TEACHER SELF EFFICACY
Teaching profession needs a knowledge base that grows and improves in order to improve classroom teaching in a steady and lasting way. In spite of the continuing efforts of researchers, archived research knowledge has had little effect on the improvement of practice in the average classroom.
Teacher self efficacy is one of such new domains which provides a knowledge base in order to improve teacher performance in the classroom setting. Teacher self efficacy springs from Self efficacy concept of Bandura.
Self efficacy is the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the sources of action required to manage prospective situations.
Factors affecting self-efficacy
Bandura points to four sources affecting self-efficacy:
1. Mastery Experience: "Mastery experience" is the most important factor deciding a person's self-efficacy. Mastery experience i.e. Success raises self-efficacy, failure lowers it.
2. Modeling: When people see someone succeeding at something, their self-efficacy will increase; and where they see people failing, their self-efficacy will decrease. This process is more effectual when a person sees him- or herself as similar to his or her own model.
3. Social Persuasions
Social persuasions relate to encouragements/discouragements. These can have a strong influence – most people remember times where something said to them significantly altered their confidence. While positive persuasions increase self-efficacy, negative persuasions decrease it. It is generally easier to decrease someone's self-efficacy than it is to increase it.
4. Physiological Factors
In stressful situations, people commonly exhibit signs of distress; shakes, aches and pains, fatigue, fear, nausea, etc. A person's perceptions of these responses can markedly alter a person's self-efficacy. If a person gets 'butterflies in the stomach' before public speaking, those with low self-efficacy may take this as a sign of their own inability, thus decreasing their self-efficacy further, while those with high self-efficacy are likely to interpret such physiological signs as normal and unrelated to his or her actual ability.
Level of arousal affects self-efficacy, depending on how the arousal is interpreted. When faced the task, if asked, are you anxious and worried? (Lowers efficacy) or Are you excited and “psyched”? (Raises Efficacy).
Teacher self efficacy is a belief about judgment of his or her capabilities to bring about desired outcomes of student engagement and learning, even among those students who may be difficult or unmotivated (Armor et al., 1976; Bandura, 1977). This judgment has powerful effects. Teachers’ sense of efficacy has been related to student outcomes such as achievement, motivation and students’ sense of efficacy.
Teacher self efficacy may be high or low depending on teachers’ beliefs in their judgments regarding classroom teaching & learning situations.
Teachers who have high self-efficacy, tend
- to persist in failure situations (Gibson & Dembo, 1984)
- to take more risks with the curriculum (Guskey, 1988)
- to use new teaching approaches (Gibson & Dembo, 1984)
- to get better gains in children's achievement (Brookover et al. 1979)
- to have more motivated students (Midgely et al. 1989).
- to take more risks with the curriculum (Guskey, 1988)
- to use new teaching approaches (Gibson & Dembo, 1984)
- to get better gains in children's achievement (Brookover et al. 1979)
- to have more motivated students (Midgely et al. 1989).
Five assumptions for effective teaching all of which are supported by research findings are:
1. Self-reflection: Teachers need to be capable of self-reflection. Effective teachers reflect on their own thinking and about their actions.
2. Intentional Behaviour: Much of teachers' behaviour is purposeful, intentional, and goal-directed. Teachers' behaviour is guided by forethought (including anticipation and prediction).
3. Symbolic Representation: Teachers teaching depends on their capacity for symbolic representation also. Symbolic representation creates internal representations of experience, generates innovative and multiple solutions, and characterizes possible consequences (behavioral, cognitive, emotional) of applying these solutions.
4. Self-Regulation: Teachers require the capacity to self-regulate their thinking, behaviour, and emotions by exercising direct control over their thinking, behaviour, and teaching circumstances.
5. Triadic Reciprocal Causation: There is an interaction, reciprocity, and inter-dependence of teachers' inner personal factors (cognition, emotion, and biological events), teachers' behaviour, and the circumstances in which this teaching occurs. Bandura (1989) refers to this as triadic reciprocal causation.
There are at least four kinds of self-efficacy of a teacher:
Behavioral Self-Efficacy of a Teacher
Behavioral self-efficacy of a teacher is the self-belief in one's capability as a teacher to perform specific actions to deal with specific teaching situations.
