A Study On The Relationship Between Pre-service English Teachers' Sense Of Self-efficacy And Expectation Of Reality Shock

Reality shock is a common psychological state among novice teachers.Many beginning teachers are faced with discrepancies between the expectation and reality causing reality shock.The disillusion may be so great that the beginning teacher leaves the profession early.Maintaining a high sense of teaching efficacy may prevent the novice teachers from departing the profession.Decreasing novice teachers' experience of reality shock is important to enhance teacher resiliency.Pre-service teachers are the future novice teachers.However,no domestic study has been conducted on how pre-service teachers' sense of efficacy is linked with pre-service teachers' expectation of reality shock during their first year of professional teaching.Therefore,it is worthwhile to investigate this aspect.The present study aims to explore the overall profile of pre-service teachers' expectation of reality shock and pre-service teacher self-efficacy and their interrelationship.180 pre-service English teachers in a normal university are investigated in this study.The Reality Shock Expectation Scale(2014)and The Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy's(2001)Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale are used in this study.The data from the questionnaire is statistically analyzed through the SPSS17.0.Drawn from the research,there are some major findings as follows:First,the result indicates that the pre-service teachers show a moderate level of concern about the reality shock experience during their first year of professional teaching.Second,it can be concluded that the pre-service teachers in general are at moderately high level on sense of teaching efficacy.Lastly,the Pearson Correlation results reveal that the relationship between pre-service teachers' sense of efficacy and their expectation of reality shock is very weak.A refined analysis is carried out.Without the sample of tuition-free normal students and academic graduate students,the pre-service teachers' expectation of reality shock is negatively related to pre-service teachers' sense of efficacy.In other words,with the increase expectation of reality shock,pre-service teachers' sense of efficacy will decrease,and vice versa.Therefore,pre-service teachers with low sense of efficacy are more likely to have high expectations of a gap between what they have learned in the school and the reality that they may face during the first year of teaching.