Pre-service Special Education Teachers’ Knowledge about Autism

Abstract

There is a great deal of concern in respect to the increase autism prevalence rates.Teachers are responsible for teaching students in their classrooms.However, research findings suggest that special education teachers are underprepared and express 'low" to "moderate" levels of knowledge about autism.Analysis of several databases revealed no studies concerning levels of knowledge about autism among pre-service special education teachers.The presented study aimed at investigating pre-service special education teachers' levels of knowledge about autism.A test was developed for the purpose of this study.Further, a sample of 56 pre-service special education teachers responded to the study test.Participants were enrolled in a training session of 12 hours, 4 times a week.The participants responded to pre-and posttest.Results indicated that the levels of knowledge among the study sample was within the "low" range.However, this shifted toward the "moderate" levels after finishing the training.Additionally, there were no differences between male and female participants and year level in respect to the levels of knowledge about autism either before or after receiving the training.The participants differ in the levels of knowledge on GPA rating in the pretest results, but not the posttest results.