The relationship between teacher quality variables and secondary teachers' efficacy for teaching urban minority students

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between quality teaching variables and identify secondary teachers' efficacy for successfully instructing urban minority students. Participants included middle and high school teachers employed in an urban school district located in Houston, Texas.;Subjects were initially selected from a population consisting of teachers representing six schools in the district comprised of 7,323 students, wherein a majority were from Hispanic (67%) and African American (28%) minority groups. Of this population, approximately 85% were economically disadvantaged, and 32% had limited English skills. Conversely, the ethnic makeup of the professional teaching staff was primarily White (41%), African American (36%), and Hispanic (21%). After survey questionnaires were distributed to the six schools, 192 teachers responded; however, 42 instruments were excluded due to incomplete answers, resulting in a sample size of 150 usable surveys from five schools.;Data analysis was divided into two phases: (a) descriptive statistics describing the sample's demographic characteristics and (b) a one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) utilized to individually examine the effect of six independent variables (gender, ethnicity, educational degree, years of teaching experience, teacher certification, and time devoted to professional development within the last year) on the dependent variable (efficacy of secondary teachers in instructing urban minority students).;A cross-sectional survey instrument taken from Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy's (2001) Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale was used to determine the relationship between teacher quality variables and secondary teachers' efficacy for instructing urban minority students. After examining the independent variables in relation to the dependent variable, data analysis revealed that ethnicity was consistently statistically significant with student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management based on MANOVA, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and post hoc results.;Significant mean differences pertaining to instructional strategies included gender, ethnicity, and professional development. This finding supported previous research suggesting that teachers with a high degree of efficacy tend to make every effort at improving their daily instructional techniques by experimenting with and pursuing innovative materials. Finally, Bandura (1997) noted that teachers who display efficacy typically perform under the assumption that even difficult students are open to instruction.;KEY WORDS: Teacher efficacy, Minority students, Urban schools, Student achievement, MANOVA, ANOVA.