An Empirical Study On Primary School English Teacher’s Sense Of Efficacy

Teacher’s sense of efficacy is considered by researchers to be a predicative variable for teacher’s ability or an important index of teacher’s personal characteristics. On the basis of a comprehensive analysis of Chinese culture background and English teaching situation in primary school, this thesis aims to develop a new instrument to measure English teacher’s sense of efficacy within the context of primary school, to get a general idea about the levels of primary school English teacher’s sense of efficacy, to probe into some factors that may affect English teacher’s sense of efficacy as well. A survey was conducted to the samples which comprised of170primary school English teachers from9cities in Inner Mongolia and97English-major college students. The findings of the study are mainly summarized into the following aspects:Firstly, the newly developed ETSES (English Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy Scale) is a subject-specific instrument for measuring English teachers’sense of efficacy, which has good validity and reliability. Secondly, it is found that primary school English teacher’s sense of efficacy is at an upper-middle level. English teachers who work in the primary schools are in general confident in English teaching and class management than on student engagement. They have the highest efficacy on class management than on the other two dimensions. Thirdly, in terms of the demographic factors, the gender and educational level are not found to be significantly correlated with the difference of primary school English teacher’s sense of efficacy. Teaching experience is only significantly correlated with the dimension of language teaching efficacy. Major variable, professional title and school setting all belong to the factors that significantly predict primary school English teachers’sense of efficacy. English teachers who work in the urban setting are more efficacious than those working in rural areas. The findings of this study provide some useful insights into how to measure English teacher’s sense of efficacy and how to improve primary school English teacher’s sense of efficacy. Because of their low level of sense of efficacy, the education administrators and the school principals should pay more attention to the new teachers and those who work in rural areas. In addition to the enactive mastery experiences, these teachers ought to obtain the access to master more vicarious experiences and verbal persuasions to enhance their teachers’sense of efficacy. Besides, primary school English teachers should know more about the New Standards because it consists of most of the potential tasks that an English teacher may come up with in practical teaching. Limitations of the present study and suggestions for the future research are also discussed in this study.