The Impact of Inclusive Middle School Classrooms on Students’ Academic Self-Efficacy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The effects of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic continue to be unveiled. The pressures and stipulations for inclusion can cause great stress for teachers and administrators to attempt ways to create a least restrictive environment (LRE) for students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), while maintaining rigor and safety for all students in the midst of changing policy and practice. Self-efficacy allows individuals to measure their beliefs in the ability to complete a task. The pandemic led to a need of examining students’ self-efficacy within the inclusive environment. The purpose of the study was to examine the differences in academic self-efficacy scores based on students’ classification as a student with and without a documented disability and gender among middle school students in an inclusive classroom. The research was conducted in this study through a casual comparative study to determine students’ self-efficacy toward inclusion in in-person and remote classrooms. This study examined 222 students, while using 2 two-way analyses of variance in disability qualification, gender, and learning format. The instrument of measurement is the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS) created by Midgley et al. (2000) used to measure students’ self-efficacy at the end of the 2020-2021 school year finding that having a documented disability had no significance on academic self-efficacy. Gender and learning format (in-person compared to virtual) did not have significant effect size within this study. There has been extensive research on the effects of inclusion; however, the measured self-efficacy of students throughout the pandemic experience needs continued development. Results indicate further research and intervention to improve academic self-efficacy of students.