Henson, R.K. Teacher self-efficacy: substantive implications and measurement dilemmas. Invited Keynote Address, meeting of the Educational Research Exchange, Texas A&M University, January 26, 2001.
Hoy, A.W. 2003-4. Self-efficacy in college teaching. Essays on Teaching Excellence, Toward the Best in the Academy, 15(7).
Tschannen-Moran, M., Hoy, A.W., and Hoy, W.K. 1998. Teacher efficacy: Its meaning and measure. Review of Educational Research, 68: 202-248.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Modifying our Self-Efficacy--How to get better!
How do we change our self-efficacy? Is it easy? What tools are available (on campus, on the internet) to help us?
It has been suggested that teacher self-efficacy is most malleable early in a teacher’s career, as self-efficacy judgments are likely to become more set with time and experience. “Beliefs about both the task of teaching and assessment of personal teaching competence are likely to remain unchanged unless compelling evidence intrudes and causes them to be reevaluated. Consequently, helping teachers develop strong efficacy beliefs early in their careers will pay lasting dividends (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, pg 23).”
Research has provided a theoretical framework for how self-efficacy evaluations can change, as well as a few suggestions for how to translate these ideas into concrete, real-world training ideas for new and continuing teachers. Let’s explore.
(The following framework is modified from Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998).
A. Mastery Experiences
“Mastery experiences are the most powerful source of efficacy information (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, pg 19).” In other words, teaching successfully will bolster your self-efficacy. (Duh.) Practice, practice, practice! But hopefully other tools will be available that give you confidence and feedback about your performance in the classroom, so that even less successful days in the classroom can be, at the very least, bounced back from. Or, even better, used to help you learn how to better teach.
B. Vicarious Experiences
“Watching others teach in skillful and adept ways-especially observing admired, credible and similar models—can affect the observer’s personal teaching competence. Comparisons to others can lead observers, particularly beginning teachers, to believe that they also have the capabilities to be successful teachers under similar circumstances (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, pg 19).” As college teachers, we are lucky in this sense: we have spent the last 5-10 years as students, observing other college teachers, picking up tips, habits and approaches in the classroom that we may eventually utilize. As graduate students we may even have been lucky enough to find a “teaching mentor” who we could watch, and who would provide us, as TAs or lecturers, with feedback. If not, maybe we can seek out a mentor, or at the very least, we can look around, attend lectures given by professors who are popular with undergraduates: what tools do these lecturers use in their classrooms? How do they engage their students? Are these skills that we can mimic in our own classrooms?
C. Verbal Persuasion
“Verbal persuasion can be general or specific; it can provide information about the nature of teaching, give encouragement and strategies for overcoming situational obstacles and provide specific feedback about a teacher’s performance. … The potency of the persuasion depends on the credibility, trustworthiness, and expertise of the persuader (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, pg 19-20).” This resource for increasing our feeling of self-efficacy is more rare than it should be, but can be easily sought out. Asking for feedback from a professor in your department, or even other graduate students in your field, could provide you with important information regarding your performance in the classroom. Asking for feedback from your students is also valuable, especially if it can be done mid-term, and not just at the end, so that there is time to modify and implement your approaches. Many college campuses have teaching resource centers that offer services like these. For example, some will interview your students midway through the quarter and then discuss the feedback with you. They may also be able to videotape one of your lectures, and then provide you with a consultation.
During the weekend retreat on college teaching that I participated in a few weeks ago, we compiled a list of things we thought we could do in order to get better as teachers. Some of these I’ve touched on in the preceding text, but I’ll give you the full list we came up with.
• Attend professional development seminars (MANY of these are typically available on college campuses, ranging in topic from “how to write better multiple choice tests” to “how to use PowerPoint” to “how to engage students in class participation” on my campus.)
