An Investigation of Collective Teacher Efficacy and Teacher Self-Efficacy Subscales in the EFL Context of Iran

The concept of teacher efficacy has received significant attention in educational contexts in the recent years and has been empirically probed at 2 levels: individual teacher efficacy and collective teacher efficacy. Having their origins in the social cognitive theory, teacher and collective efficacy perceptions are quite distinct constructs, each affecting educational decisions and student achievement particularly. Furthermore, teacher efficacy is a context and culture specific construct rarely investigated in an ELT context. The current study explored the relationship between collective teacher efficacy and teacher self-efficacy as well as its3 subcomponents, that is, efficacy for classroom management, efficacy for student engagement, and efficacy for instructional strategies in the ELT context of Iran. Moreover, this study was an attempt to discover which of the factors/subscales of teacher self-efficacy accounts for most of the variance observed in collective teacher efficacy. Data were collected from 90 English instructors through Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy’s (2001) Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) and Goddard’s (2002) Collective Teacher Efficacy Scale (CTES) questionnaires. Informal interviews were also held to tap more into different teacher efficacy aspects. Correlation analysis illustrated no significant relationship between the English instructors’ collective teacher efficacy and teacher self-efficacy as well as its3 subscales. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis indicated that none of the 3 subscales of teacher self-efficacy was a strong predictor of collective teacher efficacy.