An Empirical Study Of English Teachers’ Sense Of Self-efficacy In Secondary School

Teachers’ sense of self-efficacy, which means a teacher’s belief in, perception andjudgment of his or her capabilities to influence students’ learning behavior, learning attitudesand academic achievement, is a key factor to explain teachers’ motivation. To some degree, itexerts great influence on teachers’ positive attitudes and predicts students’ academicachievements as well. In spite of the fact that attention has been paid to the research ofteachers’ sense of self-efficacy for many years, few studies of English teachers’ sense ofself-efficacy in secondary school have been done till now. On the basis of a comprehensiveanalysis of Chinese cultural background and English teaching situation in secondary school,this thesis conducts an empirical study of English teacher’s sense of self-efficacy within thecontext of secondary school, aiming to get a general idea of the current situation of Englishteachers’ sense of self-efficacy in secondary school, to figure out whether some demographicfactors including gender, teaching experience, educational level and professional title predictEnglish teachers’ sense of self-efficacy, and to probe into factors affecting teachers’constructing of their sense of self-efficacy as well.The thesis starts by defining sense of self-efficacy and reviewing related literature, thenthe empirical study is conducted with questionnaire and interview respectively. In order to geta general idea of current level of English teachers’ sense of self-efficacy in secondary schooland figure out whether demographic factors like gender, teaching experience, educationallevel and professional title predict English teachers’ sense of self-efficacy, the questionnairemade up of six dimensions is adopted. It involves120English teachers from different middleschools and high schools in Hebei Province and next, the data is processed by SPSS software.Then, as the follow-up, interviews focusing on qualitative questions are held with4Englishteachers from two different schools to probe into factors affecting teachers’ constructing oftheir sense of self-efficacy. And the data of interviews is collected by note-taking so as toconduct qualitative analysis.After that, collection and analysis of the data are conducted and results are discussedthen. It is found that: Firstly, secondary school English teachers’ general sense of self-efficacy is at a relatively upper-middle level, with mean scores of sense of self-efficacy in sixdimensions ranging from student engagement, cultivation of students’ attitudes and culturalawareness, instructional strategies, use of textbook, class management to interactions withstudent, beginning with the lowest and ending with the highest, and teachers tend to havehigher sense of self-efficacy in the dimension of interacting with students, class managementand use of textbook than in the dimension of student engagement, cultivation of students’emotion and cultural awareness and instructional strategies. Secondly, as for whetherdemographic factors like gender, teaching experience, educational level and professional titlepredict English teachers’ sense of self-efficacy, it is shown by the independent samples T-testthat: In terms of English teachers’ overall sense of self-efficacy in secondary school, there issignificant difference between genders, but no significant differences are found betweenteachers with different teaching experience, of different educational levels and of differentprofessional titles. However, when it comes to the sub dimensions of English teachers’ senseof self-efficacy, it leads to distinctive differences. Thirdly, with regard to factors influencingEnglish teachers’ constructing of sense of self-efficacy in secondary school, it is internalfactors(teachers’ individual difference, teachers’ perception and thinking of essence ofteaching, etc) and external factors (schools setting and relations with colleagues, etc) togetherthat make a contribution to English teachers’ constructing of their sense of-self efficacy.At last, based on the above results, some implications for improving English teachers’sense of self-efficacy in secondary school are provided, in the hope that English teaching canbe enhanced in future.