The impact of student teaching on preservice teachers' teaching self-efficacy beliefs

This study investigated the impact of student teaching on preservice teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. Additionally, preservice teachers' perception of their mentors' teaching self-efficacy beliefs was examined to determine any relationship between the perception of the mentor's efficacy beliefs and the student teacher's poststudent teaching efficacy beliefs.;Self-efficacy belief is a mature construct in psychological research, while teaching self-efficacy belief is moving out of the adolescent stage. Both Bandura's social cognitive theory and Rotter's locus of control theory have influenced early measurement of teaching self-efficacy beliefs. Existing research has established the impact of teaching self-efficacy beliefs on student achievement, commitment to the profession, and teaching practices. New research implements instruments measuring teaching self-efficacy, the Teachers Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES), were developed at Ohio State University.;Bandura states that teaching self-efficacy beliefs are influenced by four sources of information: mastery experiences, vicarious learning experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological responses. Preservice teachers, inundated with information from all four sources, undergo a cognitive processing model, developing their appraisal of their teaching ability during their student teaching experience.;The present study demonstrated preservice teachers' student teaching experience impacted preservice teachers' teaching self-efficacy beliefs; specifically, preservice teachers' teaching self-efficacy belief scores on the TSES instrument were shown to increase following student teaching. Additionally, preservice teachers' perception of the mentor teachers' teaching self-efficacy beliefs were shown to correlate with the poststudent teaching self-efficacy beliefs of the preservice teacher. As the perception of the mentor teachers' teaching self-efficacy beliefs increase, so did the poststudent teaching self-efficacy belief of the preservice teacher. A discussion of the results and recommendations for both practice and future research are provided.