Being a Teacher: Developing Self-efficacy and Teacher Identity through Self-reflective Techniques in Teacher Education Programs

Abstract

In this study, the researcher intends to develop the self-efficacy and teachers personal and professional identities through various self reflective techniques used by the teachers. To conduct this study the main objective of the study was, to find out the effect of self-reflective techniques on self-efficacy, personal and professional identities of teachers. To achieve study objective various research questions were developed. This study was purely experimental and qualitative in nature. The population of the study was all the prospective teachers of Punjab province those were enrolled in various universities in different teacher education programs. The researcher selected the sample from the Government College University Faisalabad (GCUF). All the students enrolled in teacher education programs, who use to go for teaching practice, were selected as sample of the study. Just before the students went to teaching practice in schools, there was one week workshop conducted for experimental group by giving them lectures relevant to concepts of reflection, reflection in teaching, usage of reflective techniques in teaching, etc. At the same time, there was no similar opportunity given to students of control group officially. The pre and post tests were conducted to investigate effect of reflection on professional development of prospective teachers. The data collection was based on two phases. In first phase pre and post tests data were collected through questionnaires and the data for second phase was collected through interviews based on Gibbs (1988) model of reflection. The pre and post tests questionnaires were comprised of various questions about self-efficacy, personal and professional identities of teachers. Teacher’s personal identity scale (Cheek & Briggs, 2013), Professional Identity Scale (Hoi Yan Cheung, 2008), and Teachers’ Self-efficacy Scale (Bandura, 1997) were used together as one questionnaire. After collection of posttest data, teachers participated in treatment group were interviewed about usage of self-reflective techniques during teaching practice. The validity and reliability of tools were also done through respective techniques. The analysis of data was done with the descriptive statistics and paired sample t-test. The results of analysis showed that there was significant effect of reflective techniques on development level of self-efficacy, personal and professional identities of teachers. Teachers who were part of treatment group strongly considered, usage of self-reflective techniques is having close relation to develop not only their identities and self-efficacy but also played crucial role to activate teachers to rethink about different aspects of their teaching methodologies to teach students effectively.

Keywords: teacher self-efficacy, professional identity of teacher, personal identity of teacher, reflection in teaching, self-reflective techniques in teaching, teacher education