The influence of formal and informal formative pre‐service experiences on teacher self‐efficacy

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The influence of formal and informalformative pre‐service experiences onteacher self‐efficacyElie Tuchman a & Jenny Isaacs ba Yeshiva at the Jersey Shore , Deal Park, New Jersey, USAb Department of Psychology , Yeshiva University , New York, USAPublished online: 30 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: Elie Tuchman & Jenny Isaacs (2011) The influence of formal andinformal formative pre‐service experiences on teacher self‐efficacy, Educational Psychology:An International Journal of Experimental Educational Psychology, 31:4, 413-433, DOI:10.1080/01443410.2011.560656

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Educational PsychologyVol. 31, No. 4, July 2011, 413–433

ISSN 0144-3410 print/ISSN 1469-5820 online© 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/01443410.2011.560656http://www.informaworld.com

The influence of formal and informal formative pre-service experiences on teacher self-efficacy

Elie Tuchmana* and Jenny Isaacsb

aYeshiva at the Jersey Shore, Deal Park, New Jersey, USA; bDepartment of Psychology, Yeshiva University, New York, USATaylor and FrancisCEDP_A_560656.sgm10.1080/01443410.2011.560656(Received 29 September 2010; final version received 3 February 2011)Educational Psychology0144-3410 (print)/1469-5820 (online)Article2011Taylor & Francis00000000002011Dr. [email protected]

Formal pre-service training has been shown to be effective in building teacherself-efficacy beliefs. However, the impact of other, less formal, ‘teacher-like’ pre-service experiences on the formation of efficacy beliefs has not previously beeninvestigated. This study examines the associations between both formal andinformal formative pre-service experiences and teacher self-efficacy. In addition,the effect of years of teaching experience on these associations was investigated.Three hundred fifteen teachers of general and Judaic studies in Jewish day schoolsin the USA responded to a survey about their formal pre-service experiences;informal experiences as youth advisors, camp counsellors and childcaresupervisors; and two measures of teacher self-efficacy. Formal pre-servicetraining and positive student-teaching experiences, as well as each of the threeinformal experiences, were found to be associated with positive teacher self-efficacy. Interestingly, formal and informal pre-service experiences appear to beassociated with different aspects of teacher self-efficacy. Formal teacher trainingwas most strongly associated with efficacy for instructional practices, while thepositive informal experiences were most strongly associated with efficacy forstudent engagement. The potential impact of both formal and informal experiencesdid not appear to fade over time. On the contrary, for those variables where aninteraction with years of teaching was detected, it was the efficacy beliefs of themost senior teachers that were most related to their pre-service experiences. Thesefindings have important implications for the practice of both teacher trainers andthose charged with recruiting and supporting teachers.

Keywords: self-efficacy; teachers; pre-service; training

Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory suggests that an individual’s efficacy expec-tations, his belief in his ability to perform certain actions, combined with his outcomeexpectations, his conviction that such actions will lead to a particular outcome, arepredictive of how successful that individual will be in performing the action in ques-tion and in achieving the desired outcome (1977). Application of this theory to theact of teaching leads to the compelling notion that a teacher’s belief in his ability toimpact student learning makes a difference in his teaching and in his students’ learn-ing (Bandura, 1997). This construct, also called teacher self-efficacy, has been corre-lated positively with a broad range of positive student outcomes, teaching practicesand teacher classroom behaviours (Ross, 1994; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990). Given the

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

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414 E. Tuchman and J. Isaacs

importance of teacher efficacy beliefs, it is valuable to understand what personalfactors and real-life experiences help teachers to develop strong efficacy beliefs.

Although much more research has been focused on outcomes that can be predictedby strong teacher efficacy beliefs, a number of studies have looked at some of thefactors that are predictive of higher teacher efficacy. Predictably, formative pre-service experiences such as teacher training (Hoy & Woolfolk, 1993) and student-teaching (Fortman & Pontius, 2000; Hoy & Woolfolk, 1990) have been shown to beimportant in building teaching efficacy.

However, it remains unclear how persistent the effect of these factors is on teacherefficacy, or whether teachers might be able to develop equally strong efficacy beliefswithout these experiences. The effect of other potentially formative experiences on thedevelopment of teacher efficacy beliefs, such as involvement in a programme of infor-mal education, is also unclear.

In this study, we examined the effects of teacher training, student-teaching andleadership experiences in informal education on the efficacy beliefs of teachers inJewish day schools. In addition, by looking at these factors in conjunction with actualteaching experience, we have tried to determine if the efficacy-building effects ofthese formative experiences persist. In beginning to fill these basic gaps in our under-standing, this study seeks to clarify the role of formative pre-service experiences in thedevelopment of teacher efficacy.

Understanding self-efficacy

Bandura’s theoretical framework for explaining human behaviour is centred on effi-cacy beliefs – an individual’s belief that he is capable of executing a particular patternof behaviour. Experiences that leave one with a feeling of success and provideevidence of competence bolster efficacy beliefs; repeated successes help these beliefsbecome stronger and more resilient. Once a resilient sense of efficacy has been devel-oped it is not as easily weakened by experiences of failures or obstacles. Individualswith a strong, resilient sense of efficacy react to failure by redoubling their effort,viewing obstacles as surmountable. On the other hand, for individuals who have yetto develop strong efficacy beliefs, the experience of early obstacles and failure canlead to the development of very low self-efficacy. Repeated failures can strengthenthese beliefs as well, to the point that even clear successes are easily discounted(Bandura, 1997).

According to Bandura (1977, 1997), the development and change of one’s self-efficacy beliefs are based on information drawn from four major sources: (1) masteryexperiences, in which one personally experiences success in the desired action; (2)vicarious experiences, in which the individual observes the successes of others; (3)verbal persuasion and social influence of others, frequently conveyed in the form ofevaluative feedback; and (4) one’s internal interpretation of one’s physiological andaffective states, including emotions and mood. In many situations, more than one ofthese sources may be at work providing information that influences efficacy beliefs.

