antecedents on teachers’ self-efficacy, including its three subscales, as well as their pedagogical tendency in the language classroom. And, then further elaboration goes onto the influences of some key sources to the formation of teachers’ self-efficacy and their orientation of pedagogic strategies.
The results of multiple regression analyses from this study showed that the 13 antecedents significantly contributed to the prediction of teachers’ self-efficacy and successfully consisted of 30.6% of the variance to teachers’ self-efficacy. That is, these 13 antecedents not only play a potent part in determining teachers’
self-efficacy but the results imply that there remain a lot of undisclosed important sources and antecedents that form critical factors to decide teachers’ self-efficacy.
The results also revealed that the 13 antecedents had significant effects on its three subscales and teachers’ pedagogical tendency toward CLT. Among the dependent variables, the 13 antecedents were also found to be able to significantly
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predict teachers’ self-efficacy for student engagement and for instructional strategies more, compared to the other two variables, teachers’ efficacy for classroom
management and pedagogical orientation toward CLT. That is to say, these 13 antecedents posed stronger predictive impacts on teachers’ efficacy for student engagement and for instructional strategies. The phenomena of the results could possibly be explained by the nature of the antecedents and the essence of the dependent variables since most of the antecedents were either about personal background variables, or school-related factors. Postulated by social cognitive theory, personal variables and behaviors interact with the environments to impact one another through a reciprocal process (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001).
Thus, it is of great value to understand what kinds of context variables linked to higher self-efficacy (Labone, 2004) and what outcomes it might cause under different contextual factors. In the following sections, some of the key factors were further dwelt on.
First of all, teachers’ satisfaction with their past teaching, mastery experiences by Bandura’s (1986) definition, proved from the results to be the strongest predictor of teachers’ perception of efficacy judgment, including its three subscales. That is to say, how teachers made out their past teaching performance as a success or a failure would have great influence on their efficacy level building. The findings were manifested by the results of previous related studies (Bandura, 1997; Chang, 2010;
Tschannen-Moran et al.’s, 1998; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007). The occurrence suggested that how teachers interpreted their past performance would have a decisive impact on their self-efficacy formation and that ultimately leads to future performance. Therefore, some studies (Bosma, Hessels & Resing, 2012; Karimvand, 2011; Klassen & Chiu, 2011; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2006) also began to
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punctuate the importance of helping the novice teachers to gain successful experience in the beginning of their teaching career since teachers’ positive or negative evaluation about their past performance would boost or damage their efficacy beliefs and hence directly linked to their expectation of future performance (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998).
Years of English teaching experience had a significant influence on teachers’
efficacy for instructional strategies. Regarding this, one-way ANOVA was employed to check the participants’ discrepancies in their efficacy perceptions and pedagogical orientations among three groups according to their years of English teaching
experience. The results all showed statistical significance across teachers’
perceptions of efficacy, including efficacy for student engagement, efficacy for classroom management and efficacy for instructional strategies, and teachers’
pedagogical tendency toward CLT. The data showed that years of teaching
experience played a decisive role in teachers’ self-efficacy levels and pedagogical choice. Furthermore, the post tests revealed that the more years of English teaching experience a teacher has the more efficacious he/she perceived him/herself in carrying out English instruction tasks and the more likely he/she would use CLT approach to instruct the language class.
The previous research about how the year of teaching experience affected teacher’s self-efficacy remains undecided. In Lee’s (2009) study, the years of English teaching experience among Korean EFL primary teachers was negatively related to pedagogic strategies and had very little proportions shared with teacher efficacy dimensions. However, the finding that novice teachers, teacher with less teaching experience, perceived that they were less capable of teaching English was agreed by many studies (Karimvand, 2011; Lee, 2009; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy,
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2006). This lower judgment of their teaching abilities is not implausible given the relative inexperience of these teachers, which means they don’t have mastery experience to rely on like experienced teachers (Gist & Mitchell, 1992). Contrary to the observation (Guskey, 1984; Pajares, 1992; Soodak & Podell, 1997) that
experienced teachers are more resistant to change in their beliefs of personal efficacy than teachers with less experience, the data of current study revealed that the experienced teachers not only expressed higher efficacy than novice teachers but advanced their capabilities over time.
Considering the effects of vicarious experience (modeling) proposed by Bandura (1986, 1997), the authorities should make good use of these experienced teachers’ knowledge and skills to improve the level of teachers’ qualifications in this field with a wish for better uplifting teaching effectiveness in Taoyuan.
