Universidade de São Paulo

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Departamento de Física e Ciência Interdisciplinar - IFSC/FCI Artigos e Materiais de Revistas Científicas - IFSC/FCI

2010-02

An instrument for measuring self-efficacy

beliefs of secondary school physics teachers

Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, Amsterdam, v.2, n.2, p.3129-3133, 2010
http://www.producao.usp.br/handle/BDPI/49660

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Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 3129–3133

WCES-2010

An instrument for measuring self-efficacy beliefs of secondary

school physics teachers
Marcelo Alves Barrosa *, Carlos Eduardo Laburúb, Fábio Ramos da Silvac
a
Institute of Physics of São Carlos, University of São Paulo, Av. Trabalhador São-carlense, 400, São Carlos, SP, 13560-970, Brazil
b
Departament of Physics, State University of Londrina, Rod, Celso Garcia, Km 380, Londrina, PR, 86055-4440, Brazil
c
Program in Science Teaching, State University of Londrina, Rod, Celso Garcia,Km 380, Londrina, PR, 86055-4440, Brazil
Received October 26, 2009; revised December 2, 2009; accepted January 13, 2010

Abstract

This work presents the procedures and results of the validation process of a data collecting instrument to survey the self-efficacy
beliefs of Secondary School Physics Teacher’s. This instrument consists of a Likert scale questionnaire applied to a sample made
up of 136 Physics Teacher’s from Brazil. The collected data were submitted to the application of some statistical tests, as item-
total correlation, reliability and factor analysis. We conclude by pointing out the congruity of our results with those of other
investigations, we presented the validated version of the instrument. Among the main implications of this study we hope to
contribute to the research on the self-efficacy beliefs of Physics Teachers so that we can better understand which elements
influence the teacher-student relationship regarding motivational beliefs in the classroom.
© 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

Keywords: Self-efficacy beliefs; physics teacher’s; secondary school; motivational beliefs; science teaching

1. Introduction

It is quite common for physics teachers to relate their students’ learning difficulties to the lack of motivation in
the classroom, blaming this for school failure. Some argue that better prepared and more motivated students to learn
certain contents would be a necessary and sufficient condition to ensure a positive learning outcome. We agree with
this position in part, seeing that teacher motivation also has a significant influence on improving the performance
and interest of students, including a direct reflection regarding discipline in the classroom.
In the field of Science Education, perspectives in conceptual change research indicate the need to investigate the
motivational processes in the activities of teaching and learning (Pintrich et al., 1993). Upon elaborating a review of
the characteristics of the conceptual change model of the 1980s, these authors identified that this theoretical
framework leaves the door open for two aspects: the influence of factors relating to the motivational beliefs of
teachers and students as well as the supporting possibilities for conceptual change arising from the roles assumed by
those in the classroom. In general, the models that promote the cognitive domain avoid including individual goals,

* Marcelo Alves Barros. Tel.: +55-16-3373-8726; fax: +55-16-3373-9879

E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.476
3130 Marcelo Alves Barros et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 3129–3133

beliefs, intentions, purposes, expectations and needs. That is, the motivational aspects are not considered in the
investigation of the so-called cognitive skills for which, to some degree, students were being prepared for.
Among these aspects, the self-efficacy beliefs of both students and teachers in the motivational and self-
regulation processes has attracted the interest of several researchers in the field of Science Education (Riggs &
Enochs, 1990; De Souza et al., 2004; Britner & Pajares, 2006; Palmer, 2006; Barros et al., 2007, Katelhut, 2007,
Silva, 2007; Smolleck & Yoder, 2008). The self-efficacy beliefs refer to beliefs in the individual capabilities of each
individual to organize and implement the necessary actions to produce a specific result (Bandura, 1997). This
approach endeavors responding to the revisions of that area’s work, indicating that it is necessary to include socio-
psychological dimensions and environmental factors in the teaching and learning process (Confrey, 1990).
In addition, Contemporary Psychology studies on school motivation have also demonstrated the growing interest
of researchers in the motivational beliefs of teachers (Schunk, 1991; Pajares, 1992). The concern of such researchers
has focused on the processes that take place in the classroom, valorizing self-regulation in the learning process and
identifying the differences in teachers based on their knowledge of the subject and their beliefs about teaching and
learning, with the beliefs of self-efficacy as one of the most important educational beliefs of teachers. As reported
in these works, many of the teachers’ beliefs during the development of their classes are important in the creation or
maintenance of student motivation, some of them are conscious, however others relate to the routine that teachers
have developed within their teaching or their practice know-how.
It is worth mentioning that one characteristic of the works that target investigating the self-efficacy beliefs of
students and teachers is the use of quantitative techniques for collecting and analyzing data, as is customary in some
research areas of Psychology. Applying this method requires some necessary cautions to reduce any random
mistakes (Dancey & Reidy, 2006). Accordingly, the validity study of the data collection instrument is stressed as
one of these procedures.
This work presents the validation results of a data collection instrument, specifically dedicated to study the self-
efficacy beliefs of Secondary School Physics Teacher’s. The importance of this study is justified by the lack of
research in the area selected to investigate these motivational beliefs with Physics Teacher’s, although there are
study results with teachers of other subjects and within many contexts.
In the field of Education, studies concerning the beliefs of teachers’ self-efficacy revealed the existence of other
related beliefs. It is worth noting the self-efficacy belief in teaching (Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990) as particularly
interesting because it represents a teaching belief in a particular discipline, assuming no personal involvement in
such assessment. Our instrument covers both levels: the personal efficacy beliefs (or teacher’s self-efficacy) and the
efficacy beliefs in teaching Physics.

