Compilation And Application Of Teacher Efficacy Scale For Elementary School And High School

Teacher efficacy has proved by many studies to be powerfully related to positive teaching behaviors and students'achievement.However,the meaning of teacher efficacy and appropriate methods of measuring the construct has been questioned and argued constantly both in theoretical and psychometrical way.Without a robust and valid instrument,all the claims about the influence of teacher efficacy on educational outcomes would be refused.Furthermore, the development of teacher efficacy is an important issue of teacher's professional development.To understand the trend and influencing factors of teacher efficacy is propitious to terchers and their students.This study includes three parts.Firstly,based on specialization principle of Bandura,the study separate personal teaching efficacy to teaching strategies,class management and student engagement and develop a three-factor scale of teacher efficacy.The reliability and validity of the scale is tested and verified.Secondly, using the scale compilated by this study to research the relation between traditional GTE factor and teacher efficacy and to explore the fit of three models,two of them including GTE factor and one model excluding it.The result confirm that GTE factor is independent of teacher efficacy and the fit of the models including GTE factor did not reach the recommended criterion of adequately fitting models,while the model excluding GTE factor did. So, it is unsuitable to use GTE factor and PTE to represent teacher efficacy together.Thirdly,using the scale developed by this study to explore the difference of teacher efficacy in different stage of teaching career and the resources of teacher efficacy in order to reveal the relation betweenverbal persuasion , mastery experiences with teacher efficacy. The results prove that teachers with different years of teaching experience have different efficacy resources. Mastery experiences and support of leaders make a significant contribution to explaining the efficacy of teacher whose teaching experience less than 6 years. Only mastery experiences can explain the efficacy of teacher whose teaching experience between 7-9 years. While mastery experiences and verbal persuasion did not make a significant contribution to explaining the efficacy of teacher whose teaching experience over 10 years in the regression analysis.