An Adapted Measure of Teacher Self-Efficacy for Preservice Teachers: Exploring its Validity Across two Countries

Abstract

Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) is an important construct in the prediction of positive student and teacher outcomes. However, problems with its measurement have persisted, often through confounding TSE with other constructs. This research introduces an adapted TSE instrument for preservice teachers, which is closely aligned with self-efficacy experts' recommendations for measuring self-efficacy, and based on a widely used measure of TSE. We provide first evidence of construct validity for this instrument. Participants were 851 preservice teachers in three samples from Germany and New Zealand. Results of the multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses showed a uniform 3-factor solution for all samples, metric measurement invariance, and a consistent and moderate correlation between TSE and a measure of general self-efficacy across all samples. Despite limitations to this study, there is some first evidence that this measure allows for a valid 3-dimensional assessment of TSE in preservice teachers.

The impact of direct instruction in a problem-based learning setting. Effects of a video-based training program to foster preservice teachers’ professional vision of critical incidents in the classroom

“…Third, a quantitative indication of congruent test validity was deduced from applying the MC test in a Bachelor seminar that also focused on issues of classroom management (N = 74). Since previous studies showed that an increase in knowledge of class management is accompanied by an increase in both self-reported teacher self-efficacy in classroom management (Pfitzner-Eden, Thiel, & Horsley, 2014) and self-reported knowledge (Böttcher-Oschmann, Groß-Ophoff, & Thiel, 2018), we also studied these correlations. We used Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Coefficient to show that the MC test score was correlated with teacher self-efficacy in classroom management (r = .19) and two subjective change rating items ("In this seminar I have learned a lot about effective classroom management", r = .33; "In this seminar I did not learn anything really new about classroom management", r= -0.43).…”

Does ethnicity matter? The impact of stereotypical expectations on in-service teachers’ judgments of students

“…The last dimension is related to self-efficacy beliefs about teaching ethnic minority students, or more specifically, teacher selfefficacy (Bakari 2003). Teacher self-efficacy is not only the belief that good teaching is able to reduce differences in academic achievement that stem from the different social backgrounds of the students (Gibson and Dembo 1984;Woolfolk et al 1990;Tournaki and Podell 2005) but also a belief in one's ability to cope with difficult classroom situations and interactions (Schmitz and Schwarzer 2000;Pfitzner-Eden et al 2014). Teachers with low self-efficacy have been shown to rely more on students' social background (Podell and Soodak 1993) and to have more negative relationships with their students (Yoon 2002).…”

Classroom Ready? Pre-Service Teachers’ Self-Efficacy for Their First Professional Experience Placement

“…A nine-point response scale was created, from "Not at all certain can do" (1) to "Absolutely certain can do" (9). The STSE has been validated with PSTs in Germany and New Zealand across two different initial teacher education programs and provides a stable three-factor structure for beginning and advanced PSTs (Pfitzner-Eden, Thiel, & Horsley, 2014). For the present study, three questions were used to obtain demographic information (program, gender, and teaching subject) and there was an open-ended question (Please explain in as much detail as you can the main factors which influenced your responses) repeated for each of the three sub-scales.…”

“…Data for the study was collected via a survey based on the Scale for Teacher SelfEfficacy (STSE) (Pfitzner-Eden, Thiel, & Horsley, 2014), which is a recently modified version of the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES, Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001). …”