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Educational Psychology Review [jepr] PP1126-edpr-481500 March 17, 2004 21:8 Style le version June 4th, 2002
Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 16, No. 2, June 2004 (
C
2004)
An Interview With Anita Woolfolk:
The Educational Psychology of Teacher Efcacy
Michael F. Shaughnessy
1, 2
AnitaWoolfolkHoyreceivedher BAinPsychologyin1969andher PhD
in Educational Psychology both from the University of Texas at Austin. She
worked briey as a school psychologist in Texas, and then joined the faculty
in Department of Educational Psychology of the Graduate School of Educa-
tion at Rutgers University in 1979. She remained there until 1993 and served
as Chair of the department from 1990 to 1993. Presently, she is a Professor
in the College of Education at The Ohio State University. Her professional
ofces include Vice-President for Division K (Teaching and Teacher Edu-
cation) of the American Educational Research Association and President
of Division 15 (Educational Psychology) of the American Psychological As-
sociation. She has published research in the areas of student perceptions of
teachers, teachers beliefs, student motivation, and the application of educa-
tional psychology to teaching. Her text, Educational Psychology (Allyn and
Bacon) is in its 9th edition and is the most widely read introduction to edu-
cational psychology in the eld (Woolfolk, 2004). She is married to Wayne
K. Hoy, the Novice Fawcett Chair in Educational Administration at The
Ohio State University. Together they conduct research on teachers sense
of efcacy and school efcacy. In this interview, Woolfolk Hoy comments
on her primary research area, teachers self-efcacy, discusses educational
psychology and teaching, and reects on trends and issues in educational
psychology.
1
Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, New Mexico.
2
Correspondence should be addressed to Michael F. Shaughnessy, Eastern New Mexico Uni-
versity, Portales, New Mexico 88130; e-mail: michael.shaughnessy@enmu.edu.
153
1040-726X/04/0600-0153/0
C
2004 Plenum Publishing Corporation
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154 Shaughnessy
TEACHERS SENSE OF EFFICACY
(1) Your primary research area is teachers sense of efcacy. Tell us
what that area is about and what work you have done.
Teachers self-efcacy for teachingtheir perceptions about their own
capabilities to foster students learning and engagementhas proved to be
an important teacher characteristic often correlated with positive student
and teacher outcomes.
About 15 years ago, Wayne Hoy and I began a series of studies that con-
tinues today on teachers sense of efcacy. In our initial work, we examined
how feelings of efcacy relate to ideas about motivating and managing stu-
dents and how all these beliefs change with initial teaching experience (Hoy
and Woolfolk, 1990; Woolfolk et al., 1990; Woolfolk and Hoy, 1990). Next,
we looked to the school climate to identify organizational factors related to
teachers efcacy judgments such as the leadership of the principal and the
collegiality of the faculty (Hoy and Woolfolk, 1993).
This research program really expanded when we moved to The Ohio
State University. As is so often the case, students inspire our own learning
and I have beneted from these experiences as well. With our students,
Megan Tschannen-Moran and Roger Goddard, we studied the meaning and
measurement of teachers sense of efcacy and collective teacher efcacy.
This work has focused primarily on developing a model of efcacy that
reconciles some of the seeming inconsistencies in early research and on
designing survey instruments for assessing both individual teachers efcacy
judgments and teachers sense of collective efcacy (Goddard et al., 2000;
Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998; Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy, 2001).
Two other students, Rhonda Burke-Spero and Rich Milner, recently taught
me about the role of cultural context in the development of efcacy and
the value of qualitative methods for understanding teachers experiences
of efcacy (Burke-Spero and Woolfolk Hoy, 2003; Milner and Woolfolk
Hoy, 2003). Right now I am studying what organizational and interpersonal
supports might enhance and sustain teachers developing sense of efcacy
particularly in the early years of teaching.
(2) Teacher efcacyis it better measured qualitatively, quantitatively,
or perhaps in a case study format?
First, I think Bandura would prefer the terms teachers sense of efcacy,
self-efcacy of teachers, instructional efcacy, teachers efcacy beliefs, or
teachers perceived efcacy. The term, teacher efcacy is too often con-
fused with teacher effectiveness, so I am trying to use other terms.
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An Interview With Anita Woolfolk 155
But to your question, I believe this concept would benet from more
studies that use both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. For the
past 25 years, teacher efcacy has been assessed predominantly through
quantitative scales and surveys. Early quantitative measures of efcacy were
grounded in the work of Rotter (1966), whereas more recent instruments
are based on Banduras theory of self-efcacy. Each approach, of course,
can tell us some things and not others. For example, previous research
using quantitative measures found that some aspects of efcacy increase
during student teaching while other dimensions may decline (Hoy
and Woolfolk, 1990). But this research does not tell us why. Some of the
most powerful inuences on the development of teachers efcacy beliefs
are mastery experiences during student teaching and the induction year.