2. Research Methodology

The methodology of our investigation is of quantitative nature with correlational character. The data were
collected from 136 Secondary School Physics Teachers in Brazil. The instrument used for collecting the data was a
Likert questionnaire with 34 items about self-efficacy beliefs of the investigated teachers. Of these 34 items, half
refers to what we term as Personal Efficacy Belief of Physics Teachers. The remaining items refer to the General
Efficacy Belief in Physics Teaching. To carry this test out we have used the statistical software package SPSS® 13
(Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for Windows).
We chose the non-parametric testing, that is, tests not needing a set of data that has a normal distribution and
does not assume prior knowledge of the sample’s population origin. The use of parametric tests must be unique to
the case of actual numerical variable analysis, in order to not cause data distortion and generate doubts about the
validity of the drawn conclusions based on evidence.
For the elaboration of the instrument related to Physics Teaching, we began by adapting two existing instruments
developed with the same theoretical assumptions; the instrument developed by Woolfolk & Roy (1990) and by
Riggs & Enochs (1990).
The adaptation of these instruments was necessary given that both presented very general issues, where the first
case refers to Education in general and the second case refers particularly to Science Teaching. Thus, we sought to
reformulate some items and develop other aspects that corresponded with aspects of Physics Teaching, such as
questions relating to specific aspects of this subject, for instance: the experimentation, conceptual structure and
formalism mathematics.
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3. Results and Discussion

For the first stage of the construct validation, we conducted two tests for all items of the questionnaire, the item-
total correlation test and the reliability coefficient test or Cronbach's Alpha. As a cut-off values criterion for the test
results of item-total correlation, we eliminated all the items that had a correlation index of less than 0.20. This
resulted in the exclusion of eight items for General Efficacy Belief in Physics Teaching and six for Personal
Efficacy Belief of Physics Teachers. We found the value of 0.61 for the Cronbach's Alpha regarding the General
Efficacy Beliefs in Physics Teaching, and 0.79 for the items that correspond to the Personal Efficacy Belief of
Physics Teachers.

Table 1 – Correlation item-total and Cronbach’s alpha for General Efficacy Belief in Physics Teaching

Corrected
Items regarding the General Efficacy Belief in Physics Teaching item-total Cronbach’s Alpha if
Correlation the item is excluded
1 - The teachers consider the physical concepts accessible to all students. ,216 ,601
2 - The teachers believe that the physical concepts are too abstract and barely understood by students. ,298 ,580
4 - The teachers believe that a student who has difficulties in mathematics will not be interested in
,237 ,600
physics.
6 - The problem of the student's motivation to learn physics resides in the student. ,273 ,587
21 - When a student’s scores in physics improve, it is often due to the teacher who found more
,209 ,599
effective teaching strategies.
25 - A student’s learning difficulty in physics can be overcome by a good teacher. ,380 ,563
26 - A student’s low performance in physics is not the teacher’s responsibility. ,304 ,578
28 - A teacher’s significant effort to teach physics produces little change in students’ performance. ,355 ,566
29 - The students’ performance in physics is directly related to the effectiveness of their teacher in
,411 ,548
teaching.

Table 2 – Correlation item-total and Cronbach’s alpha for Personal Efficacy Belief of Physics Teachers

Correlation item- Cronbach’s Alpha if

Items referent to the Personal Efficacy Belief of Physics Teachers total corrected the item is excluded
3 - I feel capable of making the physical concepts accessible to all students. ,333 ,788
9 - I feel capable of implementing experimental activities in my teaching. ,477 ,773
13 - I can combine my academic background and my ability to motivate students during Physics
,410 ,781
class.
15 - I believe I am able to motivate my students during Physics class. ,313 ,788
20 - I continually find better ways to teach Physics to my students. ,405 ,780
22 - I am not very effective in developing experimental activities. ,489 ,772
24 - I do not feel capable to teach Physics to my students. ,378 ,785
30 - I encounter difficulties in explaining to students how the Physics experiments work. ,665 ,747
31 - I am always able to respond to questions from students about Physics. ,415 ,782
32 - I know that I possess the necessary skills to teach Physics to students. ,552 ,767
33 - When a student has trouble understanding a Physics concept, I usually know how to help him to
,558 ,767
better understand it.

