Slovak Pre-Service Teacher Self-Efficacy: Theoretical and Research Considerations

The concept of self-efficacy was originally developed by Albert Bandura, and has been defined as the personal belief that one is capable of performing in an appropriate and effective manner to attain certain goals. As such, self-efficacy is a self-system that controls most personal activity, including appropriate use of professional knowledge and skills. Teacher selfefficacy is the belief that teachers have about their abilities and skills as educators. Teacher self-efficacy has been shown to be an important characteristic of the teacher and one strongly related to success in teaching. Unfortunately, however, effective measurement of teacher selfefficacy has been limited in part by geography. Therefore, described herein is a validation study for the Teacher Efficacy Scale in Slovakia. A shortened version of the original Gibson and Dembo questionnaire was translated into Slovak and administered to a sample of preservice teachers in Bratislava. The obtained score data were factor-analyzed. Two relatively independent factors emerged: personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy. The two factors accounted for 43.4 % of the explained variance and the coefficient alpha for each factor was .73. Pre-service students’ scores on both teaching self-efficacy and general teaching efficacy exceeded the midpoint of the scales, indicating they had positive self-efficacy. Comparisons to other studies with similar samples in three countries showed surprisingly similar results.