Self-efficacy of Students in a Preschool Education Programme: The Construction of a Research Instrument

The primary aim of this article is to present the validation process of the SEPRES questionnaire to measure the self-efficacy of students in a preschool education programme. After the generation of the questionnaire items for the item pool, the items were content validated, and then they underwent an exploratory factor analysis with data from 154 respondents to determine the construct validity of the questionnaire. Four factors were extracted after using Principal axis factoring with Oblimin rotation. The factors are Children involvement, Behaviour elimination, Professional collaboration and Credibility building, and they have Alphas ranging from 0.769 to 0.903. Inter-correlation among dimensions ranged from 0.419 to 0.681, indicating that SEPRES is a consistent research instrument.

REFERENCES:

• Aloe, A.M., Amo, L.C., & Shanahan, M.E. (2014). Classroom management self-effi cacy and burnout. A multivariate meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 26, 101 – 126. DOI: http://dx.doi.org.10.1007/s10648-013-9244-0.
• Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning. Educational Psychologist, 28 (2), 117-148.
• Bandura, A. (2006). Guide for Constructing Self-Efficacy Scales. In Urban, T., Pajares, F. (eds.) 2006. Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Adolescents. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 307-337. ISBN 1-59311-366-8.
• Brouwers, A., & Tomic, W. (2003). A test of the factorial validity of the Teacher Efficacy Scale. Research in Education, 69 (May), 67-79.
• Cakiroglu, J., Cakiroglu, E., & Boone, W. (2005). Pre-service teacher efficacy beliefs regarding science teaching: A comparison of pre-service teachers in Turkey and the USA. Science Educator, 14 (1), 31-40.
• Caprara, G.V., Barbaranelli, C., Steca, P., & Malone, P.S. (2006).Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs as determinants of job satisfaction and students’ academic achievement: A study at the school level. Journal of School Psychology, 44, 473-490.
• Charalambous, Y., Philippiou, G., & Kyriakides, L. (2004). Tracing the development of pre- service teachers´ efficacy beliefs during fieldwork. Educational Studies in Mathematics (on-line). Available: www.springerlink.com/content/3g043158m382444 (retrieved Nov. 9, 2007).
• Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2ⁿd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Cousins, J.B., & Walker, C.A. (2000). Predictors of educators’ valuing of systematic inquiry in schools. Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, Special Issue, 25-53.
• DeVellis, V.R. (2003). Scale development: Theory and application. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
• Enochs, L., Smith, P.L., & Huinker, D. (2000). establishing factorial validity of the math- ematics teaching efficacy beliefs instrument. School Science and Mathematics, 100 (4), 194-202.
• Evers, W.J.G., Brouwers, A., & Tomic, W. (2002). Burnout and self-efficacy: Study on teach- ers’ beliefs when implementing an innovative educational system in the Netherlands. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 72, 227-243.
• Gau, B.H., & Hung, Ch.-Ch. (2014). The Self-Efficacy Scale for preschool teachers regard- ing asthma care: Instrument development and validation. The Journal of School Health, 84 (2), 91-98.
• Gavora, P. (2010). Slovak pre-service teachers self-efficacy: Theoretical and research con- siderations. The New Educational Review, 21 (2), 17-30.
• Gavora, P. (2012). Skúsenosti so zisťovaním self-efficacy učiteľa pomocou dotazníka OSTES. Kvalita ve vzdělávání. Sborník příspěvků, XX. výroční konference České aso- ciace pedagogického výzkumu, Praha, 10-12. září 2012.
• Gibson, S., & Dembo, M. (1984). Teacher efficacy: A construct validation. Journal of Edu- cational Psychology, 76 (4), 569-582.
• Guo, Y., Justice, L.M., Sawyer, B., & Tompkins, V. (2011). Exploring factors related to pre- school teachers´ self-efficacy. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(5), 961-968.
• Hemphill, J.F. (2003). Interpreting the magnitudes of correlation coefficients. American Psychologist, 58 (1), 78-80.
• Jamil, F.M., Downer, J.T., & Pianta, R.C. (2012) Association of pre-service teachers’ perfor- mance, personality, and belief with teacher self-efficacy at program completion. Teacher Education Quarterly, Fall, 119-138.
• Kline, P. (2000). Handbook of psychological testing. Second edition. London: Routlage. ISBN 0-415-21158-1.
• Milson, A. (2003). Teachers´ sense of efficacy for the formation of students´ character. Journal of Research in Character Education, 1 (2), 89-106.
• Nikolopoulou, K., & Gialamas, V. (2015). ICT and play in preschool: early childhood teachers’ beliefs and confidence. International Journal of Early Years Education. 23 (4), 409-425. DOI: 10.1080/09669760.2015.1078727. 66, 543-578.
• Podell, D., & Soodak, L. (1993). Teacher efficacy and bias in special education referrals. Journal of Educational Research, 86, 247-253.
• Ross, J.A., & Gray, P. (2006). Transformational leadership and teacher commitment to organizational values: The mediating effects of collective teacher efficacy. School Effec- tiveness and School Improvement, 17 (2), 179-199.
• Seo, S., & Moon, H. (2013). A comparison study of teaching efficacy in pre-service teachers in Korean early childhood education and care (ECEC). Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 41(4), 363-373. DOI: 10.1080/1359866X.2013.787394
• Tschannen-Moran, M., Woolfolk Hoy, A., & Hoy, W.K. (1998). Teacher efficacy: its meaning and measure. Review of Educational Research, 68 (2), 202-248.
• Tschannen-Moran, M., & Woolfolk Hoy, A.W. (2001). Teacher efficacy: Capturing an elusive construct. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17 (7), 783-805.
• Woolfolk Hoy, A., & Spero, R.B. (2005). Changes in teacher efficacy during the early years of teaching: A comparison of four measures. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21 (4), 343-356.