The Power of the Paraprofessional: Investigating Self-Efficacy and the Importance of Ongoing Professional Development
The rising number of students with disabilities, along with the decreasing number of teachers, has made the role of the paraeducator increasingly important. Paraeducators enter the workforce with varying degrees of experience and knowledge, making the creation of targeted professional development programming necessary. Often, though, the training needs of paraeducators are found to be inadequate, leaving the provision of training to the teachers who are generally underprepared to work with paraeducators. This lack of preparation and collaboration could result in an ineffective implementation of inclusive support within the general education classroom for students with disabilities and could leave paraeducators feeling disconnected from the school community. A correlation analysis identified strong, positive relationships among the three areas measured by the TSES subscales, indicating that as we provide paraeducators support in one area of self-efficacy, their overall confidence to support students with disabilities in a variety of settings increases. This implies that when paraeducators are included in professional development programming, they are better able to implement instructional and behavior management strategies with high fidelity and have a higher sense of belonging and self-efficacy.
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