Intersecting Teacher Beliefs and Behaviors: The Influence of Self-Efficacy and Importance Value Beliefs on Teaching Style

• In Event: The Functions of Teachers’ Beliefs: Filter, Frame, and Guide

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Framework

Teaching self-efficacy beliefs are acknowledged to impact teaching behaviours; but, what are the frames through which they operate? We take up the contention by Fives and Buehl "teachers' motivational beliefs such as self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, and task value may serve as antecedents to actual classroom practices". People do not always enact behaviours for which they perceive they have skills; within the expectancy-value framework, Eccles et al. (1983) argue that when individuals perceive they have the skills, and attach value to an activity, they will engage with it. The extent to which teachers’ perceived abilities are enacted in their classroom teaching should also depend on the importance they attach to those behaviours. We set out to test whether teachers’ importance values played a moderating role in the relation between self-efficacy and teaching style.

Methods and Data

We assessed early career Australian primary/elementary (N=163; 143 women) and secondary teachers’ (N=218; 155 women; total N=381) self-efficacy beliefs for dimensions of classroom management (α=.85), student engagement (α=.87), and assessment and reporting (α=.85; SET Scale, Watt & Richardson, 2005, 2008; based on the TSES, Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001). We additionally developed corresponding measures for teachers’ importance values. Teaching behaviours were measured by the self-report Teacher Style Scale (TSS, Watt & Richardson, 2007): positive expectations–achievement (α=.91), positive expectations–behaviour (α=.84), relatedness (α =.91), negativity (α =.78), and structure (α=.82). Interaction terms were created for each self-efficacy and associated importance value; these, along with self-efficacy and importance value factors, were correlated with TSS outcomes. Confidence intervals (CIs) were constructed to determine whether correlations between interaction terms and dimensions of teaching style, were significantly stronger than with self-efficacies or importance values alone.

Results

Correlations were all statistically significant between self-efficacy factors, corresponding importance values, and their interactions, with dimensions of teaching style, p<.001. Relationships with self-efficacies appeared stronger than with importance values; classroom management and student engagement dimensions appeared more influential than assessment and reporting. CIs revealed similar relationship strengths of interaction terms and self-efficacies with teaching style; but, several relationships were stronger between interaction terms than importance values. Specifically, self-efficacy X importance value for classroom management impacted more strongly on teaching style relatedness and structure (CIs=95%, 99%); similarly for student engagement (CIs=99%, 95%).

Significance

Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, importance values, and self-reported teaching style all interrelated. Counter to hypothesis, we conclude that self-efficacies predict similarly to measured teaching style, whether or not teachers attached high importance value to classroom management, student engagement, or assessment and reporting.

Importance values predicted less strongly to teaching style relatedness and structure, when unaccompanied by corresponding high self-efficacies for classroom management or student engagement. This suggests self-efficacies provide a “frame” to guide the impact of importance values on teaching behaviours. Factors to which teachers attach value will be more likely to produce positive action, when they perceive themselves to possess requisite skills. This was the case for relatedness and structure, but reassuringly not for negativity (a negative action), or positive expectations of students (arguably not actions).

Authors

• Helen M.G. Watt, Monash University

• Paul W. Richardson, Monash University