Examine the Relationship between U.S. Teachers’ Teaching-Efficacy and Professional Commitment: A Study Built on TALIS

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday IV)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Teachers' experiences, teaching approaches, and consequences on learning

Proposal

Purpose
Professional commitment refers to people’s psychological attachment to certain profession. A critical reason for researchers’ intense attention to commitment may be the intimate relationship between commitment and turnover (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). Some studies have indicated that retaining high-quality teachers is becoming increasingly difficult in many countries (OECD, 2005), such as the United States (Ingersoll, Merrill, & Stuckey, 2014) and the United Kingdom (Education Committee, 2017). Also, commitment has been found to influence people’s work performance, job involvement, and satisfaction.
Give the importance of commitment, researchers had begun investigating teacher commitment decades ago (e.g., White, 1966) and the understanding about teaching commitment becomes increasingly sophisticated due to continuous researching and conceptualizing (e.g., Chan, Lau, Nie, Lim, & Hogan, 2008). For example, the close relationship between teaching efficacy and commitment has been reported by many researchers (Chesnut, 2017). Nevertheless, researchers reported inconsistent and even confusing findings in terms of the relationship between commitment and other factors, like teachers’ gender and age. One reason for the inconsistency might have resulted from the limitations of the research methodology such as sampling methods and sample sizes. Research built on international large databases, such as Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), may provide more reliable answers for the questions about commitment. This study will answer two questions:
(1) Does teaching efficacy impact teachers’ professional commitment?
(2) Do teachers’ background factors impact their professional commitment?
Theoretical Framework
Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory is used. He argues that it is human nature for people to undertake activities they believe themselves capable of handling; otherwise, they will avoid those activities. Thus, we assume that the higher teaching efficacy of a teacher, the stronger his/her professional commitment.
Methodology
We gleaned data from “TALIS 2013 U.S. Public-Use Data Files.” Participants are 730 middle school teachers. Among them, 254 are male. 344 teach language arts or social studies and 386 teach STEM. Their age ranges between 22-69, and their teaching experience ranges between 0-45 years. Another independent variable is teaching efficacy. It refers to teachers’ belief that they are capable of teaching successfully. It has three sub-constructs: efficacy in classroom management, efficacy in instruction, and efficacy in student engagement. The data were gleaned under the database variables SECLSS, SEINSS, and SEENGS. The dependent variable is teachers’ professional commitment. It refers to teachers’ psychological attachment to the teaching profession. The data is a combination of the three variables TT2G46B, TT2G46D, and TT2G46F. We use stepwise linear regression to analyze data.
Results
The results indicated that only one predictor explained 7.5% of the variance (R2 =.076, F(1,728)=60.1, p<.001). It was found that teachers’ efficacy in student engagement significant predicted their professional commitment (Beta=.276, p<.001).
Conclusion
Only teachers’ efficacy in student engagement may impact their professional commitment. Their background and efficacy in instruction and classroom management do not impact. This finding differs from previous studies reporting teaching efficacy in general impacts commitment. Also, it differs from studies indicating teachers’ background matters to their professional commitment.

Authors

• Guoxiang Wang, Texas Tech University

• Zhanxia Yang, Texas Tech University