The role of qualification and experience in Greek Parallel Support: Teachers’ personal views A qualitative study

Abstract: Aim: This study attempts to identify notable differences in the implementation of Parallel Support (PS), given different levels of qualification and experience of teachers providing it. The wider aim is to explore those teaching attributes that may be most clearly associated with successful PS practices, by collecting and analyzing the perceptions of eight teachers with various types of qualification in special education, who are presently working or have worked in the PS provision. Theory: This study adapts to Bandura‘s social cognitive theory, which refers to both self efficacy and teaching efficacy, in the context of modeling how teachers help individual learners to learn. By referring to Bandura‘s self-efficacy attribute, there is an effort to connect it with the results that address to whether a teacher of PS feels confident that his/her abilities are enough to influence the performance of his/her job. By following Bandura‘s teaching efficacy attribute, there is an effort to attach the accounts given by the sample to their academic self-image that comes forward in their own accounts, too. Method: This study follows the qualitative path, as the character of the qualitative research designs, through the semi structured interviews and the storytelling, define and develop an approach to the research questions. In addition, thematic analysis and coding are used in order to analyze the data. Results: It emerged those PS teachers who have a Bachelor degree or a Master‘s in special education feel more sufficient to respond to the needs of the provision. The rest of the participants question their qualifications when it comes to special education, but all eight of them agree that experience and the adequate need for extra qualification on the field can help, up to a degree, any teacher to respond to a demanding provision like Parallel Support