Purpose:
Defined as teachers' beliefs about their abilities to affect valued student outcomes, teachers' efficacy beliefs can influence their views of teaching and learning. Researchers (Bandura, 1997) postulated that teachers' efficacy beliefs may be cultivated during their early experiences as pre-service teachers, especially as student teachers. Student teaching provides an opportunity for pre-service teachers to gather information regarding their personal capabilities for teaching. However, the effects of student teaching on efficacy beliefs remain inconclusive. Some researchers insisted that student teachers' efficacy beliefs would increase, whereas others argued that they may be somewhat damaged. Although Martin and Kulinna (2003, 2004) have examined the changes of physical education (PE) teachers' efficacy beliefs as a result of professional development, no known studies are available concerning the development of student teachers' efficacy beliefs in PE. Therefore, this study examined whether student teachers' efficacy beliefs changed during the student teaching semesters.
Methods:
The participants were 145 PE major students (58 males, 87 females; Mage = 24.22, SD = 2.65) enrolled in the student teaching courses from 2006-2008 at four U.S. universities. They responded to the modified Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001) one week after they assumed full teaching (pre-test). The scale included three subscales: efficacy for instructional strategies, class management, and student engagement. The participants were requested to complete the scale again at the end of the semesters (post-test). The final sample comprised 121 participants due to missing data. The pre-test and post-test data were analyzed via MANOVA with repeated measures.
Analysis/Results:
The results revealed a significant change of student teachers' efficacy beliefs over time, F (3, 118) = 22.35, p = .00, η2 = .36. The follow-up tests yielded that student teachers' efficacy beliefs increased significantly. Specifically, efficacy for instructional strategies increased the most, F (1, 120) = 61.14, p = .00, η2 = .34, followed by efficacy for class management, F (1, 120) = 39.33, p = .00, η2 = .25, and efficacy for student engagement, F (1, 120) = 18.22, p = .00, η2 = .13.
Conclusions:
Therefore, we concluded that student teaching experiences had a positive effect on this group of student teachers' efficacy beliefs about physical education teaching. Future studies might focus on what aspects of student teaching contribute to increased student teachers' efficacy beliefs. With such information teacher educators might be able to design more effective student teaching experiences to further enhance student teachers' efficacy beliefs.