Self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service special education teachers on social studies teaching

Individuals with special needs are individuals who differ significantly from normally developing individuals in terms of their physical, affective and cognitive characteristics, have various needs due to these differences, require special changes to meet these needs and must be included in an individualized education program. The purpose of special education, is to increase students' communication with their peers and social acceptance and ensure their integration and socialization without removing them from their social and physical environment with the help of special education classes and inclusion Education programmes draw a frame for socialization. Education programs provide a framework for individuals to socialize and take advantage of the opportunities required. Social studies lesson is one of the most important lessons emphasizing socialization and its field of application is to bring socialization to the fore with life skills and effective citizenship education. Social studies course helps individuals with special needs to become sensitive to their environment, good at social skills, socially active and included, productive individuals who know their rights and responsibilities and can live on their own by gaining problem solving skills. Self-sufficiency is an individuals' belief that he/her has the necessary tools to complete an objective with success. Teachers' belief of selfefficacy plays a key role in learning and teaching processes. The purpose of this research is to determine self-efficacy belief levels of special education teacher candidates who study in different universities, in relation to social studies teaching. This research consists of 309 teacher candidates who are at third or fourth grades of special education department in education faculties of various universities in Turkey. Descriptive survey model is used in the research. In this research, a personal information form developed by the researcher and social studies self-sufficiency belief scale are used for data collection. According to the factor analysis, it was seen that the scale was not suitable for different factors and was gathered under one factor. The scale which consists of a total of 40 items and a factor is calculated to have a ,925 reliability rate of Cronbach's Alpha. The scale whose last version is given is applied to the sample group with the help of online databases due to Covid-19 pandemic which affected the entire world. SPSS 22,00 package program is used for the analysis of quantitative data in this research. For the analysis of data taken from 309 special education teacher candidates, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), t test, percentage frequency analysis, Scheffe test, factor analysis, and correlation analysis are used. In conclusion, while a significant difference isn't seen in variable of gender, in which school they study, kind of high school they graduated from, reason for choosing special education teaching, whether there are individuals with special needs in their family or environment, and education status of their parents, there is seen a significant difference in age and course level. Preservice special education teachers' self-efficacy belief level of social studies is high. Keywords: Pre-Service Teacher, Special Education, Self-Efficacy, Social Studies