Teacher self-efficacy and teacher burnout: A study of relations

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was partly to test the factor structure of a recently developed Norwegian scale for measuring teacher self-efficacy and partly to explore relations between teachers' perception of the school context, teacher self-efficacy, collective teacher efficacy, teacher burnout, teacher job satisfaction, and teachers' beliefs that factors external to teaching puts limitations to what they can accomplish. Participants were 2249 Norwegian teachers in elementary school and middle school. The data were analyzed by means of structural equation modelling using the AMOS 7 program. Teacher self-efficacy, collective efficacy and two dimensions of burnout were differently related both to school context variables and to teacher job satisfaction.

Section snippets

Introduction and purposes

Based on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1977, Bandura, 1997) a vast number of studies have shown that students' academic self-efficacy is predictive of study behaviour as well as academic outcomes (see Maddux and Gosselin, 2003, Skaalvik and Bong, 2003). During the last decade the research literature also shows a growing interest in teacher self-efficacy (e.g., Soodak & Podell, 1996; Wheatley, 2005). However, a problem with research on teacher self-efficacy is that there is no common

Teacher self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is grounded in the theoretical framework of social cognitive theory emphasizing the evolvement and exercise of human agency – that people can exercise some influence over what they do (Bandura, 2006a). Bandura (2006a) maintains that in this conception, people are self-organizing, proactive, self-regulating, and self-reflecting. From this perspective, self-efficacy affects one's goals and behaviours and is influenced by one's actions and conditions in the environment (Schunk &

Participants and procedure

Participants in this study were 2249 teachers from 113 elementary schools and middle schools (1st–10th grade) in Norway. Norway was divided into five geographical regions. In each region between 20 and 25 schools were drawn from one large city, one smaller town and two rural areas by a stratified random procedure. At each school a particular time was set aside for all teachers to respond to the questionnaire and the teachers were instructed not to discuss the items or to collaborate. All

The Norwegian Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (NTSES)

We first tested the factor structure of the 24-item NTSES by means of exploratory factor analysis with Varimax rotation and eigenvalues greater than 1. The analysis extracted six factors consistent with the theoretical model (see description of the six dimensions in the Method section). These factors explained 60% of the variance in the equation. The expected factor loadings were greater than .6 for twenty of the twenty-four items and greater than .5 for four items. None of the remaining factor

Discussion

This study supports the conceptualization of teacher self-efficacy as a multidimensional construct and shows that the Norwegian Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale may be a useful measure of the construct. However, the six dimensions of teacher self-efficacy are relatively strongly correlated, and the analysis verify previous results of a small scale study indicating that the six sub-scales may be used as indicators of a latent self-efficacy construct. This makes the scale particularly useful for

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by a grant from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

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