Faculty of Education

Faculty of Education
Faculty of Education

Informing Pre-Service Education with Complex Frameworks for Teacher Efficacy

In recent studies, Dr. Jamie Pyper examined teacher efficacy contextualized in intermediate/senior math education and how this translates into teachers’ classroom behaviours and pedagogical decisions.

A teacher showing a teacher candidate how to teach math.

Through his studies Dr. Jamie Pyper examines teacher efficacy, a subset of teachers’ beliefs, and explores three subscales of teacher efficacy. In the three subscales (or, perspectives on classroom practice), namely student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management, the studies showed fluctuations during the pre-service program. For example student engagement efficacy increased significantly in the last quarter of the program, and instructional strategies efficacy increased in the first and last thirds of the program, while classroom management efficacy appeared to have a lull with decreases and/or a plateau over the middle portion of the program.

A complex interrelated web emerges, where a change in teacher efficacy is related to the evolution of teacher concerns, potentially evident in a teacher orientation that is a reflection of the rich experiences that have come together to mould the teacher candidates’ classroom teaching practices.

This look at particular perspectives and sources of teacher efficacy and how they change over time or in relation to each other may be helpful in informing teacher education practice. It offers insight for planning a teacher education course or program in order to increase preservice teachers’ potential learning through course topic selection and order, and explicitly bringing experiences from coursework and practicum together.

Key Findings

  1. Various perspectives of teacher efficacy fluctuate throughout the course of the teacher education program
  2. Teacher concerns evolve and appear nested within each other, and are related to teacher efficacy
  3. Teacher orientation is related to teacher efficacy and the blending of different orientations emerges with an increase in teacher efficacy

Further information: Dr. Jamie Pyper