Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy During a Time of Crisis

Abstract

Technology education (TE) has the creating, making, and doing aspects of human activity at its foundation. This article presents a comparison of the teaching sense of efficacy (TSE) of practicing TE teachers and teacher candidates (TC) pre/post a forced switch to emergency remote teaching (ERT). In study 1, the effect of the switch to ERT had a significantly negative effect on TE teachers (N = 42; d = 1.77). In study 2, TE TCs (N = 16) were similarly affected (d = 1.16). Results of a two-way mixed ANOVA demonstrate that ERT had a greater negative impact on TE teachers’ TSE for student engagement (partial eta squared = .11) and classroom management (partial eta squared = .19) than it did on TE TCs’ TSE. As novice teachers tend to draw more from contextual factors than mastery experiences, this research demonstrates that experienced teachers were at a greater loss due to the pandemic than TCs.