Correlates of teacher self-efficacy

Beginning in the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s, a great deal of researchfocused on teacher attitudes and behaviours and student outcomes that correlatewith teacher self-efficacy. In general, teachers with strong self-efficacy beliefs have

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Educational Psychology 415

been found to have a more positive attitude towards teaching and to be more confi-dent in their teaching abilities than their peers (Guskey, 1984, 1988). High-efficacyteachers are more likely to have a positive orientation towards their students and toprefer strategies that reflect a positive approach to discipline and management (see,e.g., Ashton, 1985; Ashton & Webb, 1986; Emmer & Hickman, 1991; Gibson &Dembo, 1984; Midgley, Feldlaufer, & Eccles, 1988; Woolfolk, Rosoff, & Hoy,1990). Strong teacher efficacy beliefs are also associated with a broad range ofpositive teacher behaviours (Allinder, 1994; Ashton, 1985; Ashton & Webb, 1986).It is no surprise, therefore, that high-efficacy teachers are also likely to be ratedhighly competent by their superintendents and principals (Heneman, Kimball, &Milanowski, 2006; Riggs & Enochs, 1990; Trentham, Silvern, & Brogdon, 1985).

These differences between teachers with strong efficacy beliefs and their lower-efficacy colleagues translate into real benefit for their students. A number of studieshave affirmed the correlation between teacher efficacy and student achievement (see,e.g., Anderson, Greene, & Loewen, 1988; Ashton, 1985; Ashton & Webb, 1982,1986; Moore & Esselman, 1992; Muijs & Reynolds, 2002; Ross, 1992, 1998). Astrong association has also been observed between a teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs andtheir students’ beliefs that they are capable of learning, known as student self-efficacy(Anderson et al., 1988; Midgley, Feldlaufer, & Eccles, 1989). This relationship likelymediates the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and behaviours and studentachievement (Ashton & Webb, 1986).

Predicting and enhancing teacher self-efficacy beliefs

It is clear that there would be great benefit if we could raise teachers’ efficacy beliefs.Unfortunately, efforts to increase teacher self-efficacy through in-service and othersimilar interventions have met with mixed success, and no clear pattern is apparent inthe data from these studies, making it difficult to draw any conclusion about the effec-tiveness of these approaches in increasing teacher self-efficacy (Ross, 1994, 1998).Researchers and practitioners have, therefore, continued to try to understand how bestto enhance teacher efficacy beliefs.

The identification of factors that predict teacher self-efficacy is of more thanacademic interest. There are also at least two practical ramifications of the identifica-tion of such predictors. First, it might be possible to construct or strengthen teacherefficacy beliefs proactively through the manipulation of one or more of these factors.Second, these factors might serve principals or others charged with teacher recruit-ment as indicators of potential high-efficacy teachers.

Research has identified a number of specific factors that have a measurable, signif-icant impact on teacher efficacy beliefs. Some of these factors, such as gender(Coladarci & Breton, 1997; Cousins & Walker, 2000; Romi & Leiser, 2006), areinherent teacher qualities that are essentially fixed and not subject to enhancement.Others, such as student achievement (Ashton, 1985; Moore & Esselman, 1994; Muijs& Reynolds, 2002), might impact a teacher’s efficacy beliefs during the course of herteaching career. Of the greatest interest, however, are those formative pre-serviceexperiences that help mould a teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs. These experiences,occurring while teachers’ efficacy beliefs are still developing and more easily influ-enced, can have significant impact on the teaching efficacy of teachers.

A teacher’s general level of education significantly affects his or her efficacybeliefs. Researchers have found that elementary school teachers who attended

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graduate school were more likely to have a strong belief in their own teachingefficacy (Hoover-Dempsey, Bassler, & Brissie, 1987; Hoy & Woolfolk, 1993), andthat subject matter expertise plays an important role in the formation of efficacy toteach that particular subject (Chacon, 2005; Muijs & Reynolds, 2002).

Formal teacher training programmes utilise modelling and various forms of vicar-ious experience along with verbal and social persuasion to help students developfamiliarity with the basic elements of pedagogy and skills in teaching. Many trainingprogrammes also conclude with the opportunity for enactive mastery experiencesthrough a supervised programme of student-teaching. Many researchers have foundthat this formal programme of training and practice provides prospective teachers witha strong sense of efficacy (see, e.g., Pigge & Marso, 1993; Woolfolk Hoy & BurkeSpero, 2005). Teacher training has also been independently shown to enhance teacherself-efficacy, even when measured separately from the student-teaching experience(Redmon, 2007; Vinson, 1995), and even in programmes that do not necessarily havea clinical fieldwork component (Housego, 1990; Watters & Ginns, 1995).

The supervised student-teaching experience that concludes many teacher trainingprogrammes provides precisely the type of enactive mastery experiences that Bandurasuggests build efficacy (Fives, Hamman, & Olivarez, 2007; Mulholland & Wallace,2001). It is, therefore, no surprise that teachers’ personal efficacy for teachingincreases significantly when measured after student-teaching but before the first yearof actual classroom teaching (Fortman & Pontius, 2000; Hoy & Woolfolk, 1990). Thebenefits of student-teaching experiences seem to accrue, regardless of the time spanduring which they occur or the settings in which they take place (Chambers & Hardy,2005; Fives et al., 2007; Knoblauch & Woolfolk Hoy, 2008).

