The relative contribution of teacher efficacy and teachers' pre-service classroom experience on students' academic achievement

The pervasive failure of urban students to perform comparably with their suburban peers has led educators, researchers and policy makers in pursuit of ways to promote student achievement. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative contribution of the pre-service teaching experience on students' academic achievement in urban early childhood settings, by examining the relationship of teacher efficacy and teachers' pre-service teaching experience to student achievement. Teacher efficacy beliefs, borne out of Bandura's social cognitive theory, provided the theoretical framework for this study because, although available research has shown that teacher efficacy beliefs affects students' academic achievement, none specifically addressed its effects on student achievement in urban early childhood settings. The Teacher Efficacy Scale (Dembo & Gibson, 1984) was used to measure teacher efficacy beliefs, ECLAS-2 measured student achievement, and demographic information was used to assess the length of the pre-service teaching experience. Data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression at a .05 level of significance. Sixty-six early childhood public school teachers from Regions One and Two in the Bronx participated in the study. Results revealed that teacher efficacy was not significantly related to student achievement, the length of the pre-service was not significantly related to student achievement and finally, there was no significant relationship between the interaction of teacher efficacy and the length of pre-service teaching experience to student achievement.