Teacher Training and Pre-service Primary Teachers’ Self-Efficacy for Science Teaching

Abstract

This study focuses on the improvement of pre-service teachers' selfefficacy for teaching science by including science courses within the teacher training program. Knowing how efficacy beliefs change over time and what factors influence the development by pre-service primary teachers of positive science teaching efficacy beliefs may be useful for teacher training universities, so that they can adapt their curriculum to accommodate these factors. Participants included 292 pre-service primary teachers, a cross-sectional sample from two different universities in the Netherlands across the four different years of study in the training program. Based upon our results, we conclude that the science teaching self-efficacy of pre-service teachers, in particular, improved during years 1 and 2, and not during years 3 and 4. Higher levels of self-rated subject-matter knowledge and science teaching experience in primary schools both contributed to higher levels of personal self-efficacy for science teaching. Differences at the university level in courses taken during the first year between science content courses and science methods courses also influenced the pre-service teachers' development of science teaching self-efficacy. After their first year, the pre-service teachers from the university with science content courses had significantly higher self-efficacy than pre-service teachers from the university that offered science methods courses. After the second year of teacher training, however, this difference in self-efficacy was no longer present.

In-Service Professional Development on Supporting Elementary Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Efficacy through Inquiry-Based Teacher Training

“…Regarding its integration, teachers need to believe on their professional capacities (known as teacher efficacy). Teacher efficacy in teaching can be used as a powerful indicator from teachers' professional behavior in class [6,7]. Teachers with low efficacy will struggle more in teaching, satisfaction under the standard, high level of stress at work [7].…”

Collaborative curriculum design to increase science teaching self-efficacy

“…Corresponding to Bandura's ideas about how to develop efficacy (Bandura, 1994), we suggest that the colleges incorporate the ideas of Bandura (1994Bandura ( , 1997 and Pajares (1997) by ensuring that the curriculum and the courses of the college give pre-service students the opportunity to have successful experiences with teaching science, starting with small-scale science-related activities that can be practiced in a safe environment (mastery experiences). From the results of this study, which are more elaborately described in Velthuis, Fisser, and Pieters (2013a), it can be seen that this has a positive effect: pre-service teachers who took the opportunity to choose a science-related elective assignment had a higher PSTE than those who did not do an elective science-related assignment. These mastery experiences should be accompanied with good examples or 'best practices' to get a better idea of the possibilities of teaching science (vicarious experiences provided by social models).…”

“…It was therefore decided to carry out additional analyses based on this construct to get an indication of the relation between the PSTE construct, attitude toward science, and the respondent's background. An elaborated description of the analysis of the results from the STEBI-NL can be found in Velthuis, Fisser, and Pieters (2013a), but here we focus on the factors that are related to the self-efficacy of pre-service teachers, in order to further develop the STEBI-NL. The PSTE items that are included in this analysis can be found in Table 2.2.…”

“…The teacher training program takes 4 years, which means 4 years to learn subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge for mathematics, language, arts, history, science and all other subjects in the primary school. Previous studies showed that that graduated students do have only slightly positive science teaching self-efficacy beliefs (Velthuis, Fisser, & Pieters, 2013a). In addition, only 53% of future primary teachers in the final year of their teacher training program intend to teach science when they are in-service teachers § This chapter has been submitted as: Velthuis, C., Fisser, P., & Pieters, J.…”

“…Collaborative curriculum design and the science teaching self-efficacy of pre-service primary teachers (Van Uum & Gravenmeijer, 2012). To improve current pre-service primary teacher training for science teaching, two teacher training programs with different science courses, content and method were compared regarding the development of science teaching self-efficacy by pre-service teachers in the Netherlands were studied in our previous study (Velthuis et al, 2013a). A remarkable finding was that, despite their participation in science specialization programs in both their third and fourth years of study, the science teaching self-efficacy of the pre-service teachers stabilized in the third year.…”