| Abstrakt: |
What teachers believe about their own effectiveness in the classroom influences what and how they teach, so teacher preparation programs should work to cultivate strong self-efficacy beliefs (SEBs) in future teachers. I designed a science content course for future elementary teachers around the simultaneous goals of teaching science content and improving SEBs by activating Bandura’s 4 factors that influence SEBs (performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal and social persuasion, and physical and emotional arousal). During the semester, future teachers taught 3 45-min elementary school science lessons to small groups of peers, received detailed anonymous feedback, and reflected on their own teaching. I tracked the SEBs of 830 future teachers in this course using the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument-Preservice. I performed a multiple regression analysis to isolate factors that influenced initial SEBs and how SEBs changed during the course. I also qualitatively analyzed written reflections to gain insight into the quantitative changes. Two factors had the most significant influence on SEBs: science content mastery and quality of microteaching as measured by peers. Initial SEBs correlated with prequiz scores, whereas final SEBs correlated with postquiz scores. Among participants with identical quiz scores, those who recognized the benefits of science content mastery were more likely to increase their SEBs than otherwise identical participants who did not mention science content in their reflections. Future teachers trusted their peers’ rating of their teaching more than their own self-assessment, which suggests that verbal and social persuasion may have been more important than performance accomplishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
