Relationship between Locus of Control and Self-efficacy among Special Educators

Self-efficacy is the belief of a person that is related to a specific task, challenge or endeavor; which means that self-efficacy may differ according to situations. Locus of control, on the other hand, is a person’s attribution towards a factor on the outcome of an event. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between self-efficacy and locus of control of special educators. Ex-post facto Research Design was used in this study. The sample for the present study consisted of thirty-five women special education teachers purposively chosen from five special schools in Chennai city. The women special educators were in the age range of 25 years to 40 years, having a work experience of 2 years to 10 years and salary ranging from to rupees 4000 to 12,000 rupees. The following standardized tools were used; the Teacher Self-efficacy Scale by (Scharwzer, Schmitz & Daytner, 1999), and the Levenson’s Locus of Control Scale by (Levenson, 1973), the scale yields three distinct factors; The Individual Control (I), The Chance Control (C) and The Powerful Others (P) that were used to assess the variables chosen for the study. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was calculated to understand the relationship between Locus of control and Self-efficacy. One way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was computed to find out the difference in Self-efficacy and the factors of Locus of Control among the special educators with regard to the chosen demographic variables (namely; age, income and years of experience).