Date

2016-05-08

Author

Ata, Aysun
Demircan, Hasibe Özlen

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Teacher self-efficacy was described by Woolfolk Hoy and Spero as confidence of the teachers in their competence to encourage student's learning. Increment in teacher self-efficacy beliefs leads to positive outcomes for both students and teachers. In addition, teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs influence teachers’ classroom settings, their performance, their openness to change, their attitudes toward education, their curriculum implementation in the learning process and context selection as well as classroom climate and academic development of their students. In early childhood education context, research examined self-efficacy beliefs of teachers or teacher candidates from different aspects. While some research focused on self-efficacy beliefs of pre and in-service preschool teachers in science teaching, in creative drama, in music and in art education, some focused on the effects of teacher self-efficacy on teacher behavior. This study aimed to examine current level of in-service preschool teachers' self-efficacy beliefs (overall and under the sub-dimensions of parental involvement, classroom management, communication skills, organization of learning-environment, planning and teachinglearning process) and its relationship with some demographic variables such as years of experience, educational level and type of institutions where teachers work. To that end, this study was conducted with 304 preschool teachers who were working in public and primary elementary schools and preschools under Ministry of National Education (MoNE) in Ankara. A demographic information form prepared by the researcher and "Preschool Teachers' Self-Efficacy Belief Scale" were utilized as data collection instruments. One-way Anova and Pearson product moment correlation analyses were used to analyze the data. Results revealed that preschool teachers had high level self-efficacy beliefs. When it was compared with other sub-dimensions, they had higher self-efficacy beliefs in communication skills and classroom management and lower self-efficacy beliefs in parental involvement and organization of the learning environment. In addition, preschool teachers self-efficacy beliefs did not differ according to their educational level and type of the institutions where teachers worked. While overall self-efficacy beliefs of the teachers was not significantly correlated with their years of experience, selfefficacy in parental involvement and classroom management were positively correlated with years of experience. In the light of this findings, results were discussed with regard to teacher education programs and current conditions of preschools in Turkey. It can be suggested that since gaining more and firsthand experience in the teaching profession by means of practice teaching may improve self-efficacy beliefs of teacher candidates in skills like classroom management and parental involvement, teacher training programs may provide teacher candidates with practice teaching for a long term. In addition, some regulations might be done by MoNE to reveal the physical and environmental conditions of early childhood education institutions, especially in low socioeconomic districts where teachers face limited opportunity in terms of organization of classroom environment. In addition, In this way, preschool teachers self-efficacy beliefs may be moved to the highest level.

Subject Keywords

Self-Efficacy, Teacher Self-Efficacy, Preschool teacher

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/71191
http://congress.eab.org.tr/2016/media/2016_ozet_kitap.pdf

Collections

Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education, Conference / Seminar