Numerous studies have shown that the number of years a teacher has beenteaching also has a positive effect on efficacy beliefs (Darling-Hammond, Chung, &Frelow, 2002; de la Torre Cruz & Casanova Arias, 2007; Heneman et al., 2006; Hoy& Woolfolk, 1993; Riggs & Enochs, 1990). The relationship between experience andefficacy, however, does not appear to be a simple one. Teachers in their first year ofteaching, for instance, tend to have lower-efficacy beliefs than they did upon conclu-sion of their student-teaching (Woolfolk Hoy & Burke Spero, 2005). This finding islikely to be due to the shattering of the ‘unrealistic optimism’ held by most studentteachers (Weinstein, 1988) when they are confronted with the often daunting task ofreal classroom teaching.

Previous research has begun to illuminate the antecedents of teacher efficacy. It isclear that the formal, formative experiences that teachers undergo during their traininghelp build and strengthen their sense of teaching efficacy. However, there remains agreat deal that we do not yet know.

The value of other formative experiences

Social cognitive theory maintains that efficacy beliefs can transfer between onedomain and another when the individual perceives them to be similar enough thatmastery in one will carry over, to some degree, to the other (Bandura, 1997). It islikely that the reason student-teaching increases teacher self-efficacy, despite somesubstantial differences between student-teaching and ‘real’ teaching, is that they aresimilar enough in the minds of pre-service teachers. Are there other ‘teaching-like’activities that might similarly help pre-service teachers develop relevant efficacybeliefs?

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Weinstein (1988) suggests that experiences in informal education settings, such ascamp and babysitting, contribute to the ‘unrealistic optimism’ of student teachers,since formal and informal settings are not comparable. However, according to socialcognitive theory, the two settings do not need to be identical in order for efficacybeliefs to transfer. They only need to be perceived by the individual as similar enoughthat existing efficacy beliefs are relevant as a starting point from which to build asense of efficacy for the new activity. Is it possible that, regardless of formal teachertraining, leadership experiences in informal education contribute to the developmentof efficacy beliefs for teaching?

The persistence of the effects of formative pre-service experiences

As suggested earlier, it seems likely that the reason formative pre-service experienceshelp build efficacy for teaching is that individuals tentatively construct efficacy beliefsfor new tasks on the basis of mastery experiences (and efficacy beliefs) in a taskperceived as similar. If this is the case, one might expect the effects of mastery in therelated task to be rendered irrelevant once the individual has accumulated a sufficientnumber of experiences in the new task itself. A series of successes would providemore relevant and powerful evidence of mastery and build self-efficacy for the newtask, while a series of failures would serve as ‘proof’ that the tasks were not as similaras they seemed and lower self-efficacy beliefs.

Previous research has noted that teacher-efficacy beliefs grow with length ofteaching experience (Darling-Hammond et al., 2002; de la Torre Cruz & CasanovaArias, 2007; Heneman et al., 2006; Hoy & Woolfolk, 1993; Riggs & Enochs, 1990).Perhaps, as evidence accrues of mastery in the actual task of teaching, the relevanceof earlier successes in related areas diminishes. Does the effect of formative pre-service experiences on teacher self-efficacy depend on the length of the teacher’sactual teaching experience?

The case of Jewish day schools

Jewish day schools have a particularly eclectic mix of teachers, and the training ofthese teachers varies greatly. These schools have teachers of Judaic studies, responsi-ble for teaching the various Jewish curricular areas. Teachers of Judaic studiesfrequently have less formal training than teachers in general (Commission on JewishEducation in North America, 1990; Gamoran, Goldring, Goodman, Robinson, &Tammivaara, 1994; Gamoran, Goldring, Robinson, Goodman, & Tammivaara, 1997).

In addition, Jewish day schools have general studies teachers who are responsiblefor a curriculum that is more or less comparable to that taught in other private andpublic schools. It is generally assumed that most such teachers ‘do not possess asignificantly different profile from those teachers whom students might encounter inpublic schools’ (Pomson, 2000, p. 56).

Owing to the unusual composition of their staffs, Jewish day schools seem partic-ularly well suited for a more complete analysis of the effects of training and experienceon teacher efficacy beliefs. The varied backgrounds and training experiences of theteachers permit comparison between the efficacy beliefs of those teachers with formaltraining and student-teaching experiences and those without such experiences. In addi-tion, by looking at these factors in conjunction with actual teaching experience it waspossible to examine if the efficacy building effects of pre-service experiences persevere.

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Similarly, there is reason to believe that a high percentage of teachers in Jewishschools may have some background in informal education (Jewish Education Serviceof North America, 2008). It is also probably reasonable to assume that those experi-ences were successful, or they would not likely have pursued teaching as a profession.Given the importance of mastery experiences and successes in forming efficacybeliefs (Bandura, 1977, 1997), it was expected that teachers with these kinds of expe-riences might have strong, well-established efficacy beliefs, perhaps equalling orsurpassing their colleagues with student-teaching experience.

Methods

Procedures

Principals of Jewish day schools were contacted by telephone and by letter or emailto request their assistance in the distribution of the surveys. Those who agreed toparticipate were sent a packet of teacher surveys and instructions for distribution.Teachers were provided postage-paid envelopes in order to return the survey.Teacher participants were informed of the nature and content of the study, potentialrisks and benefits, their right to refuse to participate or to withdraw and the stepstaken to assure confidentiality by means of a cover letter attached to the survey. Theteacher surveys were completed anonymously, and no identifying data were gatheredabout the teachers.

Participants

Data were collected from full- and part-time teachers of general studies and Judaicstudies in Jewish day schools in the USA. In order to ensure a more focused, homo-geneous sample, participation was limited to teachers of kindergarten through gradefive. All participants received the same measures, and all data were collected duringthe spring semester. Participants received no compensation for participation.

