The Study On The Construct Of Teacher Efficacy: An Application Of Facet Theory

Teacher efficacy has proved by many studies to be powerfully related to many meaningful educational outcomes, including the most important indicator—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.This study comprises two separate stages. First, various instruments'construct were examined by a 475 sample. Those instruments include Teacher Efficacy Scale(TES) and Chinese Teacher Efficacy Scale(CTES), both historically the most frequently used in western world and China correspondingly, as well as the newest instrument--OSTES (Ohio state teacher efficacy scale). The deficiency of TES and CTES'two factors model, consisting of GTE and PTE (general teaching efficacy & personal teaching efficacy), was observed. And the distinction of the three factors of OSTES was supported by the evidence from the output of Smallest Space Analysis (SSA). But the output also solicited the argument of the relationship among the three factors.In second stage, Facet theory approach was introduced and adopted in research design and data analysis. Through the use of Facet theory's mapping sentence technology, two facets were proposed based on the analysis of teaching practice and the cognitive process of teacher efficacy. One facet, labeled task, composed elements of knowledge instruction, classroom management, and moral character and behavior teaching. The second facet, labeled cognitive sources, contained elements of self-valuation of capacity and quality, expectation, feedback from students, comparison with colleagues, and emotional arousal. Items were generated according to this construct. After the pretest the questionnaire was revised and administered to 450 teachers. An unexpected strong positive and negative worded items effect was clearly shown on the output figure of SSA, and the effect was clarified by the results of EFA(exploratory factor analysis) when chose a forcing two factors solution. Even though, the SSA provided support for the two facets design. And the effect of positive and negative worded items effect couldn't be simply regarded as response bias when Guskey's positive and negative dimensions of teacher efficacy were brought into considered. Conclusively this study developed a multi-faceted construct design. With its comparative validity and reliability and multiple function measurement integrity, a promising new measure direction and method of teacher efficacy was proposed.In the end, implications of the research on the construct of teacher efficacy for teacher training and strategies for improving the efficacy of in service teachers were suggested.