Differences Between Elementary and Secondary School Teachers in Trinidad and Tobago on Teacher Self-Efficacy

Abstract

The present study examined self-efficacy in 77 elementary and 146 secondary school teachers, most of whom were taking an educational psychology course at The University of the West Indies (UWI). Participants completed Gibson and Dembo's (1984) Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES), Bandura's (n.d.) Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (TES), and two single items developed by researchers at the RAND Corporation. Elementary teachers reported higher levels at self-efficacy than did secondary teachers on all variables. TES and TSES subscale scores resulted in moderate to high internal consistency estimates, with the TSES scores having higher scores on average. TSES scores also had stronger intercorrelations than did TES scores or RAND items. Number of Years Teaching (NYT) was not related to self-efficacy, but a single global self-rating of teaching ability had moderate correlations with some efficacy variables. Future research should examine the factor structure of TSES scores and the potential of increasing the self-efficacy of secondary teachers through teacher training.