The Jewish day school movement in the USA is a diverse enterprise, comprisedof schools with a range of religious orientations and philosophies (Schick, 2005).Schick has proposed 10 categories for classifying these schools, two of which,Special Education and Chassidic, were excluded from our study. There is reason tobelieve that special education teachers differ from regular education teachers in theirefficacy beliefs (Freytag, 2001; Soodak & Podell, 1993), and teachers in Chassidicschools were excluded due to lack of sufficient access. Teachers from schools in theremaining eight categories were included in proportion to their representation in theday school community. This study’s sample also included schools in 11 differentstates, in every region of the USA, with a distribution comparable to the distributionof Jewish day schools, so that the sample in this study was reasonably representativeof the teacher population in (non-Chasidic, non-special education) Jewish dayschools in the USA.

A total of 825 surveys were distributed to teachers in 31 schools, and 349responses were received, for an overall response rate of 42.30%. Twenty-eight of therespondents were not regular classroom teachers of general or Judaic studies in gradesK-5, and, not properly belonging in the sample, they were removed. Once these 28respondents were removed from the potential pool of valid responses, there remained321 valid responses from a potential pool of 797 teachers, for a response rate of40.28%.

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Measures

Teacher self-efficacy was measured using two separate measures, the personal teach-ing efficacy (PTE) subscale of the Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES) (Gibson & Dembo,1984) and the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy,2001).

Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES)

The TES (Gibson & Dembo, 1984) is the most widely used measure of teacher self-efficacy, and it is composed of two factors. The first factor reflects a teacher’s personalsense of responsibility for student learning, and is known as PTE. The second factorreflects a teacher’s more generalised beliefs about the relationship between teachingand learning and is known as general teaching efficacy (GTE). In recent years TEShas come under increasing scrutiny and has been subject to criticism of both its validityand its reliability (Brouwers & Tomic, 2003; Deemer & Minke, 1999; Denzine,Cooney, & McKenzie, 2005; Henson, 2001; Henson, Kogan, & Vacha-Haase, 2001).The GTE subscale in particular has been especially criticised, with some researcherssuggesting that it should no longer be used to measure teacher self-efficacy (Deemer& Minke, 1999; Henson et al., 2001). For this reason, the GTE subscale of TES wasnot used in this study. However, Coladarci and Fink (1995) found that TES is moder-ately correlated with other measures of teaching efficacy, and many researchers havecontinued to consider the results of previous studies utilising TES compelling (see, e.g.,Henson, 2001; Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy, & Hoy, 1998). The PTE subscaleof TES was, therefore, included in this study to permit comparisons to previousresearch. In our sample, PTE was reliable, with a Cronbach alpha coefficient of .74.

The PTE subscale from the short form of TES (Hoy & Woolfolk, 1993) iscomprised of five statements, about each of which teachers are asked to indicate theirdegree of agreement on a six-point Likert-type scale. The response points are labelled1 – ‘strongly agree’, 2 – ‘moderately agree’, 3 – ‘agree slightly more than disagree’,4 – ‘disagree slightly more than agree’, 5 – ‘moderately disagree’ and 6 – ‘stronglydisagree’. Responses were reverse scored; so, higher scores indicated strongerefficacy beliefs.

Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES)

Bandura (1977, 1997) notes that the predictive power of efficacy beliefs is greaterwhen the beliefs are more focused in a particular realm of behaviour. Some research-ers have, therefore, suggested that a teacher efficacy scale that is more specificallyrelated to actual teaching duties would be more accurate and would provide for amore contextualised and more meaningful measure of teacher efficacy (Deemer &Minke, 1999). To that end, Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy (2001) developedthe TSES, containing 24 items in its long form and 12 items in an abbreviated shortform, reflecting the actual responsibilities of a teacher. Factor analysis revealed threefactors, efficacy for student engagement (SE), efficacy for instructional practices (IP)and efficacy for classroom management (CM). Each of these factors produced high-reliability scores in their testing and together accounted for 54% and 65% of the vari-ance in responses on the long and short form, respectively. Further testing of TSESrevealed it to be both valid and reliable (Heneman et al., 2006; Tschannen-Moran &Woolfolk Hoy, 2001).

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The short form of the TSES contains 12 items about which teachers are asked tojudge their ability to influence outcomes (‘How much can you do?’) on a nine-pointLikert-type scale which ranges from 1 – ‘nothing’ to 9 – ‘a great deal’. In the currentstudy, the internal consistency for each subscale was adequate, with Cronbach alphacoefficients of .75 (SE), .79 (IP) and .85 (CM).

Demographic and experience variables

Teachers were asked to indicate their gender, the number of years that they hadbeen teaching and whether they taught general or Judaic studies. They were alsoasked whether they had formal training as teachers and whether they were certified/credentialed as teachers. In addition, they were asked to indicate their highest levelof formal education. Finally, they were asked whether or not they had supervisedstudent-teaching experience(s) prior to becoming a teacher, and if so, the degree towhich they felt those experiences were successful.

Teachers were asked to respond to a series of questions about any experiences theymight have had in informal education prior to becoming a teacher. These questionswere designed by the researchers to measure both the quantity and the quality of expe-riences in three disparate areas of informal education – youth groups, camp and child-care. For each area, respondents were asked to indicate whether they had anyexperience, and if they had, for how many years. They were also asked to indicate thedegree to which they felt they had a positive influence on the children in their careusing a nine-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 – ‘nothing’ to 9 – ‘a great deal’.The subjective nature of this assessment of quality is appropriate, since it is the indi-vidual’s interpretation of his experiences that is theorised to influence efficacy beliefsrather than an objective assessment of success or failure (Bandura, 1997).

Results

Descriptive statistics

The sample size, mean, standard deviation and range for each of the equal-interval andordinal variables in the study are presented in Table 1. For the variables positivestudent-teaching experience, positive youth advisor experience, positive camp coun-sellor experience and positive childcare experience, which measure the degree towhich a particular experience was positive, only those respondents who had thoseexperiences could provide responses.

