Teacher efficacy and academic performance.

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effect of gender and university grade level on pre-service teachers' mathematics teaching efficacy belief and academic performance. The analysis was based on 258 pre-service teachers enrolled in an undergraduate program in Ankara, Turkey. Results revealed that the significant effect of gender and university grade level on performance. However, there is no significant effect of gender and university grade level on mathematics teaching efficacy. Thus, gender and grade level are important constructs having impact on performance of pre-service teachers.

Introduction

Self-efficacy has been defined as an individual's judgment of his or her capability to organize and execute the courses of action required to attain designated types of performances (Bandura, 1986, 1997). Strong sense of efficacy increases human accomplishment and people with high confidence in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided. People with high efficacy beliefs set themselves challenging goals and they heighten and sustain their efforts in the face of failure. On the other hand, people who doubt their capabilities shy away from difficult tasks, which they view as personal threats (Bandura, 1994).

Teacher efficacy has been defined as teachers' "beliefs in their ability to have a positive effect on student learning" (Ashton, 1985; p. 142). Teachers with higher teaching efficacy find teaching meaningful and rewarding, expect students to be successful, assess themselves when students fail, set goals and establish strategies for achieving those goals, have positive attitudes about themselves and students, have a feeling of being in control, and share their goals with students (Ashton, 1985). Gibson & Dembo (1984) mentioned that teachers with high efficacy devote more class time to academic activities and focus less on discipline as a prerequisite to student learning. Woolfolk and Hoy (1990) stated that teacher efficacy is considered as one of the few teacher characteristics that consistently relates to teaching and learning. Studies on teacher efficacy suggested that pre-service teachers in different countries have varying degrees of beliefs about themselves to be effective in teaching (Campbell, 1996; Gorrell & Hwang, 1995; Yeung & Watkins, 2000; Cakiroglu, 2003). Lin & Gorrell (2000) stated that the concept of teacher efficacy might be culturally oriented and must be carefully examined when applied to teachers in different countries. In a research study, Cakiroglu (2003) found out that Turkish pre-service teachers had significantly higher mathematics teaching outcome expectancy beliefs than that of American pre-service-teachers and he noted that gender was not a factor explaining the difference in efficacy beliefs of pre-service teachers in both countries.

Teachers' sense of efficacy affects the effort they put into teaching, the goals they set and their level of inspiration . Swars (2005) mentioned that the number of research studies in the area of mathematics teaching efficacy of pre-service elementary teachers is limited. Given the importance of teacher efficacy regarding instructional practices, further investigation should occur in this area. In order to make the development of highly efficacious mathematics pre-service teachers possible, we need to explore pre-service teachers' sense of mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs. Since teachers' efficacy beliefs influence their professional practices, gender differences regarding their efficacy beliefs may have significant consequences in classroom. In this sense, gender differences in mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs is an important issue to be explored about pre-service teachers. Especially considering that mathematics may sometimes be stereotyped as a "mail domain" (Hyde, Fennema, Ryan, Forst, & Hopp 1990) different efficacy levels of female and male teachers may add to such beliefs of students. Several studies have focused on understanding teachers' level of efficacy beliefs and the characteristics of self-efficacious teachers; however there is a need to assess prospective male and female teachers' beliefs about their ability to perform specific teaching competences before going into the classroom (Brandon, 2000). In this sense, a question raise whether gender is an important factor that affects teaching efficacy of pre-service teachers toward mathematics.

In this aspect, this study aims to investigate the effect of gender and university grade level on academic performance and mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs of pre-service teachers enrolled in four-year teacher education program in Turkey. In addition, the relationship between teacher efficacy beliefs and academic performance is also investigated. It is believed that identifying how female and male teacher candidates differ in terms of their mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs before engaging in the teaching profession actively will give valuable insights to both policy makers and educators. In general; the purpose of the present study was to address the following three questions:

1) What is the relationship between mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs and academic performances of pre-service mathematics teachers?

2) What is the effect of gender and years in university on pre-service teachers' teaching efficacy beliefs?

3) What is the effect of gender and years in university on pre-service teachers' performances?

