After Bandura’s (1997) assertion that teachers’ self-efficacy is subject-specific and context-oriented, there have been plethora of research concentrating on
measuring teacher efficacy in specific subjects and under different contexts related to teachers’ self-efficacy (Bayraktar, 2011; Betoret, 2009; Chong et al., 2010; Palmer,
14
2006; Siwatu, 2011; to name but a few). Many of them based on Bandura’s (1986, 1997) claim that four sources have influence on people’s beliefs about their efficacy—enactive mastery experiences, verbal persuasion, vicarious experiences and physiological arousal. When handling information from the four sources, one first selects “the types of information he/she attends to and uses as indicators of personal efficacy” (Labone, 2004, p. 343), and second, “weight and integrate
efficacy information in forming personal efficacy beliefs” (p. 343). The four sources are elaborated as follows.
Mastery experiences, the extent of a teacher’s satisfaction with his or her past professional performance, have been claimed to be the strongest source of
self-efficacy judgments for teachers (Bandura, 1997; Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998).
It is claimed that success builds a robust belief in one’s personal efficacy and that failure undermines it. Therefore, teachers who perceive their past performance a success tend to have stronger self-efficacy beliefs. On the other hand, teachers carry lower self-efficacy beliefs if they regard their past performance a fail. In
Tschannen-Moran and Hoy’s (2007) study, it is found that teachers’ interpretations of their past experiences were moderately associated with teachers’ perceived self-efficacy for both novice and experienced teachers. Gorrell and Capron (1990) has shown that experiences during student teaching influence the development of teachers’ efficacy and that the student teacher’s mentor and cooperating teachers’
role in their supervision also play a significant part in the development of teachers’
efficacy.
Verbal persuasion is interpreted as “verbal interactions that a teacher receives about his or her performance and prospects for success from important others in the teaching context, such as administrators, colleagues, parents and members of the
15
community at large” (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007, p.945). Whether the feedback is given formally or informally, both have been claimed to have impacts on teachers’
self-efficacy and the subsequent performance to some degree. In Tschannen-Moran and Hoy’s study (2007), they explored how various forms of verbal persuasion, such as interpersonal support from administrators, colleagues, parents and the community, influenced novice and experienced teachers’ self-efficacy. The results revealed that none of the verbal persuasion variables contributed to experienced teachers’
self-efficacy; only the support from colleagues and the community was linked to novice teachers’ self-efficacy. However, it is worth noting that the power of verbal persuasion for teachers’ judgment of their capacities may differ in some ways due to
“the credibility, trustworthiness and expertise” (Bandura, 1986, as cited in
Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, p.230) the persuader reveals during the interaction.
The third source is through vicarious experiences provided by social models.
Vicarious experiences refer to the experience of observing other teachers modeling a target activity. Bandura (1997) stated that observing people succeed in task by sustained effort increases observers’ beliefs that they can also command the
capabilities to achieve similar activities. The effect of the modeled performances on observers’ self-efficacy beliefs is determined by “the degree to which the observer identified with the model” (Bandura, 1997, as cited in Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007, p.945). In another word, the more closely identified the model is to the observer in terms of gender, training and professional experience, the stronger impact there is on teacher’s efficacy beliefs. Otherwise, there is little impact on teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs if the model should be considered relatively different from the observer in many ways. In empirical studies, modeling is detected as a powerful tool in forming pre-service teachers’ sense of self-efficacy (Labone, 2003;
16
Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998).
And finally, Bandura’s fourth source of teachers’ self-efficacy is physiological arousal, the self-beliefs of efficacy to reduce people’s stress reactions and to alter their negative emotional inclination and interpretations of their physical states.
Tschannen-Moran et al. (1998) state, “high levels of arousal can impair functioning and interfere with making the best use of one’s skills and capabilities,” while
“moderate levels of arousal can improve performance by focusing attention and energy on the task” (p. 219).That is, pleasure or depression teachers experience during their teaching is claimed to have an influence on teachers’ perception of their individual competence. The happier and more satisfied a teacher feel about his or her teaching, the more his or her positive judgment of capabilities will be boosted. In contrast, a sense of anxiety and depression will undermine teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs.
Three of the abovementioned sources were used as the criteria of the
antecedents in the research after the features of the participants in this study were taken into account. They are mastery experiences, verbal persuasion and
physiological arousal. Only vicarious experiences were not included due to the rare chance of happening and the participants’ tight instruction schedule in the EFL primary settings.
Previous Studies on Teachers’ Self-efficacy and EFL Domains
A teacher is not an isolated organ in the society. On the contrary, teachers are living human beings who not only actively interact with the outside environments but change their behaviors and perceptions, if necessary, to respond to the contexts.Based on social cognitive theory, personal factors (including self-efficacy beliefs) and behaviors interact with the environments to influence one another through a
17
reciprocal process. Thus, it would be instructive to examine reciprocal relationships between school contexts and teachers’ self-efficacy with personal backgrounds taken into consideration. The following reviewed literature displayed how different factors increased or decreased teacher’s self-efficacy.