Changes in General and Specific Teacher Self-Efficacy Related to:
Professional Development Follow-up, Assignment, and Career Stage
Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this project was to study the changes
in general and specific teacher self-efficacy related to the frequency
of Professional Development (PD) video conference follow-up, teacher
assignment, and teacher career stage.
Method: This study was approved by the St. Ambrose University
IRB in May, 2016. PD meetings were held at four elementary schools in
four midwestern school districts. Each PD meeting had been requested by
the early elementary staff. The topic of these meetings was training in
the use of See the Sound/Visual Phonics (STS/VP), a gestural technique
that represents all the sounds in English, as a supplement to literacy
instruction. Seventy-four elementary educators attended these meetings.
Attendees were assigned to preschool, kindergarten, first grade, and
second grade classrooms. Attendees also included reading teachers,
special education teachers, and speech-language pathologists. Attendees
were grouped according to these assignment categories, as well as by
career stage categories according to Huberman (1989)
All attendees participated in a video conference follow-up to the PD
meeting. The topic of the PD meeting was the use of See the Sound/Visual
Phonics (STS/VP) as a supplement to typical literacy instruction. They
were given the option of participating in two individual video
conference follow-up meetings, or one grade or assignment-level group
meetings. Both types of follow-up conferences lasted for a total of
35-37 minutes. Sixteen attendees chose individual video conference
follow-up, while the other fifty-eight participated in group video
conference follow-up.
All video conference follow-up was conducted in the time period between
the end of the PD meeting and eight weeks after that meeting (PD+8). The
two individual conference follow-up meetings were arranged depending on
the attendee schedule. These were held at PD+2 weeks and PD+6 weeks. The
group, assignment-specific, video follow-up was held at PD+4 weeks.
These involved one meeting for each grade level. A Post-Conference
Response Survey was filled out by both the attendee involved and the
follow-up provider. Agreement between the two people was measured on a
random sample of surveys. Agreement was defined for the purposes of this
study using the criteria of (+/-) one scale point. Agreement was
calculated at 67%.
All attendees completed a survey concerning self-efficacy in the three
areas mentioned above. A copy of the survey is in Appendix B. All
results were compiled according to teaching assignment and career state.
The survey was administered twice. Survey 1 was conducted at PD+8 weeks,
and Survey 2 at PD+16 weeks. There were no scheduled follow-ups between
PD+8 weeks and PD+16 weeks. Attendees were given the option of allowing
the results of their two surveys for research purposes. This followed
guidelines of the St. Ambrose IRB. The attendees were assured that the
data would be grouped, and individual attendees would remain
anonymous.
Results: Frequency of Video-Conference Follow-up: Attendees who
chose the two-individual-conference option had higher efficacy ratings
across all three categories than did those who chose the group
conference option. This held for both Survey 1 and Survey 2. It is
possible that the differences in the number of subjects in the two
follow-up categories may have affected the results.
Teacher Assignment: Teachers were asked to indicate their
current assignment on the initial survey. There were some differences in
both general and specific teacher self-efficacy related to classroom
assignment. For two groups, the preschool teachers and first grade
teachers, the changes ( Survey 2 compared to Survey 1) were greatest
related to the specific self-efficacy measure of efficacy for STS/VP
use. Overall assignment was slightly correlated with both specific
teacher self-efficacy and support efficacy.
Teacher Career Stage: The Huberman’s (1989) career stage
categorization was used as a measure of career stage. Attendees at about
mid-career (the “Experimentation” category according to Huberman)
showed the greatest change in specific self-efficacy related to STS/VP
use. There was a positive correlation between both specific teacher
self-efficacy and support efficacy.