Associations and group differences among variables

Pearson product–moment correlations were calculated to test the associations amongall the continuous study variables. The results of these correlations are shown inTable 2. As expected, the four measures of efficacy were significantly and stronglypositively intercorrelated. A teacher’s years of teaching experience and academicbackground were both found to be significantly correlated with all four measures ofefficacy, with stronger relations noted with efficacy for instructional practices thanwith efficacy for student engagement. On the other hand, the degree to which teachersfelt they had a positive effect on students during their student-teaching experience wasfound to correlate most strongly with efficacy for student engagement, and to a lesserdegree with efficacy for instructional practices.

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Teachers were asked to indicate the degree to which they felt they had a positiveinfluence on those in their care in each of three different informal education venues inwhich they might have had leadership experiences – youth groups, summer camps andchildcare. The measures of positivity for these informal education experiences weresignificantly and positively intercorrelated. All three measures of positive informalexperience were also found to correlate positively with teacher efficacy. Positiveyouth advisor experience was found to have a positive relation with PTE. Positiveexperiences as a camp counsellor and childcare supervisor were found to correlatewith nearly all of the measures of efficacy and were more strongly correlated withPTE and efficacy for student engagement than with efficacy for instructional practicesor classroom management.

Teachers with state-issued credentials had higher mean scores than their non-credentialed colleagues on all four measures of efficacy, and these differences reachedsignificance on two of the four measures. For the student engagement subscale, teach-ers with credentials (M = 7.39; SD = .93) reported higher efficacy than those without(M = 7.09, SD = 1.03; t(306) = −2.70, p < .01). For the instructional practices subscale,credentialed teachers (M = 7.54; SD = .97) reported higher efficacy scores than non-credentialed teachers (M = 7.21, SD = .99; t(296) = −2.82, p < .01). Similarly, teacherswith formal teacher training reported significantly higher efficacy for instructionalpractices (M = 7.44; SD = 1.00) than teachers without formal teacher training (M =7.02, SD = .97; t(300) = −2.71, p < .01). No differences were noted between teacherswith and without training on the other efficacy measures. Surprisingly, no significantdifferences were found between general and Judaic studies teachers, or teachers whohad supervised student-teaching with those who did not, on any of the efficacymeasures.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for equal-interval and ordinal study variables.

Range

Variable N M SD Min Max

Positive student-teaching experience 222 6.36 2.09 1 9

Highest academic education 313 2.16 0.81 1 4

Years of youth advisor experience 309 1.68 2.19 0 10

Positive youth advisor experience 146 7.00 1.67 1 9

Years of camp counselor experience 307 2.80 2.44 0 10

Positive camp counselor experience 228 6.92 1.77 1 9

Years of childcare experience 299 3.10 3.41 0 18

Positive childcare experience 218 6.84 1.75 1 9

Years of teaching experience 313 14.52 10.22 1 41

Grade level taughta 310 2.62 1.69 0 5

Teacher sense of efficacy scale (total) 299 7.41 0.84 5 9

Efficacy for student engagement 314 7.22 1.01 4 9

Efficacy for instructional practices 303 7.37 1.00 5 9

Efficacy for classroom management 310 7.59 0.96 4 9

Personal teacher efficacy (Teacher Efficacy Scale) 310 5.07 0.61 3 6

aGrade 0 refers to kindergarten.

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Tabl

e 2.

Pear

son

prod

uct–

mom

ent

corr

elat

ions

am

ong

the

stud

y va

riab

les.

Var

iabl

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23

45

67

89

1011

12

1.P

erso

nal

teac

hing

eff

icac

y (T

ES

)—

2.E

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acy

for

stud

ent

enga

gem

ent

(TS

ES

se)

.57*

**—

3.E

ffic

acy

for

inst

ruct

iona

l pr

acti

ces

(TS

ES

ip)

.56*

**.6

1***

—4.

Eff

icac

y fo

r cl

assr

oom

man

agem

ent

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Regression analyses

A series of hierarchical multiple regressions were performed in order to examine theindependent contributions of years of teaching, formal training experiences and infor-mal education experiences to the variance in the efficacy measures. In each regression,academic education, curriculum specialty (Judaic or general studies) and gender werecontrolled for by entering them on the first step. Years of teaching was entered next,on the second step. On the third step, the variables measuring formal formative pre-service experiences: (a) formal teacher training; (b) student-teaching; and (c) creden-tial, were entered. Finally, the measures associated with one of the three informalexperiences: (1) years of youth advisor experience and positive youth advisor experi-ence; (2) years of camp counsellor experience and positive camp counsellor experi-ence; or (3) years of childcare experience and positive childcare experience, wereentered. This process was repeated for each of the four teacher efficacy measures.Thus, a total of 12 four-step hierarchical multiple regressions were performed.

By definition, the measures of positive informal experience exclude those whohave not had that experience. The addition of one of these measures on the fourthstep, therefore, reduces the n of the regression as a whole, and both restricts andalters the nature of the sample. For example, when the regression includes positiveyouth advisor experience in the fourth step, the sample includes only those respon-dents who have had youth advisor experience, even for the first three steps. There-fore, in order to provide baseline data for the first three steps, a series of three-stepregressions was calculated with the entire sample, one for each of the four efficacymeasures. Summary results for the four baseline, three-step regressions are providedin Table 3.

The block of control variables in step one did not significantly predict efficacy forclassroom management or the PTE measure. However, it was significant for both theTSESse and TSESip subscales. The only significant independent predictor from stepone was academic education, which was significant for TSESip (β = .15; p < .05).

Step two, years of teaching, was significant for all four efficacy measures, with βweights ranging from .13 to .20. Step three was significant only for the instructionalpractices’ subscale. There were two significant independent predictors, formal train-ing, which was positively associated (β = .20; p < .01), and student-teaching, which,surprisingly, was negatively associated (β = −.18; p < .05).

