Reviewing teacher self-efficacy measurement research revealed that during the last three decades several teacher self-efficacy measures have been developed with mixed psychometric results and different factor solutions.
It is hard to pinpoint the main reason for these mixed psychometric results, but a likely candidate might be differences in heterogeneity of the settings and experience of the teachers in the different samples. This study focuses on first-year student teachers in competence-based education and takes into account students’ incipient developmental stage of teacher competences and teacher self-efficacy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the construct validity and predictive validity of a self-efficacy measure which is developed for predictive and diagnostic purposes for this target group.
To investigate the construct validity of the self-efficacy measure we conducted confirmatory factor analysis to provide further insight in the underlying structure of the measure. The four distinct factor models were compared based upon 4 commonly-accepted goodness-of-fit statistics used in structural equation modeling. These analyses delivered evidence for the multidimensionality of the student teacher self-efficacy construct, reflec-ting the underlying competence criteria for student teachers. Our results also revealed that the three multifactorial models (multi-factor-, second-order and bi-factor model) demonstrate a better fit than one-factor models.These results confirm, with regard to previous teacher self-efficacy measurement research (see e.g. Gibson & Dembo, 1984; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001), the multidimensionality of the teacher self-efficacy construct in general.
Within these results the multi-factor model demonstrates a slightly better fit than the second-order model. Although the STES (Tschannen-Moran &
Woolfolk Hoy, 2001) meets the Bandura criterion (1997) of task specificity, our results do not confirm Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy’s (2001) findings pointing at the second-order model as best fitting model.
Furthermore the confirmatory factor analyses delivered converging evidence for our differentiation hypothesis regarding the bi-factor model.
The bifactormodel explained 54,2% of the total variance, within which a general factor explained 22% and six specific factors together explained 32,2%, proved to be the best fitting model for our purpose. The factor loadings of the bi-factor model provided additional insight in the structure of the student teacher self-efficacy scale, a potential implication that a students incipient develop mental stage of teacher self-efficacy is partly differentiated, consisting of a general part and specific parts. The general part refers to a general common cognitive belief largely determined by indicators concerning cognitive activities.
The specific parts refer to specific practical beliefs largely determined by indicators referencing performing concrete behaviour within specific situations.
For a further interpretation of these results, it is necessary to involve the context for this study which is the first year of a competence-based teacher education programme. Students who enter this first year have an early idea of teaching and teaching competences, which tends to be more global or general in nature.
This early global concept is based on prior knowledge, teaching experiences drawn from their student role and in general no or very limited teaching expe-riences as a teacher. Competence-based teacher education nowadays provides student teachers with realistic teaching experiences from the first year of the programme. Incipient student teachers, encountering new teaching experiences, interpret these experiences and create a new and better understanding of the teaching practice and required teaching competences. In line with Schunk and Meece (2006) who state that students’ school experiences help shape their self- efficacy beliefs, we argue that the development of teacher competences matches the development of first year student teachers self-efficacy. This implies, according to the theoretical assumption of Eccles, Wigfield and Schiefele (1998), that first-year student teachers enter the first-first-year programme with a more global undiffe-rentiated sense of teacher efficacy. As students have more teaching experiences a differentiation takes place from a broad understanding to a partly differentiated sense of efficacy, finally leading to a more fine-grained sense of teacher efficacy.
The results of the reliability analysis revealed a high internal consistency for the scale as a whole and taking into account the small number of items in some sub-scales, all six sub-scales also demonstrated high internal consistency.
Furthermore, the results of the logistic regression analyses revealed that the student teacher self-efficacy subscales as well as the student teacher self-efficacy as a whole succeeds in making an accurate prediction of the student’s first-year outcome on all of the six aspects. These results are in line with and confirm other empirical and theoretical research findings that point at the predicting role of the self-efficacy construct in relation to students’ achievements, as stated by social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997). Logistic regression results also reveal that general efficacy information alone does not provide a accurate competence prediction. These results are in line with social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1977, 1997) as well as earlier teacher self-efficacy measurement research (see e.g.
Brouwers & Tomic, 2003), pointing at the inappropriateness of global measures with one-factor solutions.
The summarized construct and predictive validity results reveal that we succeeded in developing a student teacher self-efficacy measure (see appendix) that meets psychometric requirements in terms of reliability and validity.
In concrete terms, the student teacher self-efficacy measure, reflects the
underlying competence criteria, and consequently takes into account student teachers’ stage of competence development. With regard to our literature review, results show that our student teacher self-efficacy measure outperforms existing teacher self-efficacy measures such as the STES (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001), because it meets the optimal level of task as well as context specificity.
The practical result of this study, a method for measuring student teachers’ developing self-efficacy, can be used as a monitoring system for tracking student teachers’ competence development during the educational programme in a non-threatening way. The implication of this is that teacher educators use filled-in questionnaires to analyze students’answers at three levels: the scale level, the subscale level and the item level. Referencing the scale level, students with a low overall sense of efficacy can be detected in an early stage of the programme.
Using the subscale level the supervision of students can be targeted at the specific competence aspects on which they feel less efficacious. According to the item level, inspection of the factor loadings, as a result of the factor analysis, revealed three distinct groups of items. At the item level, the supervision of students can be targeted at the type of items on which they feel less efficacious such as concrete behaviour within specific teaching situations or cognitive activities as part of the teacher educational programme.
According to Bandura (1997) self-efficacy is most pliable at an early stage of the learning process, but once self-efficacy beliefs have been solidly set, it would take a certain shock to cause a recalibration. Woodfolk Hoy and Burke-Spero (2005) mentioned the so-called reality shock as a possible explanation for the decline in sense of efficacy when novice teachers enter the field and face all the role demands and the complexity of the teaching task. As competence-based teacher education nowadays addresses students as starting teachers and provides them with realistic teaching experiences from the beginning, there is the oppor-tunity to prevent a future reality shock. However a teaching experience in itself is not automatically a mastery experience, which is in turn the main source for the establishment of a firm sense of teacher efficacy. This implicates that, to provide incipient student teachers with mastery teaching experiences, teacher educators have to tune the authenticity level of the teaching experience, the structure of the situation and the supervision of the student teachers to the complexity of the teaching task and to the students’ competence developmental level.
Referencing the risk of overconfidence, the measure has to be used with some caution during the first months of the educational programme. Although modest overconfidence is posited to promote achievement, some student teachers can be overconfident, that is a significant incongruence between student teacher self- efficacy and subsequent accomplishments, which can obscure students weak-nesses (Klassen, 2006). However when student teachers enter the vocational
practice and gain teaching experiences, their overly optimistic self-efficacy beliefs tend to recalibrate.
However, due to the limited response rate, the results of the logistic regression analyses -concerning predicitive validity and diagnostic implications - must be interpreted with caution. In order to confirm our results and to gain more insight into the diagnostic implications of the student teacher efficacy subscales, further research is needed on a larger scale. Next to this further investigation it is necessary to gain insight in the diagnostic use of the student teacher efficacy subscales within the practice of competence-based teacher education. Finally, in this article we focused on first-year student teachers concerning students with an incipient developmental stage of teacher efficacy. As a consequence, new research is needed to invesigate if and how a further differentiation of student teacher efficacy takes place during their further competence development.