Teacher Efficacy and Student Learning
Today I get to use one of my favorite teacher words: efficacy.
In a multi-state study of 67 preschool teachers, researchers from Ohio State University found that a teacher’s sense of his/her efficacy resulted in greater literacy gains for students.
Results indicated that students whose teachers had high self-efficacy showed gains in one measure of early literary skills called print awareness, in which students were asked questions like ‘Show me just one letter on this page.’
However, children only showed gains in vocabulary knowledge skills when they had a classroom that offered emotional support in addition to having a teacher with high self-efficacy.
The study also showed that teachers with an elementary teaching certificate had a greater sense of self-efficacy than teachers with a preschool certificate. They speculate that that’s because the former had additional training.