The basic pattern that emerged from the first three steps in the baseline, three-stepregression remained even in the full, four-step regressions. Table 4 provides summaryresults for the fourth step of the regressions after each of the informal experiences wasadded. With youth advisor experience added to the regression, step four was signifi-cant only for the PTE measure, and positive youth advisor experience was the onlyindependent, significant contributing factor (β = .19, p < .05). The addition of campcounsellor experience on the fourth step was significant for three of the efficacymeasures and approached significance for TSEScm (p = .05). In each case, PositiveCamp Counsellor Experience was the only independent, significant contributor, withβ weights ranging from .17 to .25. The addition of childcare experience on the fourthstep was significant for the student engagement subscale and approached significancefor the instructional practices’ subscale. In each case, positive childcare experiencewas the only independent, significant contributing factor, with β values ranging from.14 to .27. Both positive childcare experience (β = .19; p < .01) and years of childcareexperience (β = .15; p < .05) significantly, independently predicted PTE.

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Interaction effects

In addition to the main effects of each of the formative experience variables, the effectof each variable’s interaction with years of teaching was measured. In each regression,the centred predictor variable was entered along with the centred moderator variable,years of teaching, on step one, followed by their product term on step two. When asignificant interaction was found, post-hoc analysis was conducted by examining theeffect of the predictor on the criterion when the moderator was one standard deviationabove the mean, at the mean, or one standard deviation below the mean, as recom-mended by Cohen, Cohen, West, and Aiken (2003). The significant interactions arereported in Table 5.

A significant effect on PTE was noted in the interaction between positive campcounsellor experience and years of teaching. Post-hoc analysis revealed that posi-tive camp counsellor experience had a minimal, non-significant association withPTE for teachers with fewer years of teaching experience, which became strongerand more significant for teachers with more experience. This pattern appeared quitestrongly in the interaction between years of teaching and positive youth advisorexperience for the TSESse and PTE measures. In both cases, the relation went froma non-significant small negative association for teachers with low levels ofexperience to a significant, positive relation for teachers with high levels of experi-ence. The interaction between teacher credentials and years of experience wasparticularly robust and significant for all self-efficacy measures. In each case, theassociation between credential and years of teaching is most strongly, positivelyassociated for teachers with the most experience.

Table 3. Summary of baseline regression analyses for years of teaching and formal formativeexperiences predicting teacher self-efficacy beliefs.

Criterion Variables ∆R2 ∆F df

TSESse Step 1 – Controlsa .03* 2.93 3,300Step 2 – Years of teaching .02* 5.59 1,299Step 3 – Formal experiencesb .01 1.34 3,296

TSESip Step 1 – Controlsa .03* 2.89 3,291Step 2 – Years of teaching .04** 12.68 1,290Step 3 – Formal experiencesb .03* 2.80 3,287

TSEScm Step 1 – Controlsa .02 1.76 3,297Step 2 – Years of teaching .02* 5.04 1,296Step 3 – Formal experiencesb <.01 0.45 3,293

PTE Step 1 – Controlsa .02 2.00 3,296Step 2 – Years of teaching .04** 12.82 1,295Step 3 – Formal experiencesb .01 0.70 3,292

Notes: TSES= teacher sense of efficacy scale; TSESse = efficacy for student engagement subscale; TSESip= efficacy for instructional practices subscale; TSEScm = efficacy for classroom management subscale;PTE = personal teacher efficacy subscale of the teacher efficacy scale.aIncludes the variables academic education, curricular specialty and gender.bIncludes the variables formal teacher training, student-teaching and credential.*p < .05.**p<.001.

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Table 4. Summary of the final regression analyses for youth advisor, camp counsellor orchildcare experiences predicting teacher self-efficacy beliefs.

Predictor Criterion ∆R2 ∆F df

Youth advisor experiencea TSESse .02 1.41 2,130

TSESip .03 2.29 2,129

TSEScm <.01 0.28 2,130

PTE .05** 3.58 2,128

Camp counsellor experienceb TSESse .05*** 5.43 2,209

TSESip .04*** 5.03 2,205

TSEScm .03* 2.98 2,207

PTE .07**** 8.25 2,207

Childcare experiencec TSESse .07**** 7.43 2,191

TSESip .02* 2.34 2,186

TSEScm .02 1.73 2,191

PTE .06*** 6.22 2,188

Notes: TSES= teacher sense of efficacy scale; TSESse = efficacy for student engagement subscale;TSESip = efficacy for instructional practices subscale; TSEScm = efficacy for classroom managementsubscale; PTE = personal teacher efficacy subscale of the teacher efficacy scale.aIncludes the variables years of youth advisor experience and positive youth advisor experience.bIncludes the variables years of camp counselor experience and positive camp counselor experience.cIncludes the variables years of childcare experience and positive childcare experience.*p < .10.**p < .05.***p < .01.****p < .001.

Table 5. Predictors whose influence on efficacy scores is moderated by years of teachingexperience.

Variables Interaction β when moderator is:

Predictor Criterion Effect β High Medium Low

Positive camp counselor experience PTE .19** .46*** .27*** .08

Positive youth advisor experience TSESse .20* .30* .09 −.13

Positive youth advisor experience PTE .17* .37** .18* −.01

Credential TSESse .14* .28*** .14* −.01

Credential TSESip .14* .28*** .14* >–.01

Credential TSEScm .13* .20* .07 −.07

Credential PTE .15** .23** .08 −.08

Notes: TSES = teacher sense of efficacy scale; TSESse = efficacy for student engagement subscale;TSESip = efficacy for instructional practices subscale; TSEScm = efficacy for classroom managementsubscale; PTE = personal teacher efficacy subscale of the teacher efficacy scale.*p < .05.**p < .01.***p < .001.

