needs, but recorded low levels of efficacy on the General Teacher Efficacy Scale. The qualitative data suggest that the study’s teachers express a mixed view of their students’ future trajectories. Initiatives to improve students’ post-school outcomes must be buttressed by an education policy that is forward-looking and can enable special needs students to transcend the barriers currently hindering them from self-actualization and being productive citizens in Barbados.