Early Childhood Teachers' Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Mathematical Talk in the Classroom

• In Event: 34.035 - Teachers' Motivations and the Classroom: Relations Across Diverse Educational Contexts

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Framework
Teachers’ motivations, including their teaching self-efficacy beliefs, have been theoretically and empirically linked to their students’ achievement (e.g., Bandura, 1993; Klassen & Tze, 2014). The tenants of social cognitive theory applied to an educational context suggest that teachers’ beliefs of their own personal efficacy to motivate and promote students’ learning affect both the types of learning contexts they create as well as the amount that their students ultimately learn (Bandura, 1993). Beyond the global features of high-quality instructional practices, little is known about the content-specific mechanisms by which teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs may affect their students’ achievement.

The goal of the present study was to investigate the links between early childhood teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and the content of their classroom mathematics instruction. Previous research has shown that the quantity of early childhood teachers’ math talk positively predicted their students’ end of year math outcomes (Klibanoff et al., 2006). Furthermore, parents’ use of higher quality, more advanced number talk during math activities predicted their preschool children’s advanced number skills (Ramani et al., 2015). Using a mixed-methods design, we explored whether early childhood teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs predict the quantity and quality of their mathematical talk during instruction.

Sample
The sample consisted of 20 lead early childhood teachers from schools in the southeast United States. The teachers were members of the control group from a larger intervention study (Kinzie et al., 2014).

Method
In the fall, teachers completed the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) Short Form. Teachers also submitted video recordings of their classroom mathematics activities across the academic year. One hour of video per teacher was transcribed at the utterance level using CLAN software (MacWhinney, 2000). The video transcripts were then coded for types of mathematical talk, including counting, numeral identification, cardinality, ordinality, relative magnitude, equivalence, and arithmetic (Ramani et al., 2015). The types of mathematical talk were summed to create a measure of math talk quantity. Math type codes were combined into foundational and advanced math concepts talk as an indicator of quality (Ramani et. al, 2015). To control for variability in teachers’ overall mathematical talk, a proportion of quality talk was created by dividing the number of advanced math utterances by the total number of math utterances.

Results and Significance
Teachers’ self-efficacy ratings varied (M = 7.37, SD = 0.95), and a median split was used to categorize teachers into a group of higher self-efficacy and lower self-efficacy ratings. On average, 22% of teachers’ utterances were coded as mathematical talk (range = 10 – 37%). The frequency of the types of teachers’ mathematical talk varied significantly (see Table 1). Although there were no significant differences in quantity of mathematical talk between teachers with higher and lower self-efficacy ratings, teachers with higher self-efficacy ratings did have a greater proportion of more advanced mathematical talk than teachers with lower self-efficacy ratings, t(18) = 1.75, p < .05 (Figure 1). These results highlight teachers’ mathematical talk as one potential mechanism linking teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and their students’ achievement.

Authors

• Nicole Scalise, University of Maryland - College Park

• Geetha Ramani, University of Maryland - College Park

• Kristin Pak, University of Maryland - College Park