The influence of pre-service teacher identity and personality traits on teacher self-efficacy

Abstract

The present study investigates the predicting effects of pre-service teacher identity and five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience) on teacher self-efficacy among pre-service teachers of English as a foreign language. It was conducted at a state university in Turkey at the spring term of 2015-2016 academic year. A total of 155 students (sophomore N = 77; junior N = 78) participated in the study. In order to measure early teacher identity level of participants, Early Teacher Identity Measure (Friesen & Besley, 2013) was employed. Personality traits were measured by Quick Big Five Inventory (Vermulst & Gerris, 2005) while Teachers’ Sense of Self-efficacy scale (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk-Hoy, 2001) was used to find out participants’ self- efficacy in terms of their student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management strategies. Pearson correlation coefficients revealed that each variable has positive correlations with each other. Standard multiple regression analysis indicated that early teacher identity was the best predictor for teacher self-efficacy (β = .486, t = 6.856, p < .001) which was followed by openness to experience (β = .288, t = 4.296, p < .001). As the various individual differences were seen to have interrelations in the development of teaching skills, the study concludes that individual differences may help pre-service teachers to acquire one of the most important components of being a teacher: teacher-self-efficacy.