Being A Teacher:Developing Self-efficacy And Teacher Identity Through Self-reflective Techniques In Teacher Education Programs

Within current era,need of reflective teaching is increasingly dramatically because it has deeper and long lasting influence on performance and professional development of teachers that could help teachers to become effective teacher as well and goal oriented in nature.There are several researchers proved and showed enough evidences to support existence of relationship between professional identity and self-efficacy of teachers those are also considered to be influential components for professional development of teachers.So it was considered need of the day to conduct research on development process of self-efficacy and teacher identities by using self-reflective techniques as medium to influence these variables.Based on purpose of the study,major objectives of the study are(1)to find effect of self-reflective techniques usage during teaching practice on the development level of teacher self-efficacy,personal and professional identities(2)to investigate relationship of self-reflection,self-efficacy,personal and professional identities together(3)to identify factors affecting development process of self-efficacy and identities of teachers,and(4)to explore current condition of self-reflection and its usage by in-service teachers.By keeping objectives of the study in mind,research questions were formulated:is there any difference exists in the development level of teacher personal identity,professional identity,and self-efficacy level of prospective teachers in posttest scores based on treatment given to use self-reflective techniques?;is there any significant relationship exists between development level of personal,professional and self-efficacy of teachers in pretest and posttest scores?;and is there any significant difference exists between usage of self-reflective techniques by in-service and prospective teachers while teaching at schools?In this study QUAN-qual research design was used,which means that this study was more quantitative in weight and less qualitative comparatively.Quantitative part was based on pretest-treatment-posttest design,on contrary,qualitative part was based on semi-structured interviews conducted with participants of treatment group as well as head of schools.Population of the study was all the prospective teachers enrolled in teacher education programs in Pakistani Universities,based on accessible population one University,GC University Faisalabad,was selected and two classes,i.e.B.Ed(Honor)8th semester and M.A Education 4th semester,were selected.These classes were selected because especially in these semesters,it was compulsory for students go to teaching practice preferably in public sector schools.With the help of simple random sampling technique,students were randomized and distributed into two groups separately,such as control and treatment group.Data was collected from students of both control and treatment groups as pretest data then treatment group was given treatment based on introduction to reflection,self-reflection,its importance,relevant theories&models,different reflective techniques and usage during teaching,etc and its usage,in teaching.Then students of both groups went for teaching practice.When students came back to University after completion of teaching practice,posttest data was collected and interviews were conducted with treatment group participants only and with head of schools to get feedback about prospective teachers'performance during teaching in their schools.Interviews were further conducted with head teachers to know more about self-reflective techniques usage by in-service teachers.Data was analyzed with the help of descriptive statistics,one way Analysis of Covariance ANCOVA and Pearson Product-moment Correlation r.It was observed significant development in favor of professional identity and self-efficacy level of teachers but not for personal identity based on usage of self-reflective techniques or being as reflective practitioner during teaching practice.Professional identity and self-efficacy of teachers were found interconnected concepts and both variables show significant development and very strong positive relationship together.It means that development level of one variable,i.e.professional identity,can help to develop other variable of investigation,i.e.self-efficacy of teachers,and vice versa.Self-reflective techniques were found quite helpful for prospective teachers during teaching practice and most the self-reflective techniques were found applicable and outcomes oriented to help teachers to think over and over on their actions to make it more efficient and outcome friendly.These techniques were considered main source of professional identity and self-efficacy development of prospective teachers,both aforementioned variables showed very strong relation together which could lead teachers to be stronger professionally.Self-efficacy and teacher identities are part of professionalism which can help teachers to become effective practitioner and goal oriented as well.Being as reflective practitioner led teachers not only to influence their own performance but also effect academic performance of students positively and it could help teachers to perform better than peers.In-service teachers were also using different kind of self-reflective techniques but it was found they were not familiar with different kind of self-reflective techniques as.Furthermore,it was found,in-service teacher especially experienced teachers were reluctant to adopt any new strategy especially strategy which can't be evaluated as a part of their periodic evaluation criteria.Additionally suggestions were made for future researches such as:better to target larger sample of prospective teachers by including experienced and newly appointed in-service teachers to investigate journey of teacher's self-efficacy and identities over time based on their experiences,gender differences,availability of facilities,and educational background;this study was delimited to one university because of experimental in nature,similar study could be conducted in future by taking comparatively larger sample from different Universities of public and private sector to compare differences together;better to include community interference for both personal and professional identities because these two aspects are greatly influenced by social circles a lot;and same research could be conducted by comparing teacher education programs between two countries to analyze the way how these variables could interact together under different educational standards.