Based on the notions of teachers’ self-efficacy by Bandura (1986, 1997) and the cyclical nature of teacher efficacy by Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy (2001, 2007), the current research set up the research structure as Figure 3-1. Teachers’
self-efficacy serves as a mediator whose formation factors are from contextual factors and personal background variables. Teaching practices are the results of teachers’ self-efficacy. Therefore, the components of research variables are evolved around it.
Sources of efficacy:
1. School factors 2. Background factors 3. Language proficiency
Teachers’ self-efficacy:
1. Classroom management 2. Student engagement 3. Instructional strategies
Teaching practices:
1. Diversity
2. Pedagogical strategies 3. Flexibility
Figure 3-1 Research Structure
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Participants
All nonnative EFL public primary school teachers in Taoyuan County were included in the research as participants. Private elementary schools were excluded because they varied in many ways from public schools, such as school settings, faculty, curriculum design, students’ backgrounds and so on.
Taoyuan County was chosen due to its special features in many ways.
Positioning itself as the gate of Taiwan, Taoyuan is to be transformed into Taoyuan Aerotropolis. In order to carry out the plan, tremendous funds and resources were put in to advance English education and to enrich English language environments.
The local government’s policy is to make Taoyuan so internationalized as to make it the culture ambassador for Taiwan. The English education was officially extended to first grade from 2011, forerunning many other cities and counties in Taiwan. To meet the demand for more English teachers, the government not only recruited overseas volunteers and hired qualified substitute teachers but also held 20-credit TEFL training programs every summer for in-service teachers. Yet, little research was made to explore whether there would be any discrepancies between teachers’ need and the availabilities of resources, which drove the researcher to do this study focusing on this county.
According to the Ministry of Education (MOE, 2012), for the academic year 2012, there were a total of 188 public primary schools with 542 English teachers in Taoyuan County. Stratified random sampling method was employed. Out of total 460 samples, 384 teachers responded. Among them, 339 teachers were female, reaching 88.3％. More than fifty percent of the participated teachers took on multiple job postings, which made the pure subject teachers less than half. All of the participants were B.A. holders or above but up to 62 percent of them did not
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major in English. When the data was collected, there were still more than one fifth of the participated teachers attending TEFL-related trainings with less than 10 credits and 16.4 percent of participated teachers were appointed to teach English against their will. With 12 years’ official English education implemented in Taiwan, only 16.4 percent of the participated teachers had more than ten years’ EFL
teaching experience. Table 3-1 displays the summary of descriptive statistics of participants’ background information of this study.
Table3-1. Summary of Descriptive Statistics of Background Information of Participants in the Formal Study
Indicators Frequency Percent
Gender Male
Job Position Subject teacher
Homeroom teacher Highest Educational Attainment B.A.
M.A.
University Major English
Other than English
148 236
35.8 61.5
TEFL Training Above 10 credits
Below 10 credits
300 84
78.1 21.9 Willingness to Teach English Volunteer
Against the will
321 63
83.6 16.4 Year(s) of Teaching Experience 0~3 years
3~10 years
To answer the research questions, the current study adapted the long version of the Ohio State teacher efficacy scale (OSTES) (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001) that is constructed under the cyclical formation of teacher efficacy beliefs and has
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also been frequently applied to educational research (e.g.,Chacón, 2005; Chang, 2010; Lee, 2009; Shore, 2004). The items in the OSTES cover a broad range of significant teaching tasks, such as “assessment, adjusting the lesson to individual student needs, dealing with learning difficulties, repairing student misconceptions and motivating student engagement and interest” (Tschannen-Moran, 2001, p.796).
The construct of teachers’ self-efficacy was devised to measure three dimensions, i.e. efficacy for instructional skills, efficacy for classroom management and efficacy for student engagement. That is considered complete enough to cover the core of an effective teaching and learning.
In terms of the assessment of multifaceted teaching dimensions and selections of representative teaching activities and tasks, a great leap had been made by the OSTES with proved reliability and validity. Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001) pointed out that unlike other instruments that limit the focus of efficacy measure on
“coping with student difficulties and disruptions as well as overcoming the impediments posed by an unsupportive environment” (p.801), the OSTES
integrated more core items from the employment of instructional strategies, diverse teaching assessments to the cultivation of students’ creativity and critical thinking.
Considering the advantages and coincidence of items of the OSTES, the long version of the instrument was thus used in this present study.
The questionnaire of the present research consisted of the following four parts:
1) EFL teachers’ background information and measure of antecedents of teachers’
self-efficacy, 2) teachers’ self-reported English proficiency, 3) teachers’ sense of efficacy in teaching English, and 4) teachers’ EFL pedagogic strategies. All of the questionnaire items were written in English first and then translated into Chinese in order to minimize the respondents’ misunderstandings due to the medium language
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(See Appendix A & B for the English version, and Appendix C & D for the Chinese version). The advisor and senior EFL teachers were invited, using back translation, to improve and to ensure the quality of translation. Teaching cognitions were used as the title of the questionnaire instead of teachers’ self-efficacy in order to avoid influencing the participants’ judgement.
The design of questionnaire format was a six-point Likert-type scale, except on the measurement of teachers’ pedagogic strategies, in order to reflect the
participants’ responses from “Doing this without any confidence” to “Doing this with great confidence” on a scale of one to six. The 4-point scale was used on the measurement of teachers’ pedagogic strategies due to the features of items’
description. In addition, the selection of 4-point or 6-point scale rather than the 5-point scale was to avoid the neutral answer, allowing the participants to reflect their real thoughts on each item with more consideration. Barcelos (2003) also recommended the benefits of the Likert-type questions, especially in the context of belief studies regarding L2 acquisition. Considering the objectives of discovering varied levels of teachers’ self-efficacy, self-reported language proficiency,
orientation of pedagogic strategies and antecedents of teachers’ self-efficacy on a large scale, a 6-point and 4-point Likert-type formats were therefore used to collect quantitative data, and to observe the strength of the participants’ agreement
regarding each item. In total, there were 67 questions constructed. Table 3-2 illustrates the distribution of the items. The instrument for each part of the questionnaire is delineated below.
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Table 3-2. Distribution of the Items in the Questionnaire
Part Researched Construct/Measure Number of Items
Ⅰ Background Information of Participants Variables Related to Teachers’ Self-Efficacy
7 7
Ⅱ Self-Reported Language Proficiency Listening
Speaking Reading Writing
4 4 4 4 8 8 8
Ⅲ Perceptions of EFL Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Efficacy for Classroom management Efficacy for Student Engagement Efficacy for Instructional Skills
Ⅳ Teachers’ Self-Reported Pedagogical Strategies 12