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Discussion

This study examined the associations between formative pre-service experiences ofteachers and their efficacy beliefs. Previous research has demonstrated that formalpre-service experiences positively correlate with teacher self-efficacy. The findings ofthis study partially support this general conclusion as well, and also provide insightinto the circumstances under which these experiences are likely to have the greatestpredictive power. These findings also provide some evidence that pre-service experi-ences in informal education may also help to build efficacy beliefs about teaching. Inthis study, experience as a youth advisor, experience as a camp counsellor and expe-rience as a childcare supervisor were all found to be positively associated with teacherself-efficacy.

Additionally, and contrary to expectations, the predictiveness of both formal andinformal pre-service experiences regarding teacher efficacy does not appear to fadeover time. On the contrary, for those variables where an interaction with years ofteaching was detected, the direction of the interaction indicated that the efficacybeliefs of the most senior teachers were most related to their pre-service experiences.

Interestingly, formal and informal experiences appear to relate to different aspectsof teacher-efficacy beliefs. Formal teacher training and possession of a state-issuedteaching credential were most predictive of high efficacy for instructional practices,while the various informal experiences were most strongly associated with high effi-cacy for student engagement.

Informal experiences

The three types of informal experiences investigated in this study seem to have a greatdeal in common. They are highly intercorrelated with one another on measures of bothyears of experience and quality of experience. However, these experiences differ fromone another as well, and despite their similarities, they relate to teacher efficacydifferently.

The relationship between youth advisor experience and teacher efficacy wasmoderated by length of teaching experience. Among the most senior teachers, therewas a strong association between their perceived success as youth advisors and theirefficacy for student engagement and personal teaching efficacy. On the other hand, theassociation was less pronounced, and the effect much smaller, for less senior teachers,and among the most inexperienced teachers, perceived success as a youth advisor wasassociated, albeit weakly, with reduced teacher efficacy.

The existence of such a strong association for senior teachers suggests that thepossible impact of positive youth advisor experience on efficacy may be strong andlong-lasting, but that some factor or group of factors may reduce efficacy beliefs forthese teachers in the early years of teaching. One likely suppressing influence isWeinstein’s (1988) ‘unrealistic optimism’. The many responsibilities of a classroomteacher and the environment in which the teacher interacts with the students may besufficiently different than those of a youth advisor as to force a highly efficaciousadvisor to doubt her ability as a teacher to successfully engage students. However,the data suggest that, over time, as teachers become more familiar with the schoolenvironment, those teachers who had been high-efficacy advisors figure out ways toengage students, and their efficacy may begin to climb again.

Of the informal experiences included in this study, the experience of being a campcounsellor appeared to have the broadest ranging effects on teacher efficacy beliefs.

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As was the case for the other informal experiences, perceived success as a camp coun-sellor was associated with efficacy for student engagement. However, it also had apositive association with efficacy for instructional practices and personal teacher effi-cacy. There was a significant interaction noted between positive camp counsellorexperience and years of teaching, in the prediction of personal teaching efficacy, withthe strongest association found among the most senior teachers.

These findings suggest that the experience of being a camp counsellor may havesome commonalities with teaching. In fulfilling their duties, camp counsellors engagestudents in a way that they feel to be meaningful, and which, apparently, they feel iscomparable to the way teachers engage their students. Success as a camp counsellor,therefore, builds efficacy beliefs for engagement that appear to carry over into theclassroom and become efficacy for student engagement. Somewhat surprisingly, theremay also be activities that the counsellors perceive to be instructional in nature, inwhich success might breed efficacy for instructional practices.

In light of the above findings, it was particularly interesting that successful campcounsellor experience did not relate to efficacy for classroom management, despite thefact that the duties of a camp counsellor typically include a certain amount of disci-pline and behaviour management. It may be that the behavioural expectations of chil-dren and the ways in which those expectations are communicated and enforced inschools differ from camps.

Positive childcare experience, like positive camp counsellor experience, was asignificant, positive, independent contributor to teacher efficacy for student engage-ment (as well as personal teaching efficacy), suggesting that the skills developed inengaging children during childcare may be relevant to engagement of students as ateacher. Interestingly, no interaction was noted with length of teaching experience,implying that the experiences may be related closely enough that the impact of child-care experience on teacher efficacy beliefs is felt immediately.

Formal pre-service preparation

Previous research has noted an association between formal preparation for teachingand teacher efficacy beliefs. The results of this study partially support this notion andprovide an opportunity to look at this relation in a more nuanced way.

In this study, formal teacher training was associated with greater efficacy forinstructional practices. As noted above, this suggests that teacher training programmesdo a good job of preparing teachers for their instructional responsibilities. In addition,the lack of an interaction with length of teaching experience implies that this prepara-tion is helpful to teachers immediately and that it stands them in good stead through-out their careers. On the other hand, no association was observed between formalteacher training and the other measures of teacher efficacy beliefs. This raises ques-tions about the helpfulness of such training programmes in preparing teachers to moti-vate and engage students or to manage their classrooms.

Possession of a valid, state-issued teaching credential is an indicator of a certaindegree of training and preparation for teaching. However, in the absence of clear,uniform, international standards, it is impossible to be sure precisely how much orwhat type of preparation is certified by the credential. When measured in the contextof other formal and informal pre-service factors, possession of a credential was notindependently predictive of efficacy even for instructional practices. Interestingly, asignificant interaction was noted with years of teaching on all four efficacy measures.

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This suggests that the training implied by a credential may not be sufficient to coun-teract the stresses of the early years of teaching. In the long run, however, it appearsto contribute greatly to a teacher’s confidence and competence.

