Teacher Efficacy Scale

Gibson, S. (1984). Teacher Efficacy Scale. Journal of Educational Psychology 76:569–82.

Comments:

The 30-item rating scale is designed to allow teachers to evaluate their degree of personal efficacy or their conviction that they can successfully execute behavior necessary to produce desired outcomes. Self-efficacy beliefs would indicate that teachers’ evaluations of their abilities can bring about positive student change.

Sample:

The sample consisted of 208 teachers from 13 elementary schools within two neighboring school districts in California.

Validity:

A multitrait-multimethod technique was employed to establish both convergent and discriminant validity on three traits—teacher efficacy, verbal ability, and flexibility.

Factor Analysis:

A principal factoring solution was used with both orthogonal and oblique rotations. Two factors were produced suggesting that the two factors were relatively independent. One factor was named personal teaching efficacy; the second was teaching efficacy.

Data Analysis:

Classroom observations related to academic focus and teacher feedback behaviors indicated differences between high- and low-efficacy teachers in time spent in whole class versus small group instruction, teacher use of criticism, and teacher lack of persistence in failure situations.

References

Teacher Efficacy Scale

1. When a student does better than usual, many times it is because I exerted a little extra effort.
2. The hours in my class have little influence on students compared to the influence of their home environment.
3. If parents comment to me that their child behaves much better at school than he/she does at home, it would probably be because I have some specific techniques of managing his/her behavior which they may lack.
4. The amount that a student can learn is primarily related to family background.
5. If a teacher has adequate skills and motivation, he/she can get through to the most difficult students.
6. If students aren’t disciplined at home, they aren’t likely to accept any discipline.
7. I have enough training to deal with almost any learning problem.
8. My teacher training program and/or experience has given me the necessary skills to be an effective teacher.
9. Many teachers are stymied in their attempts to help students by lack of support from the community.
10. Some students need to be placed in slower groups so they are not subjected to unrealistic expectations.
11. Individual differences among teachers account for the wide variations in student achievement.
12. When a student is having difficulty with an assignment, I am usually able to adjust it to his/her level.
13. If one of my new students cannot remain on task for a particular assignment, there is little that I could do to increase his/her attention until he/she is ready.
14. When a student gets a better grade than he usually gets, it is usually because I found better ways of teaching that student.
15. When I really try, I can get through to most difficult students.
16. A teacher is very limited in what he/she can achieve because a student’s home environment is a large influence on his/her achievement.
17. Teachers are not a very powerful influence on student achievement when all factors are considered.
18. If students are particularly disruptive one day, I ask myself what I have been doing differently.
19. When the grades of my students improve, it is usually because I found more effective teaching approaches.
20. If my principal suggested that I change some of my class curriculum, I would feel confident that I have the necessary skills to implement the unfamiliar curriculum.
21. If a student masters a new math concept quickly, this might be because I knew the necessary steps in teaching that concept.
22. Parent conferences can help a teacher judge how much to expect from a student by giving the teacher an idea of the parents’ values toward education, discipline, etc.
23. If parents would do more with their children, I could do more.
24. If a student did not remember information I gave in a previous lesson, I would know how to increase his/her reten- tion in the next lesson.
25. If a student in my class becomes disruptive and noisy, I feel assured that I know some techniques to redirect him quickly.

26. School rules and policies hinder my doing the job I was hired to do.
27. The influences of a student’s home experiences can be overcome by good teaching.
28. When a child progresses after being placed in a slower group, it is usually because the teacher has had a chance to give him/her extra attention.
29. If one of my students couldn’t do a class assignment, I would be able to accurately assess whether the assignment was at the correct level of difficulty.
30. Even a teacher with good teaching abilities may not reach many students.

Scoring:

1 = Strongly Disagree to 6 = Strongly Agree.