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