Teacher Efficacy and Classroom Management among Botswana Junior Secondary School Teachers

Teacher efficacy – the beliefs of teachers in their capabilities to have an impact on students’ accomplishments in learning – has been researched for 30 years. This issue has been viewed as an important dimension of teacher professionalism, teacher practice, leadership, and collaboration as it is one of the teacher attributes associated with teaching and learning. Founded on Bandura’s self-efficacy theory (1997), those earlier findings suggested that self-efficacy involves “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the course of action required to produce given attainments” (p. 2).

This study investigated Botswana junior secondary school teachers’ responses on the three subscales of the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES): Efficacy in Student Engagement,Instructional Strategies, and Classroom Management.

Data were collected via a survey administered to 1006 Botswana participants.

The survey consisted of three sections. Part 1 requested demographic data; Part 2 contained 12 items of the TSES (Short Form instrument); and Part 3 had 24 items of Teacher Practices. The researcher and research assistants gathered data from junior secondary school teachers in Gaborone (the capital city of Botswana) and surrounding areas. Letters of permission to conduct research and teacher letters accompanied the survey. The response rate was 95% with only 6 out of 1006 participants not completing the survey.

Pearson-product moment correlation was computed to analyze the data using the Statistical Package of Social Sciences. All bivariate correlations among the three subscales were statistically significant at 0.01 level (2- tailed). For Instructional Strategies and Student Engagement, r = .412; Student Engagement and Classroom Management, r = .589; and Instructional Strategies and Classroom Management, r = .589. The correlations are consistent with those that Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk-Hoy, (2001), obtained. Efficacy in Student Engagement showed significant results, and teachers with postgraduate qualifications rated themselves higher than their colleagues in engaging students in learning.

For teacher practices, results showed no significant relationship between the positive and negative practices reported by the teachers regarding classroom management, student engagement, and instructional strategies. Bonferroni adjustment, which changed alpha from .05 to .017, showed no significant relationships. Recommendations and educational implications for future research are discussed