Writing Self-Efficacy Instrument: Development and Validation

Self-efficacy is an important trait that factors into a teacher’s ability to effectively teach writing. Teacher’s self-efficacy in writing, however, has been widely ignored by the writing research community. This study developed a new instrument to measure a teachers’ writing self-efficacy and examined its psychometric properties. The Writing Self-Efficacy Instrument demonstrated factorial score validity with 52% explained variance, internal consistency score reliability of 97% (α = .973), and split-half score reliability of 94% with 4 th through 7 th grade teachers. The Writing Self-Efficacy Instrument can be used to assess in-service educators’ knowledge gaps in teaching writing for research and professional development.