Banduras theory of self-efcacy suggests that efcacy may be most mal-
leable early in learning, thus the rst years of teaching could be critical
to the long-term development of teacher efcacy. Yet few longitudinal stud-
ies exist that track efcacy during the malleable period of student
teaching.
I believe that qualitative methods are appropriate for an exploration of
factors that mediate efcacy development andcultural inuences onthe con-
struction of efcacy beliefs. I worked with one student who used qualitative
methods to focus on ve prospective teachers involved in a cross-cultural im-
mersion teaching internship. Qualitative case study methods examined the
interns perceptions and beliefs about their own teaching efcacy (Burke-
Spero and Woolfolk Hoy, 2003).
Some of our qualitative work pointed to the importance of social sup-
port and resources in the development of efcacy, so we have followed with
larger quantitative studies (Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy, 2002).
Qualitative results have helped us identify topics for quantitative
items on surveys and helped us phrase items appropriately. Also, we have
used the quantitative measures to identity teachers with a range of efcacy
beliefs so that we could conduct case studies of these targeted
teachers.
(3) Your recent work focuses on teacher efcacy and teachers needs
for social support and respect. Please tell our readers about this
work and why you see it as important?
About 6 years ago while we were developing our model of teachers
sense of efcacy, I was working with students in our teacher education pro-
gram. I taught one of the rst courses in the curriculum and then worked
with those same students during their capstone experience. My research
team decided to trace the development of efcacy as my students pro-
gressed through the programand then followthemthrough their rst year of
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156 Shaughnessy
teaching (Burke-Spero and Woolfolk Hoy, 2003; Woolfolk Hoy and Burke-
Spero, 2003). Some of the studies were surveys that used the scales we were
developing and other investigations were case studies. Preliminary ndings
fromthe case studies indicatedthat student teachers oftencommentedabout
the support available tothemintheir placements. Withthese nding inmind,
we addedve questions toour surveys for rst year teachers that askedabout
the levels of support available (quality of teaching, resources provided, sup-
port from colleagues, support from administrators, support from parents,
support from the community). We found that support (the mean of the
ve items) correlated moderately with changes in efcacy in the rst year
of teaching using both the Gibson and Dembo (1984) and Bandura (1997)
scales to measure efcacy.
Based on these initial ndings, we continued to examine the role of
support in the development of efcacy. Megan Tschannen-Moran and I just
completed a larger study of both novice and experienced teachers. We found
that the quality of teaching resources available was related to novice teach-
ers sense of efcacy (assessed using our Teachers Sense of Efcacy Scale
(TSES) measure), but none of the ve sources of support was related to
experienced teachers efcacy perceptions. Using school-level measures of
resource support, quality of facilities, principal leadership, and teacher pro-
fessionalism, we found modest relationships between the teachers sense of
efcacy and the quality of the facilities, and between efcacy and teacher
professionalism. We have not yet found clear, strong connections between
school levels of support and individual teachers sense of efcacy.
My guess is that efcacy judgments are specic to the teachers indi-
vidual situation (subject taught, teaching and managerial skills, knowledge,
students, class size, etc.) and less affected by organizational level differences.
There is little research showing that the principal has a direct impact on
teachers sense of efcacy.
Rich Milner is responsible for a line of qualitative case studies examin-
ing teachers sense of efcacy, social support, and respect. He followed two
teachers for a year and got to know them well. He found that respect from
students and parents played key roles in protecting these experienced teach-
ers sense of efcacy, especially during difcult times (Milner and Woolfolk
Hoy, 2003).
These lines of work are important because they can help us understand
better how to create learning environments that support teachers in their
work. Student learning is affected most directly by the hours they spend on
appropriate tasks in classrooms. Teachers are the rst line of defense against
ignorance. We will never have the perfect curriculum or teaching strategy,
but teachers who set high goals, who persist, who try another strategy when
one approach is found wantingin other words, teachers who have a high
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An Interview With Anita Woolfolk 157
sense of efcacy and act on itare more likely to have students who learn.
So the question of how to support and not undermine teachers sense of
efcacy is critical.
(4) You and your colleagues have developed some teacher efcacy
scales and teacher condence scales. What led you to pursue this
work?