• Emphasize clarity and organization in your lectures
• Read books on effective teaching
• Pay attention to what current research says about effective teaching
• Videotape yourself teaching and ask for feedback
• Periodically review your teaching objectives and goals (prepare a Teaching Philosophy to organize these thoughts)
• Ask for mid-term evaluations from your students, and use these in addition to your end of term evaluations, to modify your teaching style.
• Try new things! (And it’s ok to fail sometimes.)
• Seek mentors and observe other teachers
It has been suggested that teacher self-efficacy is most malleable early in a teacher’s career, as self-efficacy judgments are likely to become more set with time and experience. “Beliefs about both the task of teaching and assessment of personal teaching competence are likely to remain unchanged unless compelling evidence intrudes and causes them to be reevaluated. Consequently, helping teachers develop strong efficacy beliefs early in their careers will pay lasting dividends (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, pg 23).”
Research has provided a theoretical framework for how self-efficacy evaluations can change, as well as a few suggestions for how to translate these ideas into concrete, real-world training ideas for new and continuing teachers. Let’s explore.
(The following framework is modified from Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998).
A. Mastery Experiences
“Mastery experiences are the most powerful source of efficacy information (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, pg 19).” In other words, teaching successfully will bolster your self-efficacy. (Duh.) Practice, practice, practice! But hopefully other tools will be available that give you confidence and feedback about your performance in the classroom, so that even less successful days in the classroom can be, at the very least, bounced back from. Or, even better, used to help you learn how to better teach.
B. Vicarious Experiences
“Watching others teach in skillful and adept ways-especially observing admired, credible and similar models—can affect the observer’s personal teaching competence. Comparisons to others can lead observers, particularly beginning teachers, to believe that they also have the capabilities to be successful teachers under similar circumstances (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, pg 19).” As college teachers, we are lucky in this sense: we have spent the last 5-10 years as students, observing other college teachers, picking up tips, habits and approaches in the classroom that we may eventually utilize. As graduate students we may even have been lucky enough to find a “teaching mentor” who we could watch, and who would provide us, as TAs or lecturers, with feedback. If not, maybe we can seek out a mentor, or at the very least, we can look around, attend lectures given by professors who are popular with undergraduates: what tools do these lecturers use in their classrooms? How do they engage their students? Are these skills that we can mimic in our own classrooms?
C. Verbal Persuasion
“Verbal persuasion can be general or specific; it can provide information about the nature of teaching, give encouragement and strategies for overcoming situational obstacles and provide specific feedback about a teacher’s performance. … The potency of the persuasion depends on the credibility, trustworthiness, and expertise of the persuader (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, pg 19-20).” This resource for increasing our feeling of self-efficacy is more rare than it should be, but can be easily sought out. Asking for feedback from a professor in your department, or even other graduate students in your field, could provide you with important information regarding your performance in the classroom. Asking for feedback from your students is also valuable, especially if it can be done mid-term, and not just at the end, so that there is time to modify and implement your approaches. Many college campuses have teaching resource centers that offer services like these. For example, some will interview your students midway through the quarter and then discuss the feedback with you. They may also be able to videotape one of your lectures, and then provide you with a consultation.
During the weekend retreat on college teaching that I participated in a few weeks ago, we compiled a list of things we thought we could do in order to get better as teachers. Some of these I’ve touched on in the preceding text, but I’ll give you the full list we came up with.
• Attend professional development seminars (MANY of these are typically available on college campuses, ranging in topic from “how to write better multiple choice tests” to “how to use PowerPoint” to “how to engage students in class participation” on my campus.)
• Emphasize clarity and organization in your lectures
• Read books on effective teaching
• Pay attention to what current research says about effective teaching
• Videotape yourself teaching and ask for feedback
• Periodically review your teaching objectives and goals (prepare a Teaching Philosophy to organize these thoughts)
• Ask for mid-term evaluations from your students, and use these in addition to your end of term evaluations, to modify your teaching style.
• Try new things! (And it’s ok to fail sometimes.)
