Slovak Pre-Service Teacher Self-Efficacy: Theoretical and Research Considerations

The concept of self-efficacy was originally developed by Albert Bandura, and has been defined as a personal belief that one is capable of performing in an appropriate and effective manner to attain certain goals. As such, self-efficacy is a self-system that controls most personal activity, including appropriate use of professional knowledge and skills. Teacher self-efficacy is a belief that teachers have about their abilities and skills as educators. Teacher self-efficacy has been shown to be an important characteristic of the teacher and one strongly related to success in teaching. Unfortunately, however, effective measurement of teacher self-efficacy has been limited in part by geography. Therefore, described herein is a validation study for the Teacher Efficacy Scale in Slovakia. A shortened version of the original Gibson and Dembo questionnaire was translated into Slovak and administered to a sample of pre-service teachers in Bratislava. The obtained score data were factor-analyzed. Two relatively independent factors emerged: personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy. The two factors accounted for 43.4 % of the explained variance and the coefficient alpha for each factor was .73. Preservice students’ scores on both teaching self-efficacy and general teaching efficacy exceeded the midpoint of the scales, indicating they had positive self-efficacy. Comparisons with other studies with similar samples in three countries showed surprisingly similar results.

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