Teacher Efficacy Ratings by African American and European American Preservice Teachers at a Historically Black University

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine factor structures of a modified form of Gibson and Dembo’s Teacher Efficacy Scale with a combined total of 123 African American and European American preservice teachers at a historically Black university, test for differences between participants on teacher efficacy, and examine relationships among participant characteristics. A principal components analysis with varimax rotation yielded three factors—ability, effort, and environment— with alpha coefficients of .80, .77, .70, and .76 for the total scale. African American participants scored statistically significantly higher than European American participants on the environment factor (t = 2.3,p = .02), but not for ability (t = 1.59,p = .11) or effort (t = –.86,p = .39). Recommendations for further research were also made.