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Efficacy and identification of professional self.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

In this paper we focus on issues identified by immigrant women from language backgrounds other than English, who teach in schools in Victoria, Australia. We show how these women attained proficiency in their new circumstances and how being professional in one's own mind is closely connected with being perceived as such by students and colleagues. Self-efficacy and identification of self-as-professional are central to classroom practice and student learning.

Introduction

Immigrant women teachers from language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE) face many issues when they begin teaching in Victorian schools in Australia. Although employment histories are sparse, the literature suggests that this minority group is severely challenged to adapt in a new educational environment. In many instances, these teachers lack knowledge of local work cultures and ate vulnerable to both political and social pressures (Viete, 1999). Not only are their skills and experience under-valued, but colleagues may limit immigrant teachers' professional articulation, thereby promoting their own superior position (Kamler, Reid, & Santoro, 1999). A barrage of negative forces and implicit racist attitudes can cause extreme insecurity and professional isolation (Santoro, Reid, & Kamler, 2001b) that affect the immigrant teachers' perceptions of self and self-efficacy. In this paper we report the findings of a recent study (Peeler, 2005) that explored the issues that female immigrant teachers confronted in their new teaching environment. These women's conversational interview responses reveal how they endeavoured to retain their integrity while identifying their professional self.

Defining self-efficacy

Self-efficacy, the belief a person has in his/her ability to carry out a task, can significantly affect motivation and performance. "Ah optimistic sense of efficacy fosters psychological well-being and personal accomplishments" (Bandura, 1997:75). People with low self-efficacy believe that failure stems from low ability and such a perception may not easily be reversed. Those with high self-efficacy believe that they can influence and even control their environment, and typically demonstrate the affective characteristic of social efficacy.

A person's sense of efficacy is immutable, social and situational, in the way it responds and transforms, independently and interdependently, in infinite processes of reconstruction and re-identification. Kostogriz (2004) maintains that situational flows, of other people with whom a person interacts, of are present at a particular time and place, shape the construction of self. A person's perceptions of self perpetually change and transform, according to each unique interaction and the relationships attained. Efficacy embraces awareness of self (Ivanic, 1998) and through actions and interactions, presents to others the kind of person one is in a variety of situations. For the immigrant teachers in Peeler's (2005) study, self-efficacy and identification of...

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