Cognitive Self-Efficacy of a Teacher
Cognitive self-efficacy as a teacher is the self-belief in one's capability as a teacher to exercise control over one's thinking in specific teaching situations.
Emotional Self-Efficacy of a Teacher
Emotional self-efficacy of a teacher is the self-belief in one's capability as a teacher to exercise control over one's emotions in specific teaching situations.
Cultural Self-Efficacy of a Teacher
Cultural self-efficacy of a teacher is the self-belief in one's capability as a teacher to perform specific actions in culturally-appropriate ways in specific teaching situations.
These four kinds of self-efficacy of a teacher interact
Influences on Self-Efficacy of a Teacher:
The purpose of teacher education is to assist student teachers understand, explain and use self-efficacy to mediate what they know and can do, and how they teach. There are at least five sources of influence on these self-efficacy beliefs.
Performance accomplishments
Performance accomplishments are the most influential source of efficacy information. Successes perceived as genuine build a robust sense of self-efficacy. On the other hand, failures perceived as genuine undermine self-efficacy.
Vicarious experience
Modeling the behaviour of significant others can strengthen self-efficacy by encouraging the observer to self-reflect on their personal beliefs about competence and capability in similar situations.
Verbal Persuasion
Verbal persuasion may strengthen student teachers' self-efficacy. Student teachers who are persuaded verbally that they possess the capabilities to overcome specific difficulties are likely to mobilize greater effort and to persist longer. However, verbal persuasion, in itself, may be limited in its power to promote enduring change.
Emotional and physiological arousal
In judging self-efficacy, people evaluate their emotional and physiological arousal in given situations. Emotional and physiological arousal impairs or enhances self-efficacy beliefs, and thereby influences subsequent performance. Teachers' emotions and moods are persuasive as a source of information that influences self-efficacy judgments. Mood despondency, anxiety, and depression are likely to have a negative effect on self-efficacy in that the teacher is less likely to believe they are capable of making a difference in challenging situations.
Thus, teacher education programmes ought to explore strategies whereby teachers:
a. become aware of their physiological arousal, emotions and moods
b. become aware of the effects these may be having on their self- efficacy and performance, and
c. develop strategies to exercise control over physiological states, moods, and emotions.
Teacher job satisfaction
Job satisfaction may be defined as positive or negative evaluative judgments people make about their job (see Weiss, 2002). Job satisfaction is an affective reaction to one's work. Self-Efficacy is predictive of higher job satisfaction. High Self efficacy leads to better job performance leading to teacher job satisfaction.
Teacher burnout
Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job. It is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. The experience can impair both personal and social functioning, and thus contributes to a decline in the quality of work and interpersonal relationships (Maslach, 2001).
Using structural equation modeling Skaalvik and Skaalvik (2007) found a strong relation between teacher self-Efficacy and teacher burnout.
Effective teaching: exercising self-efficacy and thought control of action
The capacities to survive the demands, threats, and challenges within the diverse circumstances of teaching, to demonstrate resilience and persistence, and to demonstrate innovativeness are governed primarily by teachers' beliefs about their capability-that is, their self-efficacy as teachers.
Effective teachers have the capacity to exercise this self-efficacy and, in particular, to exercise thought control over their actions.
Teacher Outcome Expectations vs. Self Efficacy
Teacher outcome expectations are beliefs that acting in certain ways are likely to lead to certain outcomes. But such knowledge does not guarantee that teachers will willingly act in these ways. Yet acting in certain ways as a teacher, usually leads to consequences which can be anticipated. Studies show that self efficacy beliefs and teacher outcome expectations are interrelated and interdependent.
SELF EFFICACY - IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHERS
The research on expectancy, competence, and efficacy beliefs provides a number of implications for teachers.
The Domains of Instruction Affecting Teacher Self efficacy are instruction, motivating, adapting, discipline, co-operating and coping.
The following principles can be used by the teachers in the classroom environment. These principles will need to be adapted to the specific classroom context in a thoughtful and pedagogically sound manner.
1. Help students maintain relatively accurate but high expectations and efficacy and help students avoid the illusion of incompetence.
