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Measuring the self-efficacy of mentor teachers.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This study tested the validity and reliability of the Mentoring Self-Efficacy Instrument (MSEI). The instrument was developed to measure mentor teachers' self-efficacy with the roles and responsibilities of mentoring. The results indicate that the MSEI is only effective in measuring one aspect of mentor teachers' self-efficacy: feedback. These findings also suggest that mentor teachers may not have a clear definition of their role asa mentor and highlights the need to create a common understanding of what it means to be a mentor teacher.

Introduction

Self-efficacy is defined asa person's context-specific assessment of competence (Bandura, 1977). As such, a person's self-efficacy can impact the effort a person puts forth in a given situation, how long the person persists on a given task, and how they feel about the task (Goddard, Hoy, & Woolfolk-Hoy, 2004). To date there are multiple teacher self-efficacy scales (Ashton, Buhr, & Crocker, 1984; Brouwers & Tomic, 2001; Friedman & Kass, 2002; Gibson & Dembo, 1984; Riggs & Enochs, 1990). With these self-efficacy scales, researchers have then been able to examine the impact of teacher self-efficacy on variables such as: student achievement and motivation (Moore & Esselman, 1992; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk-Hoy, 2001), school effectiveness (Hoy & Woolfolk, 1993), and success of program implementation (Guskey, 1988). The research on teacher self-efficacy suggests that efficacy may have a powerful impact on many of the aspects of teaching and/or children's school performance.

With this in mind, one must also consider the impact of self-efficacy on teachers' other responsibilities that extend beyond teaching children. For example, classroom teachers often serve as mentors to novice teachers during their university field experiences and/or during their first years of teaching. As Hawkey (1998) has argued, "Mentors need to feel self-confident in their own agency as teacher educators" (p. 668). Because of the significant influence of field experiences in teacher development and university teacher education programs' heavy reliance on classroom teachers, it is important to identify the essential characteristics for mentoring success--including teachers' mentoring self-efficacy. Better understanding of teachers' self-efficacy as mentors of other teachers holds promise for shedding light on improving teacher preparation through strengthening the quality and effectiveness of mentoring. We should note that while Riggs (1997) describes the use of a mentoring self-efficacy scale that she created, validation of that instrument has not occurred.

Like other teacher self-efficacy instruments, we created the Mentoring Self-Efficacy Instrument (MSEI) based on our understanding of the "breadth of the 'mentors' role" (Friedman & Kass, 2002, p. 675--italics added). The conceptualizations of a mentor's roles and responsibilities may be debated. Indeed, in some respects, mentoring, like teaching, appears to be...

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