In the 1970s, two evaluation studies of innovative educational programs identified teachers' sense of efficacy as an important variable predicting student achievement. Over the next two decades, researchers sought to conceptualize and measure the construct, and have found it to be related to teaching behavior and career length, and student motivation and achievement. As a result, teaching efficacy has been hailed as among the most important dispositions for teachers, and as a grounding framework for teacher education programs (Ashton, 1984; Guskey & Passaro, 1994). However, despite aggressive pursuit toward understanding the construct, and consistent conclusions that it relates to a multitude of desirable outcomes, teacher efficacy continues to be the subject of debate, particularly regarding the best ways to measure it (Hebert, Lee, & Williamson, 1998; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001; Wheatley, 2005). Researchers have tended to treat teacher efficacy as a global disposition (i.e., a teacher's belief in her/his ability to influence valued student outcomes), as opposed to content- and task-specific beliefs. Current research focuses on the development of instruments that assess teaching efficacy beliefs specific to content areas and for specific tasks which teachers face in their work. Research on teaching efficacy specific to physical education is conspicuously lacking. Among the recent teaching efficacy research in physical education, Martin and colleagues (Martin & Kulinna, 2003, 2004; Martin, Kulinna, Eklund & Reed, 2001, Martin, McCaughtry, Kulinna, & Cothran, in press) developed an instrument to assess efficacy for teaching physically active lessons, and have begun to examine how these beliefs change as a result of professional development. They found that teachers with higher efficacy had stronger intentions, more favorable attitudes, and greater feelings of control. Teachers who were efficacious in their ability to teach active lessons with limited space were also confident that they could motivate students who did not enjoy PE. Further, they found that efficacy to overcome barriers to active PE, and to incorporate technology into lessons could be promoted by professional development interventions. In this presentation, we provide an overview of research on teaching efficacy, examine teaching efficacy research specific to physical education, and provide the rationale for the development of a sound physical education teaching efficacy instrument based on theory, national NASPE standards, and contemporary recommendations for development of such scales. Keyword(s): measurement/evaluation, professional preparation, research