Exploring Pre-service English Teachers' Self-efficacy And Teaching Practices

Teachers' self-efficacy refers to their confidence level in completing certain teaching tasks and achieving desirable teaching goals.Teaching practices refer to the teaching practices that teachers use in class.The sense of self-efficacy of English teachers plays an important role in teaching,and it influences teachers' performance in teaching and teaching achievements to a certain extent.Although we are now in the post-communicative age,communicative language teaching practices still occupy an eminent position in English teaching.Based on Roth's control theory,Bandura's social cognitive theory,and social constructivism,this study explores how self-efficacy influences pre-service English teachers' teaching practices,and aims to answer the following three questions:(1)What is pre-service secondary school English teachers' self-efficacy?(2)What is the preference of the pre-service secondary school English teachers in the use of communication-focused or the non-communication-focused teaching practices?(3)How is pre-service secondary school English teachers' self-efficacy associated with their use of communicative versus non-communicative teaching practices?One hundred and seventy-five pre-service English teachers participated in this study.They finished two questionnaires: Questionnaire on teacher's self-efficacy and Questionnaire on teaching practices.After this,ten of the participants agreed to participate in on-line interviews.Descriptive statistics,correlational analysis and multiple regressions in SPSS software were used to analyze and discuss the data results.The research findings suggest that:(1)Of the three sub-effects of self-efficacy,classroom management and student engagement play the most significant role in self-efficacy.(2)In English teaching,teachers are more inclined to use communicative teaching practices.(3)Self-efficacy has a significant positive relationship with teaching practice.Teachers with higher self-efficacy tend to use communicative teaching practices.There are numerous factors influence the relationship between Englishteachers' self-efficacy and teaching practices.The researcher found that English teachers' self-efficacy and teaching practices have an interactive relationship.