Many contextual factors or personal background variables would change efficacy level under various milieus. In the current study, the contextual factors like
“support from administrative staff, parent and community”, and “sources availability” showed independent of teachers’ self-efficacy or even damaged teachers’ confidence in teaching English. Previous studies (Tschannen-Moran &
Hoy, 2007) showed that experienced teachers perceived higher self-efficacy than novice teachers in general. However, under other settings, experienced teachers and novice teachers would yield varied fluctuation of efficacy levels. For example, compliments from the administrative staff and the parents would boost the novice teachers’ self-efficacy (Egel, 2009); experienced teachers’ self-efficacy declined due to job exhaustion (Houtte, 2012). The experienced teachers had higher self-efficacy when they taught younger kids; in addition, contextual support and sources
availability wouldn’t help to lift experienced teachers’ self-efficacy as they did on
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novice teachers (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007).
Another factor worth discussing was students’ learning motivation that posed significantly strong effects on teachers’ perception of efficacy judgment in general, including its three sub-scales, and on teachers’ tendency toward CLT instructional strategies. The data meant students’ attitudes would greatly influence teachers’
efficacy perceptions and their pedagogical choice in a language class. The findings meet with the previous research (Bagheri, 2011) stating that student’s self-efficacy helped to increase teachers’ efficacy. The results corroborate the previous studies (Adedoyin, 2010; Bayraktar, 2011; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001;
Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy & Hoy, 1998) that there existed a reciprocal relationship among teachers’ efficacy, students’ efficacy and their learning
motivation. That is, the more efficacious a teacher is the more likely he/she would provide an effective learning environment to help developing students’ knowledge and skills, which led to the improvement in students’ motivation, self-efficacy, and learning achievement. On the contrary, “Low teacher efficacy leads to low student efficacy and low academic achievement, which in turn leads to further decline in teacher efficacy” (Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy & Hoy, 1998, p. 222).
Job arrangement had a lot to say in the formation of teachers’ self-efficacy.
Having more than one type of job postings in the context of elementary schools is very common. In the current study, only half of the EFL teachers were purely subject teachers; the other half consisted of homeroom teachers and teachers with
administrative work. The combinations of job position caused significant impact on EFL teachers’ efficacy for classroom management but negative effect on teachers’
tendency toward CLT approach. Given the same conditions and qualifications of the teachers, the possible reason might be that the EFL teachers had to design a set of
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rules to keep the class and lesson running effectively and smoothly in order to reach the teaching goals under the pressure of time. Interestingly, this job position
phenomenon had negative impacts; even though not significantly, on teachers’
tendency toward applying CLT approach in their language class. However, this occurrence is also plausible. Since employing CLT approach usually causes more disturbances and requires more time to calm students down afterwards, it is not strange to find teachers sticking more to drill and structure practices under such circumstances. One thing the researcher has to state is that the research didn’t use formulas to cross examine the effects of multiple factors on the same variables. It is very likely that other factors such as teachers’ lack of professional knowledge or low language proficiency were influencing the results at the same time. Further research needs to be done.
Contradicting to the previous studies (Houtte,2012; Lee, 2009; Yavuz, 2007), in which different job postings helped increasing teachers’ efficacy in instructional strategies due to wider working aspects and availability of abundant resources, the results of current study showed such arrangement prevented teachers from mandated pedagogic strategies, namely CLT approach. The possible explanation to the
discrepancy is that strong rejection and resentment was fraught with this kind of job arrangement since most of the time it was not done out of teachers’ free will. Based on Tschannen-Moran et al. (1998) , “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).
Another two physiological arousal-related antecedents are worth further exploration. First, the pressure perceived formed negative effects on all the
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formation of teachers’ self-efficacy, including its three sub-scales, and reached significant level on efficacy for classroom management. The findings indicated that the pressure perceived would sabotage teachers’ confidence in intriguing students’
learning interest, inspiring students’ learning motivation, advancing students’
understanding, and keeping the class under control. Previous studies (Brouwer &
Tomic, 1999; Maddux, 1995; Maslach, 1993) had discovered that too much pressure would increase one’s anxiety and that would weaken his/her judgments of
competence of oneself; job frustration and burnout ensued. The pressure surveyed here was only about teachers’ weekly instruction period. Further research can be done to delve into the causes of pressure and to explore the causal relationship between perceived pressure level and teachers’ efficacy perceptions.
Voluntariness can always inspire teachers more than involuntariness. Another context-related antecedent also pertaining to physiological arousal is teachers’
willingness to teach English class. In order to meet the demand for more EFL teachers, many qualified in-service teachers were asked or were arranged some lessons to teach English class against their will. In this present study, these unfortunate EFL teachers reached to 16.4% high. The results from multiple regression revealed that such period arrangement against teachers’ will performed negative effects on all the formation of teachers’ self-efficacy, including its three sub-scales, and even teachers’ tendency to use CLT approach, which was manifested by Lee’s (2009) research among Korean EFL teachers. The findings above
demonstrated how negative emotions that teachers carried while teaching could enfeeble their intuition, innovation, efforts and persistence in fulfilling the required teaching tasks, just as previous studies pointed out (Tschannen-Moran et al. ,1998).
