Classroom management, self-efficacy and readiness of Turkish pre-service English teachers

Abstract

is evident that, there are some skills that pre-service teachers should develop during theirundergraduate teacher education programs to be able to be effective teachers in their futurecareers. Specifically speaking, teaching efficacy related to classroom management is one ofthose skills. Even though pre-service teachers are instructed about the related theory, withoutobserving them during their implementation of learnt theories into practice, one cannot claimthat they are efficacious in real teaching context. In this study, the main aim was to investigateboth the efficacy of pre-service teachers and its relation to their readiness to manage theirclassrooms. In addition, the relationship among their efficacy beliefs, classroom managementreadiness and their implementation in a real teaching environment was also investigated. Forthe purposes of the study, 36 senior students in the English language teaching department of afoundation university in Istanbul, Turkey participated in the study. Data came from threesources; (a) subscale of the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale concerning classroommanagement, (Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy, 2001), (b) the Teacher Readiness Scalefor Managing Challenging Classroom Behaviors (adapted from Baker, 2002) and (c) anobservation scale developed in line with the questionnaires. The analysis of data revealed thatthere is a significant relationship between the pre-service teachers’ classroom managementefficacy and their readiness to manage the challenging classroom behaviors. However, nosignificant difference was found in the implementation of classroom management skills ofpre-service teachers in a real teaching environment. The findings provided insights into preserviceteachers’ classroom management efficacy and readiness in a real teachingenvironment and their improvement in this area.Keywords: pre-