Method

Data was collected from 80 (31%) sophomore, 94 (36.4%) junior, and 84 (32.6%) senior pre-service middle school mathematics teachers enrolled in an Elementary Mathematics Teacher Education (EME) programs at two public universities in Ankara, Turkey. Two universities were randomly selected among the four universities that comprise the accessible population of the pre-service teachers in Ankara, Turkey. After selecting the two universities randomly, instrument was administered at class hour to the entire sophomore, junior and senior students in both universities. All the students, during the class hour were voluntarily participated in the study. Since mathematics performance was one of the main concerns of this study, freshman students were not involved in the study where they do not have their CGPA's yet. Data were collected through the end of the fall semester of 2004-2005 academic years. In total 258, 171 female (66.3%) and 87 (33.7%) male pre-service teachers participated in the study.

Mathematics Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (MTEBI; Enochs, Smith & Huinker, 2000) was used to determine teaching efficacy beliefs of pre-service mathematics teachers. Each item in MTEBI has five response categories: strongly agree, agree, uncertain, disagree, and strongly disagree. The MTEBI comprised of two subscales, personal mathematics teaching efficacy (PMTE) (e.g. "I will continually find better ways to teach mathematics" and mathematics teaching outcome expectancy (MTOE) (e.g. "Students' achievement in mathematics is directly related to their teacher's effectiveness in mathematics teaching."). Possible scores on the MTOE scale range from 8 to 40; and PMTE scores range from 13 to 65. In order to measure the internal consistency (reliability) of the MTEBI, Cronbach's alpha was calculated. Reliability coefficients for the PMTE (13 items) was calculated as .83 and .77 for the MTOE (8 items) that is considered as high in most social science applications. MTEBI was translated and adapted for Turkish pre-service mathematics teachers by Cakiroglu (2003). The MTEBI was given to all sophomore, junior and senior pre-service elementary mathematics teachers in both universities. Totally, 258 pre-service teachers filled out the questionnaire. Completing the questionnaire required 15-20 minutes and questionnaires were administered to students during their class hours. In this study, Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of each student, which is calculated out of 4.00, was used as a measure of academic performance. Students' total CGPA at the end of the first semester of 2004-2005 academic year was used as a variable of their academic performance in this study. Pre-service teachers CGPA's were reported from the student registration offices of two universities.

Result

In order to analyze the data, stochastic Rasch modeling was used. Rasch model provides a mathematical framework where the test developers can compare their data. Rasch model transform raw data from the human sciences into abstract, equal-interval scales and equality of intervals is achieved through log transformations of raw data odds and by the probabilistic equations abstraction is accomplished (Bond & Fox, 2001). One of the important benefits of the model is its ability to provide estimates of item difficulty and person abilities or attitudes that are relatively invariant over different samples (Green, 1996). Bond & Fox (2001) mentioned that in Rasch model analysis, raw scores are converted into natural logarithm and by this way it is possible to say how much more able a person than saying that he or she is just more able. In addition by using Rasch model more accurate evaluation is allowed even respondents do not answer every item. In this study, using the Rasch measure, mathematics teaching efficacy scores were reported in Rasch log odds units.

In order to describe the data, means and standard deviations of mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs including personal teaching efficacy (M = 1.6, SD= 1.3, in logits) and outcome expectancy (M = 1.4, SD= 1.5, in logits) were computed. Bivariate correlations were calculated to determine the relationship among mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs and performance of pre-service teachers. The results revealed significant relationship between personal efficacy and outcome expectancy (r = .37, p = .00) but no significant relationship between personal efficacy and cumulative grade point average (r = -0.04, p = .50) and between outcome expectancy and cumulative grade point average (r = 0.014, p = .83) respectively.