Our early research on efcacy left us unsatised with the most fre-
quently used two-factor instrument, the Teacher Efcacy Scale or TES
(Gibson and Dembo, 1984). We questioned whether the general teaching ef-
cacy factor as assessed by the TES actually measured outcome expectancy,
or even had much to do with an individual teachers sense of efcacy. As we
developed our integrated model of efcacy (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998),
we encountered Banduras instructional efcacy scale, read Tom Guskeys
writings about efcacy measures, and decided to try to develop a measure
that t our model and also corrected some of the problems identied in
other measures. In a graduate seminar class of teachers who averaged about
12 years of experience, we tackled the problemof developing a newmeasure,
beginning with Banduras instructional efcacy scale, and adding items we
thought captured the important tasks of teaching. We reasoned that sense
of efcacy would be connected to tasks that teachers thought were central
to good teachingnot to routine tasks like taking attendance that do not
really connect to student learning. We also heeded the guidance of self-
efcacy researchers such as Bandura, Pajares, and Guskey who cautioned
that measures must be situation specic.
The teachers in our seminar helped us develop items that were both
specic and represented valued teaching tasks. In keeping with our model,
we also thought about factors internal and external to the teacher that
might support and hinder the accomplishment of the tasks. A series of
pilot tests, factor analyses, revisions, and more tests led to our short and
long forms of the Teachers Sense of Efcacy Scales, or TSES (available at
http://www.coe.ohio-state.edu/ahoy/researchinstruments.htm#
Sense).
The condence scales are a different story andare truly situationspecic
or, more accurately, program specic. In our teacher education program, we
asked all the course instructors to list those teaching strategies and skills
that they believed the program fostered. What should students be able to do
after completing the program? From these lists we compiled an instrument
that simply asked the students how condent they were (on a 9-point scale)
that they could accomplish each skill. As noted above, we wanted to follow
their progress and also provide information for the program. We found that
students condence about these skills increased during the program (as
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158 Shaughnessy
we had hoped) and then held during the rst year of teaching. However,
scores on every other sense of efcacy measure fell during that rst year
(Woolfolk Hoy and Burke-Spero, 2003). So it appeared that after a year
of experience, the new teachers still believed they could use the skills they
had learned, but they realized that performing these skills did not insure
student learningno surprise for experienced teachers or researchers. We
encourage programs to design their own condence scales instead of using
ours. Thequestions shouldbespecic tothegoals andcontent of eachteacher
education program.
(5) You refer to self-efcacy and self-regulated learning as the
dynamic duo of school performance. How do teachers (and
parents) enhance these two variables?
Here the best source of information is Pam Gaskill (Gaskill and
Woolfolk Hoy, 2002). Pam has been a teacher for almost 30 years. As she
read the research on self-efcacy and self-regulated learning, she saw pos-
sibilities for carefully designed interventions in her own class. She taught
her students different strategies for organizing and remembering. She tried
different kinds of feedback. And she saw results.
I believe that Pam would tell you that the most important ways to en-
hance self-efcacy and self-regulation are to nd out what students need to
know and then teach them that. Sometimes we forget that students do not
all come to school with the basic strategies that guide successful learning.
Primary-grade teachers must identify the needs of struggling students and
offer fundamental guidance.
For example, Pam found it was necessary to point out to Chris, a stu-
dent who never nished his Problem of the Day journal work, that the other
students were hanging up their jackets, going directly to their seats, and
getting their journals out. Instead of assuming that Chris knew that but in-
tentionally avoided work, Pam taught a basic strategycome in, hang coat,
open journal, start problem. The type of persuasion that gives an initial
boost to get started is sometimes all that is needed to promote active en-
gagement. Fundamental strategies for a specic task, such as beginning by
reading through the problem, may need to be pointed out to some students.
Helping students to develop an awareness of the need for an action must
be accompanied by a personal commitment to the action (e.g., I ought to
do this and I can do it.) How do we accomplish this? We go back to the
same four sources identied by Bandura that provide information for ef-
cacy beliefs: modeling, mastery experiences, persuasion, and physiological
arousal. From the research on self-efcacy and self-regulated learning, we
identied several general principles to guide teachers. Here are a few of
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An Interview With Anita Woolfolk 159
the principles:
Modeling
Ensure that learning tasks are on an appropriate level for all stu-
dents. This requires both an intimate knowledge of each students
performance level in each subject domain along with the creation of
individualized tasks as necessary.
Make sure all instructions are clear. Uncertainty can lead to anxiety.
Write test instructions on the board or on the test itself instead of
giving them orally. Check with students to make sure they under-
stand. Ask several students how they would do the rst question or
an exercise or the sample question on a test. Correct any misconcep-
tions. If you are using a new format or starting a new type of task,
give students examples or models to show how it is done.