• Seek mentors and observe other teachers
Self-efficacy and Teaching
Self-efficacy refers to a person’s belief in their own capability to effectively perform a specific task. Research in many areas of human behavior has demonstrated that self-efficacy beliefs powerfully affect our behavior, learning, performance and motivation. Or, as Henry Ford said, “whether you think that you can or you can’t, you’re probably right.”
A teacher’s belief in her ability to bring about desired changes in her students cannot be underestimated. Over the last 25-30 years of research, compelling evidence has been amassed linking teacher self-efficacy to positive student and teacher outcomes.
“Teachers’ sense of efficacy has been shown to be a powerful construct related to student outcomes such as achievement, motivation, and sense of efficacy. It was also related to teachers’ behavior in the classroom. It affects the effort they put into teaching, the goals they set, and their level of aspiration. Teachers with a strong sense of efficacy are open to new ideas and more willing to experiment with new methods to better meet the needs of their students, and tend to exhibit greater levels of planning and organization. Efficacy influences teachers’ persistence when things do not go smoothly and their resilience in the face of setbacks. Greater efficacy enables teachers to be less critical of students when they make errors, to work longer with a student who is struggling, and to be less inclined to refer a difficult student to special education. Teachers with a higher sense of efficacy exhibit greater enthusiasm for teaching, have greater commitment to teaching and are more likely to stay in teaching. At the school level, higher teacher efficacy is related to the health of the organizational climate, an orderly and positive school atmosphere, greater classroom-based decision making, and the strength of the collective efficacy. Clearly the study of this construct has born much fruit in the field of education (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, pg 16)."
All of this seems self-perpetuating and cyclical: your self-efficacy is low, you are unmotivated, you don’t try very hard, you fail, your self-efficacy is low…and so on, in a downward spiral. Or, your self-efficacy is high, you try hard, you succeed, your self-efficacy is high…and so on in your climb to success.
I don’t know about you, but this wows me a little bit. Especially since my own confidence in the classroom is low. Am I doomed?
Friday, May 11, 2007
College Teaching--How do we get better???
I recently participated in a weekend retreat on college teaching. Honestly, almost every topic we covered (from class organization, student diversity, how to engage students, etc.) made me think more deeply about teaching. I have limited teaching experience, so at times the class was able to give me background and tools for thinking about issues related to my teaching skills, and this, in turn, increased my confidence and excitement about teaching. However, at the end of the exhausting weekend, I found myself still feeling overwhelmed by my lack of experience. In many ways, I still felt the same lack of confidence when it came to teaching, and in fact, was even more overwhelmed by the task at hand after becoming aware of the wide range of teaching strategies that I was inexperienced with.
For me, I know that much of this comes down to practice, plain and simple. But this got me to thinking about the role of teacher confidence in how well a person teaches, how easily a teacher bounces back from missteps in the classroom, how a teacher appears to her students, and how all this effects learning. In thinking about this, I came across some research on how teachers’ evaluations of their efficacy in the classroom can have dramatic impacts on learning. And this got me to thinking about how these concepts fit into the larger scheme of “how do we get better as teachers,” besides the obvious answer of practice.
In this blog, I’ll introduce some of the research that’s been conducted on self-efficacy in teaching, and then I’ll briefly discuss some resources and approaches that are available to help us improve our effectiveness as teachers. And, of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.
For me, I know that much of this comes down to practice, plain and simple. But this got me to thinking about the role of teacher confidence in how well a person teaches, how easily a teacher bounces back from missteps in the classroom, how a teacher appears to her students, and how all this effects learning. In thinking about this, I came across some research on how teachers’ evaluations of their efficacy in the classroom can have dramatic impacts on learning. And this got me to thinking about how these concepts fit into the larger scheme of “how do we get better as teachers,” besides the obvious answer of practice.
In this blog, I’ll introduce some of the research that’s been conducted on self-efficacy in teaching, and then I’ll briefly discuss some resources and approaches that are available to help us improve our effectiveness as teachers. And, of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.
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