In contrast with previous studies, this study found that merely having student-teaching was not generally predictive of teacher efficacy beliefs. The sole exceptionwas efficacy for instructional practices, for which student-teaching was indepen-dently, negatively predictive when measured in the context of other formal and infor-mal experiences, suggesting that experience as a student teacher may make one feelless proficient in instruction. A possible explanation for this surprising finding is thatthe range of experiences subsumed under ‘supervised student-teaching’ in this studymay have been considerably broader than is usually the case. For example, 132 of theteachers in this study report having attended a seminary, and 92 of those claimed tohave had supervised student-teaching. However, ‘student-teaching’ in the context of aseminary may refer to periodic classroom observations and occasional assistance inclassrooms, sometimes for periods as short as three weeks. A more useful measuremay be one that takes into account the meaningfulness of the student-teaching expe-rience. Indeed, the responses of the teachers to our question about having ‘a positiveinfluence on the children’ were highly correlated with their efficacy beliefs for studentengagement and, to a slightly lesser extent, with their efficacy for instructionalpractices.

Implications

Results from this study suggest some important implications for teacher trainingprogrammes and for school leaders. The findings of this study also serve as arenewed reminder to educational researchers that, when considering efficacy beliefs,it is the individual’s perception of an experience that is far more important thanwhether or not the experience took place (Bandura, 1997). It was the quality ofstudent-teaching and of each of the informal experiences that was found to be relatedto efficacy beliefs, not the mere occurrence of the experiences. Previous research has,at times, focused on whether or not individuals had a particular experience – student-teaching, for example. These results raise some questions about that approach andsuggest that it might be more meaningful to consider the way the individualperceives the experience.

The associations found between high-quality experiences in informal educationand teacher efficacy beliefs support the contention that those who participate in theseactivities may be promising candidates for careers in education (Woocher, 2004).Furthermore, the targeted recruitment of these individuals, as suggested by Woocher,may be a productive way to attack the perceived shortage of quality teachers. At thesame time, these results also suggest that such potential teachers might gain additionalbenefit from formal training.

Indeed, these findings support the notion that the best preparation would involveformal training, to enhance teacher efficacy for instructional practices, coupled withhands-on experience with children, whether through high-quality student-teaching,through informal experiences as youth advisors, camp counsellors, or childcare super-visors, or through some combination of these experiences, to enhance efficacy forstudent engagement. This is in agreement with previous findings (Darling-Hammondet al., 2002) that the best preparation consists of a combination of coursework andfieldwork, preferably with close links between them.

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Novice teachers often struggle in their first year, and may experience reduced effi-cacy beliefs (Woolfolk Hoy & Burke Spero, 2005). Recognising this, many schoolshave adopted programmes and systems, such as mentoring (see, e.g., Feiman-Nemser,1996), to help support these novice teachers. The findings in this study suggest thatsome novice teachers with high efficacy in their pre-service experiences may beparticularly hard hit by the reality of their classroom experience. It may be that theseteachers ought to receive greater attention and reassurance to help support themthrough this temporary crisis. It seems possible that, with adequate support, the lengthand severity of this efficacy dip might be minimised.

Limitations and directions for future study

The response rate to the teacher surveys was reasonably high, with greater than 40%of teachers responding overall, and with representation in some schools topping 60%.Nevertheless, it is possible that those teachers who responded to our survey differ insome important ways from those who did not respond. For example, it is possible thatthose teachers who did respond reflected a group of teachers that felt somewhat moreefficacious and/or had more positive pre-service experiences, thus giving a slightlyskewed view of teachers’ experiences and perceptions of self-efficacy.

This study measured the subjective quality of several experiences. In each case,the subjective success was determined by the response to one question, ‘To whatextent do you feel you had a positive influence on the children in your care?’ Meth-odologically, the results might be more compelling if they were based on a validatedscale composed of multiple questions. In addition, it might be helpful to do a prospec-tive longitudinal study to identify factors that help predict changes in self-efficacy andto examine pre-service activities immediately, at the time of their completion. It ispossible that as teachers accumulated experience and self-efficacy their perceptions ofearlier pre-service experiences became more positive.

The sample in this study was designed to be representative of teachers in Jewishday schools in the USA. These schools were chosen for this study in order to capitaliseon the diversity of training among the teachers and the probability that many of theteachers had been involved in one or more types of informal education, providinggreater variability on key training variables in our sample. However, there is no reasonto believe that there should be a different pattern of associations in a different popu-lation; there is nothing uniquely Jewish nor uniquely American about the factorsexamined in this study, and there is no reason to believe that the findings are uniqueto this population. Nevertheless, this study should be repeated and expanded toinclude non-Jewish private and public schools, in the USA and in other countries, totest whether the associations revealed in this study hold true for teachers in general.

Different types of formal and informal pre-service experiences have been shown,in this study, to be predictive of teachers’ efficacy beliefs. However, this research didnot clearly determine if one type of experience is better than another, or whether, forexample, camp counsellor experience could be considered a reasonable substitute forstudent-teaching. Future research could extend the findings of this study by lookingmore closely at the combinations and interactions between each of these formal andinformal experiences.

Teacher self-efficacy is a powerful construct which has been repeatedly linked toa broad range of teacher behaviours and student outcomes. By illuminating some ofthe pre-service factors that may help build teacher efficacy, this study has added to

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our knowledge of the way teachers build their efficacy beliefs and provided direc-tions for further research. Indeed, results from this study suggest that both formaland informal pre-service training are associated with different aspects of positiveteacher self-efficacy beliefs, and that these associations are generally most evidentfor teachers who have more years of teaching experience. As we continue to learnmore about the formation of these beliefs, we will be in an ever better position totrain and support teachers, and to help them believe in themselves and in theirstudents.

AcknowledgementsThe authors express their appreciation to the many teachers who participated in this researchand to the school principals who supported the data collection.

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Documents

The influence of formal and informal formative pre‐service experiences on teacher self‐efficacy