2. Students' perceptions of competence develop not just from accurate feedback from the teacher, but through actual success on challenging academic tasks. Keep tasks and assignments at a relatively challenging but reasonable level of difficulty.
3. Foster the belief that competence or ability is a changeable, controllable aspect of development.
4. Decrease the amount of relative ability information that is publicly available to students.
5. Students' perceptions of competence are somewhat domain specific and are not equivalent to global self-esteem. It is more productive for academic learning to help students develop their self-perceptions of competence rather than their global self-esteem.
Types of Teacher Self Efficacy
Teacher Self - Efficacy is of:
1) Individual teacher Self Efficacy
And
2) Collective teacher Self Efficacy.
Collective self–efficacy
Collective self–efficacy deals with a group's beliefs in its competence for successful action, similar to an individual’s belief in his or her competence. A group of teachers, for example, can believe in the faculty’s capacities to cope successfully with stressful events that challenge the group as a whole.
Thus, collective self–efficacy will influence a group’s goal setting, their collective efforts as well as their persistence when barriers arise. A highly efficacious team of teachers will, therefore, be more convinced of their ability to materialize innovative projects or to cope with budget cuts and other adversities. In addition, they will not easily be discouraged by setbacks.
Structural model of relations between perceived school context, External Control, and Collective teacher efficacy:
Five di Five dimensions of teachers' perception of the school context: (a) discipline problems and disrupted student behaviour (discipline), (b) teachers' feeling of having a heavy workload, having to prepare for teaching in the evenings and weekends, and having a hectic school-day with little time for rest and recovery (time pressure),(c) teachers' experience of being trusted by the parents, of communicating well with parents, and that cooperation with parents were easy and adaptive (parents),(d) teachers' feeling of having autonomy regarding choice of teaching methods, educational strategies and content within the limit set by the national curriculum (autonomy), and (e) teachers' feeling of having cognitive and emotional support from the school leadership, that they could ask the school leadership for advise, and that their relation to the school leadership was one of mutual trust and respect (supervisory support). |
pt refers to individuals' knowledge and perceptions about themselves in academic achievement situations (Wigfield & Karpathian, 1991).
Academic self-Efficacy refers to individuals' convictions that they can successfully perform given academic tasks at designated levels (Schunk, 1991). Students with a strong sense of efficacy are more likely to challenge themselves with difficult tasks and be intrinsically motivated. These students will put forth a high degree of effort in order to meet their commitments, and attribute failure to things which are in their control, rather than blaming external factors. Self-efficacious students also recover quickly from setbacks, and ultimately are likely to achieve their personal goals.
Students with low self-efficacy, on the other hand, believe they cannot be successful and thus are less likely to make a concerted, extended effort and may consider challenging tasks as threats that are to be avoided. Thus, students with poor self-efficacy have low aspirations which may result in disappointing academic performances becoming part of a self-fulfilling feedback cycle.
The Motivational Principles Teachers Ought to
Implement in Their Classrooms
To Influence Student Self-Efficacy
The basic tasks here are to first support and then recognize mastery experiences. Teachers need strategies, useful attributions, and tools to support the development of efficacy. Students need real evidence that effort will pay off, that setting a higher goal will not lead to failure, that they can improve, and that abilities can be changed. They need authentic mastery experiences. Some ideas for teaching are:
Emphasize students’ progress in a particular area.
Examples
1. Return to earlier material in reviews and show how “easy” it is now.
2. Encourage students to improve projects when they have learned more.
3. Keep examples of particularly good work in portfolios, contrast with earlier work.
Make specific suggestions for improvement, and revise grades when improvements are made.
Examples
1. Return work with comments noting what the students did right, what they did wrong, and why they might have made the mistakes. Give information to improve.
2. Experiment with peer editing.
3. Show students how their revised, higher grade reflects greater competence and raises their class average.
Stress connections between past efforts and past accomplishments.
Examples
1. Have individual goal-setting and goal-review conferences with students, in which you ask students to reflect on how they solved difficult problems.
2. Confront self-defeating, failure-avoiding strategies directly.
Be realistic about problems but build on strengths.