Consequently, the students’ efficacy, motivation and learning performance would be
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affected (Morine-Dershimer, 1983; Prawat & Anderson, 1988; to name but a few).
Last but not least, an unexpected background variable, gender, was found to have significant influence on teachers’ proclivity toward CLT approach. An
Independent Sample Test was run to reveal the significant differences between male and female teachers. The results showed when it comes to the inclination toward employing CLT approach in a language class, the female teachers in the present study performed more eagerly than the male teachers, which coincided with Cheung’s (2006) and Yavuz’s (2007) research but contradicted Imants and De Brabander’s (1996) study where male primary teachers appeared to have higher efficacy for pupil-oriented tasks.
The possible explanation of the results would be, first, female teachers were either mothers themselves or had the maternity instinct so they knew better how to communicate with young kids. Secondly, female teachers portrayed the mother figure to elementary school students so students were more willing to follow their instruction. Besides, the stereotype exists among people’s notion that female is good at art and language (Bussey & Bandura, 1999). On the other hand, male is better at science and math, not to mention the fact that female teachers dominates primary school settings. This kind of reciprocal interaction between female teachers and students could certainly further boost the flow of the lesson. Again, other
background factors such as years of teaching experience and education attainment might have influence on the research results, which this research failed to find out.
More research should be made to find out why male teachers shy away from CLT approach or if they need any assistance in any way in a language class.
Different from the previous studies (Chang, 2010; Hoover-Dempsey et al.’s, 1987; Lee, 2009; Woolfolk, 1993; Yavuz, 2007), the research result showed that
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teachers’ highest education attainment did not help to predict EFL teachers’ efficacy perceptions. These results might have to do with the facts that the majors or MA degrees that EFL teachers held were not necessarily TEFL-related or English-related since that was not a required qualification to be an EFL teacher. Secondly, it is presumed that primary English education is so elementary that every bachelor can handle it.
Professional TEFL training executed negative effects upon teachers’ efficacy beliefs and CLT inclination, which indicated that the teacher seemed to be less efficacious in managing class and instructing students and less confident in using CLT approach after having TEFL training. The findings are against common notions and many research (Chacón, 2005; Yavuz, 2007; Guskey, 1988; Smylie, 1988), however, the results are in accord with Lee’s (2009) study where Korean teachers’
participation in the in-service training programs was not only independent of self-efficacy but it even damaged teachers’ confidence in teaching English. The possible reasons might be that the EFL teachers’ language proficiency was not high enough to find those TEFL trainings helpful and that the professional TEFL training provided by the authority did not meet the teachers’ need. Hence, the concerned authority, the scholars, the education institutes, and the research should look into what sort of courses the in-service EFL teachers really require in order to improve their professional knowledge, language proficiency, and instructional skills.
Regarding resources and supports from different parties, which can be
categorized into verbal persuasion by Bandura’s (1986, 1997) definition, hardware equipment was found not enough to enhance teachers’ efficacy beliefs, judging from the results of multiple regression and the participants responses, even though
numerous finance and resources were claimed to be invested in building up language
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environments and helping to get the elementary English education ready. Previous studies pointed out that availability of resources (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2006) and support from colleagues (Houtte, 2012) weighed more on novice teachers than experienced teachers, which appeared independent of teachers’ self-efficacy in this study. The unrealistic expectation, which caused negative arousal
(Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998), from the parents toward students’ performance and the impacts from private institutes after school, called Busiban, posed negative effects on the formation of teachers’ efficacy perceptions. The finding confirmed that teacher is not immune to the society and would be affected by social interaction (Bandura, 1996; Houtte, 2012). Lastly, even though the mean scores of flexibility for EFL teachers to develop their own teaching and to take part in school-affair
discussion were moderately high, it did not help to form EFL teachers’ efficacy formation, as suggested by previous research (Tschannen-Moran et al., 2001 &
2006), but damage it. It might be because the main schedule of school extra
activities were set already by the administrative. What were left for discussion were the execution details, which cannot be regarded as real teacher autonomy.
To sum up, among all the 13 antecedents listed, Mastery experiences remained the strongest factor to EFL teachers’ efficacy perceptions. Students’ learning
motivation played a decisive reciprocal role in EFL teachers’ efficacy beliefs,
efficacy for student engagement and their proclivity toward CLT approach. Attention should be paid to ameliorate the conditions that aroused teachers’ negative emotions so as to avoid efficacy decrease which would lead to the decrease of students’
learning motivation.
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