Finally, our data was subjected to an exploratory factorial analysis by the extraction method of the main
components with equamax rotation and Kaiser Normalization (Dancey and Reidy, 2006). As the concern was to
investigate the contribution of the 23 items for the two constructs studied (Personal Efficacy Belief of Physics
Teachers and General Efficacy Belief in Physics Teaching), we only considered the two factors with more variance
explanation. The results of the KMO test and Bartlet sphericity, which are necessary to implement such analysis,
were satisfactory (KMO = 0.71 and Bartlet = 0.0001). Table 14 illustrates the factorial analysis results:
3132 Marcelo Alves Barros et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 3129–3133

Table 3 - Factorial Analysis for Personal Efficacy Belief of Physics Teachers and General Efficacy Belief in Physics Teaching

Personal Efficacy
Belief of Physics General Efficacy Belief in Physics
Factorial Analysis Teachers Teaching
30 – I encounter difficulties in explaining to students how the physics
,785 -,054
experiments work.
33 - When a student has trouble understanding a Physics concept, I usually know
,708 ,016
how to help him understand it better.
32 - I know that I have the necessary skills to teach Physics to students. ,681 ,126
22 – I am not very effective in developing experimental activities. ,667 -,104
9 - I feel capable of implementing experimental activities in my teaching. ,614 -,112
31 – I am always able to respond to questions from students about Physics. ,532 ,252
20 - I continually find better ways to teach Physics to my students. ,531 ,086
13 – I am able to combine my academic background and my ability to motivate
,487 ,175
students during Physics class.
24 – I do not feel capable of teaching Physics to my students. ,472 ,129
29 - The students’ performance in Physics is directly related to their teacher’s
,144 ,653
effectiveness in teaching.
25 - The learning difficulty of a Physics student can be overcome by a good
,136 ,614
teacher.
26 - A student’s low performance in physics is not the teacher’s responsibility. -,126 ,560
28 - A teacher’s major effort to teach physics produces little change in students’
,028 ,503
performance.
6 - The student's motivation problem in learning physics is within the student
-,137 ,467
himself.
21 - When Physics students’ grades improve, it is often due to the teacher who
,193 ,422
found more effective teaching strategies.
2 - Teachers believe that the physical concepts are very abstract and hardly
,012 ,414
understood by students.
1 - Teachers consider that the physical concepts are accessible to all students. ,161 ,387
4 - Teachers believe that a student who has difficulties in mathematics is not
,039 ,324
interested in physics.

Items 3 and 15 were excluded because they had significant factorial loads in two factors. We consider significant
loads those that were greater than 0.30 (Hair, et. al, 2005). The new values for the reliability coefficient were 0.61
for General Efficacy Belief in Physics Teaching and 0.78 for Personal Efficacy Belief of Physics Teachers.

4. Conclusions and Implications

This work presented some procedures used to study the validity of a Likert questionnaire on Brazilian Physics
teachers’ motivational beliefs. The results for our instrument agree with other studies in this line of research
(Palmer, 2006; Ginns et al, 1995; Enochs and Riggs, 1990 and Riggs and Enochs, 1990), whose reliability
coefficient showed a higher value for the Personal Efficacy Belief of Physics Teachers (0.79) and less for General
Efficacy Belief in Physics Teaching (0.61).
For the result, we presented the validated version of the instrument (Silva et al. 2006), and explained the
validation process. The instrument, initially comprising 34 items, was characterized by an 18-item questionnaire,
given that items 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, 12, 13 and 14 of that version are related to the General Efficacy Belief in Physics
Teaching and items 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17 and 18 are related to the Personal Efficacy Belief of Physics
Teachers. The inclusion of the factorial analysis to validate the constructs displayed interesting results, which
indicated the elimination of two items of the instrument.
We chose the non-parametric testing, that is, tests not needing a set of data that has a normal distribution and does
not assume prior knowledge of the sample’s population origin.
Thus, we hope to contribute to the research on the beliefs of Brazilian Physics teachers so that we can better
understand which elements influence the teacher-student relationship regarding motivation in the classroom.
 Marcelo Alves Barros et al. / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 3129–3133 3133

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