Examples
1. Recognize progress and improvement.
2. Share examples of how you have developed your abilities in a given area and provide other models of achievement who are similar to your students—no supermen or superwomen whose accomplishments seem unattainable.
3. Don’t excuse failure because a student has problems outside school. Help the student succeed inside school.
Don’t overlook the power of verbal persuasion from a trusted teacher or coach.
Students may just need to persist long enough to see some authentic improvement.
Teachers influence on self-efficacy of all three types
Students self efficacy: Develop self-reflection and Meta cognition—help students become more self-aware—teach kids to self-regulate their self-efficacy. Give both challenge and support. Think authentic mastery and developing (incremental) abilities. Avoid social comparisons and meaningless praise, give feedback that helps students improve, not “self-esteem” building general accolades (see Pajares & Bengston, 1995).
Teachers self efficacy: Teachers need to learn to regulate their own self-efficacy by becoming self-aware about the sources, including collective. Teachers also need to be mindful to nourish their sources of efficacy, to self-regulate their efficacy. They need to know that they will have to nurture and protect their sense of competence by seeking models and mentors, asking for the teaching tools they need, and keeping a journal noting successes. Focus on strengths—of the teacher and of the students. Find a collective that believes in students’ capabilities and learn from them.
Collective self efficacy: Find a supportive environment; create a collective that makes you feel capable (Sternberg contextual intelligence). Avoid collectives that focus on student failure.
Research
During the last decade the research literature also shows a growing interest in teacher self-Efficacy (e.g., Soodak & Podell, 1996; Wheatley, 2005).
Based on social cognitive theory teacher self-Efficacy may be conceptualized as individual teachers' beliefs in their own ability to plan, organize, and carry out activities that are required to attain given educational goals
Following this conceptualization Bandura's(1997, 2006b) recommendation for item construction should be followed when measuring teacher self-Efficacy: (a) because selfefficacy is concerned with perceived capability the items should contain verbs like “can” or “be able to” in order to make clear that the items ask for mastery expectations because of personal competence, (b) the object in each statement should be “I” since the aim is to assess each teacher's subjective belief about his or her own capability, and (c) each item should contain a barrier. The latter point is underlined by Bandura (1997, p. 42) stating that “If there are no obstacles to surmount, the activity is easy to perform, and everyone has uniformly high perceived self-Efficacy for it.”
Based on Bandura's definition of self-Efficacy several instruments have been developed to measure (personal) teacher self-Efficacy.
Conclusion
Teacher efficacy has become an important construct in teacher education, and teacher educators should continue to explore how teacher efficacy develops, what factors contribute to strong and positive teaching efficacy in varied domains, and how teacher education programs can help preservice teachers develop high teacher efficacy. Beliefs act as a filter through which new phenomena are interpreted and subsequent behavior mediated, but information can be filtered such that similar beliefs can have differing outcomes. For example, high teacher efficacy can promote or inhibit conceptual change (Guskey, 1986, 1989). That is, teachers highly confident in their instruction may be highly resistant to change any facet of it in large part because of the confidence they have in themselves; or, teachers highly confident in their instruction may also be confident enough in themselves to attempt conceptual change.
It should prove insightful to discover how teachers make the connection between belief and action and under what conditions similar teacher efficacy beliefs can result in differing performances.
Beliefs are not difficult to alter, so low teacher efficacy can be raised. And, as efficacy beliefs are critical to the process of teaching, they can be made an explicit focus of teacher education programs for enhanced teacher effectiveness and better student outcomes.
In the end it would be appropriate for every teacher and teacher educator to introspect themselves as following:
Teachers might ask themselves:
1. Am I aware of the link between teacher efficacy and student learning?
2. What steps do I take to share my learning with other teachers?
3. What steps do I take to put new skills and learning into action in my classroom?
4. What feedback am I given about my own competence?
5. Are you encouraged or given the opportunity to plan and work in teams?
6. Are you encouraged to experiment with your learning in the classroom and to share this with other teachers?
7. What do I talk about with other teachers? Is it about my own learning or about what I am doing in the classroom?
8. Do I feel that I contribute to the learning in this school?
A fundamental assertion: Beliefs matter, self-efficacy is a powerful belief, and teachers can make a difference for their students and themselves through self-efficacy.
