Preservice Teachers' Efficacy Beliefs in Taiwan.

Abstract

In Taiwan, a teacher is perceived as a central educational figure who is to mediate in translating Chinese social values into the daily school reality. Considering the important roles of teachers, research on efficacy beliefs of preservice teachers helps us understand professional development of teachers in Taiwan. The purpose of this study was to compare efficacy beliefs of preservice teachers in Taiwan who were at the beginning of early childhood teacher preparation with those who were near the end of their preparation programs, and to determine whether there were differences between these two samples of prospective teachers on the efficacy scale. In addition, this study examined the validity of a modified version of Gibson and Dembo's (1984) 16-item Teacher Efficacy Scale. The response of 298 preservice teachers were examined by means of confirmatory factor analysis, using the two factors from Gibson and Dembo. Since that analysis did not yield an adequate fit, exploratory factor analysis, using maximum likelihood extraction and direct oblimin rotation, was performed as a follow-up procedure, resulting in a four-factor structure. Similar analysis was performed separately for each group (beginning and ending), also resulting in four-factor structures, but the factor loadings were different for each group. Inspection of the results of the exploratory analysis suggests that teacher efficacy in Taiwan is conceptually different from teacher efficacy in the USA. Changes in the factor loadings for students at the beginning and at about the end of their preparation programs also suggest that preservice teachers' beliefs about their roles as teachers and their potential for success change with experience.