Seeing Self as Others See You: Variability in Self-Efficacy Ratings in Student Teaching

Source: Teachers and Teaching, Volume 15, Issue 5 (October 2009), pages 541 - 561.
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)

The main objective of this study was to investigate the differences between pre-service English teachers' self-efficacy beliefs with the instructors' views of the teaching competence of these pre-service teachers. Thus, the following research question was addressed in the study: Is there a difference between pre-service teachers of English self-efficacy beliefs and the instructors' assessment of these pre-service teachers' professional competence?

Thirty-nine student teachers (13 males and 26 females) and five female instructors participated in the study. All of the participants were speakers of Turkish.

The student teachers were eighth-semester, fourth-year students of a university, Faculty of Education, Department of ELT in Turkey. They had successfully completed their teaching practice in both public and private lycees.

The instructors had been working at the same department for at least five years and all of them had MA degrees in ELT.

For data collection, student teacher and instructor versions of the same scale were used.

The results of the research indicated that the student teachers' self-efficacy judgments were higher than the instructors' judgments for the student teachers' teaching competence. Interviews with the instructors indicated that enactive experiences and verbal persuasion seem to be important factors which affect the personal efficacy beliefs of the prospective teachers in the current study.