Differences in Teacher Efficacy Related to Career Commitment of Novice Agriculture Teachers

Abstract

This exploratory descriptive study investigated the differences between teacher efficacy of novice teachers based on relatively low and high levels of career commitment. The population was 91 novice teachers in their first, second, and third years of teaching in agricultural education in Ohio. The teachers were split into two groups based on their median scores of career commitment. Although the two groups had the same teacher efficacy at the beginning of the school year, teachers with higher career commitment were more efficacious after the first 10 weeks of the school year than the teachers with lower career commitment. Moreover, teachers with lower career commitment experienced a decline in their teacher efficacy while teachers with higher career commitment did not change in their teacher efficacy from week 1 to week 10. There was a small relationship between career commitment and tenth week teacher efficacy.