A Study Of Some Factors Influencing EFL Middle School Teachers' Self-efficacy

As a hot topic in the teaching field,teachers' self-efficacy research has witnessed many important theories and findings.With the implementation of National English Curriculum for Chinese Middle Schools,teachers' self-efficacy has become an eye-catching factor worth paying attention to in English teaching and learning.The present study is motivated by three reasons.Firstly,many scholars regard language proficiency and teaching experience as factors influencing teachers' self-efficacy.In this study,the author studies the demographic variables(gender,seniority,academic qualification,experience in travelling/studying abroad,school type),language proficiency(listening,speaking,reading,writing)and teaching environment(curriculum reform,innovation,teaching resources,workload,students,parents,colleagues,teaching freedom,motivation system)as factors influencing teachers' self-efficacy.Secondly,researchers have not paid enough attention to foreign language teachers in middle schools.In this study,the subjects are experienced EFL middle school teachers.Thirdly,teachers' self-efficacy is closely related to teacher professional development.In order to get a comprehensive understanding of teacher professional development,this study attempts to explore the factors influencing EFL middle school teachers' self-efficacy by using quantitative and qualitative research method.So the following research questions are addressed.(1)What is the teachers' self-efficacy in student engagement,classroom management and instructional strategies in EFL middle school teachers?(2)What is the general picture of the factors influencing teachers' self-efficacy?(3)What is the relationship between the main factors and teachers' selfefficacy?Based on a very careful study,the major findings are summarized below.Firstly,the findings of the study reveal that there are three aspects of self-efficacy sense,the averages followed by the students engagement(M=3.77),instructional strategies(M=3.86),and classroom management(M=3.94),beginningwith the lowest and ending with the highest.Secondly,the findings of the study show that the general picture of the three major factors influencing teachers' self-efficacy: demographic variables,language proficiency and teaching environment.As for demographic variables,nine teachers are males and thirty-nine teachers are females.All the teachers have taught for more than six years.Thirty-five teachers work in key middle schools.Nineteen teachers have studied or travelled abroad,whereas twenty-nine teachers haven't studied or travelled abroad.As for language proficiency,the total mean of language proficiency is 2.12.In the four sub-scales,for EFL middle school teachers,reading is the easiest one(Mean=2.02),followed by listening(M=2.06)and writing(Mean=2.14).Speaking(Mean=2.27)is the most difficult skill for EFL teachers.As for teaching environment,there are five items whose means are above twenty,including innovation(M=27.12),workload(M=27.19)parents(M=25.31),colleagues(M=25.14)and motivation system(M=24.79).There are four items whose means are below twenty,including curriculum reform(M=18.55),teaching resources(M=16.19),students(M=19.52)and teaching freedom(M=19.50).Thirdly,the findings of the study indicate that there are significant differences of teachers' self-efficacy among the subjects who are different in the aspects of English teaching experience(measured by the number of in-service years),academic qualification,experience in travelling /studying abroad by employing the correlational analysis and independent sample t-test.A noteworthy finding from self-assessment of the subjects' four language skills indicates that the teachers with higher sense of self-efficacy and those with lower sense of self-efficacy show a significant difference in their language proficiency only in speaking.What's more,there are also significant differences between teachers' teaching environment in curriculum reform,innovation,teaching resources,students,parents,colleagues,workload,teaching freedom,motivation system and teachers' self-efficacy by employing the correlational analysis and independent sample t-test.The above-mentioned 18 variables are treated as the independent variables and EFL teachers' self-efficacy as dependent variable.To examine the predictive effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable,the study adopts the method of multiple linear regression.The results show that six variables enter the regression equation,including three environment variables(workload,innovation,parents),two demographic variables(seniority,academic qualification)and one language variable(speaking).Multiple correlation coefficient is.587.Six prediction variables can explain 35.6% of the teachers' self-efficacy variation.The biggest influential factor on teachers' self-efficacy is EFL teachers' spoken skills,which can explain 26% of the teachers' self-efficacy variation.Academic qualification can explain 6.5%;seniority can explain 1.2%;workload can explain 0.8%;innovation can explain 0.6%,parents can explain 0.5% of the teachers' self-efficacy variation.What calls for special attention is that workload and parents have negative predictive power for teachers' self-efficacy.This is partially because of our examination system.Most of the parents pay attention to the scores,which brings a lot of pressure on teachers' shoulders.In order to live up to parents' or schools' expectations,teachers work hard and stay up late into night trying to figure out the best method for students.Some pedagogical implications are drawn based on the major findings of the study.