In order to test the effect of gender and grade level on pre-service teachers' mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs, two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was run. Results revealed that there was no significant main effect for gender, where males (M = 3.3) did not score significantly higher than females (M = 2.8), F(1,254) = 2.3, p = .13. Similarly, there was no significant main effect for university grade level. In other words, there was no significant effect of university year on pre-service teachers' mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs. Results showed that teacher efficacy scores of sophomore (M = 2.8), junior (M = 3.4), and senior (M = 3.0) pre-service teachers did not differ significantly F(2,254) = 1.45, p =.23. Parallel to these findings, there was no significant gender by university grade level interaction. Despite the lack of statistical significance F(2,254) = 0.15, p = .85, we could note that males scored higher than females throughout their university education with respect to teaching efficacy belief. Similarly, to test the effect of gender and university grade level on pre-service teachers' academic performance, two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was run. Results revealed that there was a significant main effect for gender, where females (M = 2.7) score significantly higher than males (M = 2.36), F(1,254) = 28.52, p =.00. Similarly, there was a significant main effect for university grade level F(2,254) = 4.3, p = .01. Because the overall F test was significant, follow-up tests were conducted to evaluate pairwise differences among means. In order to test the differences among university grade levels, Bonferroni Post Hoc test was used. Results revealed that there was a significant mean difference between sophomore (M = 2.4) and junior (M = 2.57) pre-service teachers (p = .006), and between sophomore and senior pre-service teachers (p = .002). On the other hand, there was no significant mean difference between junior and senior (M = 2.58) pre-service teachers (p = .66) where senior pre-service teachers had the highest performance scores and sophomore had the lowest.

Discussion

In this study, the effect of gender and university grade level on pre-service teachers' mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs and performance was investigated. Results revealed no significant relationship between teaching efficacy beliefs and cumulative grade point average. So, even if pre-service teachers have higher teaching efficacy beliefs, they did not reflect it to their CGPA's. This may be due to the fact that pre-service teachers are required to take mathematics courses that are more complex and abstract than compared with the mathematics that they are going to teach after their graduation. Therefore, pre-service teachers' beliefs in their ability to affect student outcomes may not depend on their grades in university.

According to the findings of the study, there was no significant effect of gender and university grade level on pre-service teachers' teaching efficacy beliefs toward mathematics. Although male pre-service teachers scored higher than females in all groups, this difference was small. We could also say that both male and female pre-service teachers have high teaching efficacy beliefs. In other words, they have confidence in their ability to affect their students' mathematical learning. Pre-service teachers' higher efficacy beliefs can be attributable to several reasons including: cultural factors, university grade levels or target group that is going to be taught, and teacher education programs. As stated above, pre-service teachers will teach mathematics at elementary and middle school after their graduation. Thus, pre-service teachers may feel competent to teach mathematics at these university grade levels, which include less complex and abstract mathematical approaches compared with the high school or college levels. Practicing mathematical activities in mathematics and pedagogical courses taken during the elementary education program, including method courses, might enhance pre-service teachers' beliefs on their competences to teach mathematics. Furthermore, results revealed that there was no significant difference between female and male pre-service teachers with respect to mathematics teaching efficacy beliefs on both dimensions.

On the other hand, results showed that there was a significant effect of both gender and university grade level on pre-service teachers' performance. Female pre-service teachers have significantly higher scores compare to the males. The fact that female pre-service teachers' outperformed males on performance scores contradict earlier studies that found male students outperformed female students at the high school and college levels (Aiken, 1986-1987; Hyde, Fennema & Lamon, 1990; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). Female pre-service teachers' outperforming of males on performance scores, represented by overall GPAs, might be due to the cultural factors related to the attitudes toward teaching profession. In Turkey, as in many countries, teaching is stereotypically seen as a female profession, especially in elementary and middle grade levels. Males are encouraged to have jobs like engineering while girls are encouraged to have jobs that are mostly accepted as female oriented, like teaching. Such a stereotyping could be an important factor influencing the different motivational levels toward teaching profession among females and males. This may result in female pre-service teachers to spend more time on their courses and getting higher grades. In addition, results showed that as the university grade levels of pre-service teachers increase, their grade point is also increased. Senior students' higher scores on performance could be dedicated to their adaptation to the university life and to the program.

To sum up, the results of this study tentatively suggest further investigation to be carried out with pre-service or practicing teachers to gain deeper insight into cognitive and affective variables that can be related to performance and efficacy beliefs. Studying how teaching efficacy beliefs develop across the school years, what factors facilitate their development and how these affect the pre-service teachers' performance and their further teaching experiences could yield valuable implications for the educational field.

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Mine Isiksal, Middle East Technical University, Turkey

Erdinc Cakiroglu, Middle East Technical University, Turkey

Isiksal, is Research Assistant and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Elementary Mathematics Education. Cakiroglu, Ph. D., is Assistant professor of mathematics education in the Department of Elementary Education.