Chapter 1

 

Teachers’ Self-Efficacy and Classroom Management Beliefs

1.0              Introduction

Teacher is the most important school-related factor affecting students’ achievement. In now day’s school environment, the society expected teacher to be the key to open into their children success. They are the ones who believed of teacher efficacy has positive effect on teachers’ classroom management beliefs and practices which can fulfil the community desire and educate the young people in the society (Good, 1981). They also carry a huge responsibility on their shoulder in order to act as a role model and examples to their students.

Therefore, the way the teacher represent themselves in the classroom will be take into consideration. Teacher efficacy also has positive impacts on teachers’ classroom management beliefs and practices (Good, 1981; Bezzina & Butcher, 1990; Ross, 1994; Soodak & Podell, 1994). The accepting process is relying on how they approach the student and the strategies they used to work with the students from diverse backgrounds and abilities.

There is no hard and fast list in order to indicate who is a good teacher or who is not a good teacher. Hence, an effective teacher is someone who can increase knowledge and able to provide instruction to different student of different diversity and ability (Clerk, 1993).  However, there are traits that excellent teachers have in common. The best teachers share a unique set of qualities such as manage and educate people, able to work with students with various diversity, interest in helping people and enthusiasm about a subject teach (Collin, 1990). In addition, an effective teacher with a good character should have strong interpersonal and organizational skills in managing their classroom. Besides, they also should be able to work unsupervised, creative and energetic. To blend with current school environment, they must also be able to apply digital tools learning and technologies in their teaching. 

1.1              Background of the study

It is universally accepted that the teacher is the most important component of education (Sikora, 1997). One of the entities needed to reform the educational system in a country is a teacher. The current emphasis on educational reform in our nation's schools should be forcing us to examine the personality of effective teachers (Sikora, 1997).

In line of the development in our education system, the needs to emphasize on producing a qualified and well trained teacher must be one of the main agenda in our educational system. The good personalities always represent the good characters. Thus, in order to have an excellent teacher with required characters are crucial in current education (Pintrich, (1990). Character is defined as all the relatively stable and distinctive styles of thought, behaviour, and emotional responses that characterize a person's ability to adapt to surrounding circumstances (Maddis, 1976; Mischel, 1976). For the purpose of the study, the characteristics of the teacher is relate with the teacher efficacy in order to assure that the classroom is managed well and effectively.

1.2              Problem Statement

It is obvious that to have an effective classroom, it must be managed by a good and effective teacher. A good and well classroom management will assure that teaching and learning process is optimally acquired by students (Henson, 2001). The conducive classroom created by effective teacher will result in increasing of academic achievement (Smith & Misra,1992). This demonstrates that the characters of the teacher will determine the efficacy beliefs of teacher and classroom management (Pintrich, 1990). In this study, it aimed to investigate the effect of the teaching practice on teaching efficacy and classroom management beliefs.

1.3       Research Objective

The main of objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the teaching practice on teaching self-efficacy and classroom management beliefs.

1.4       Research Question

Based on the questioned outlined above, the research is attempted to answer the following questions:

1.                  Is there any significant difference between male and female teacher with regard to their self-efficacy and classroom management beliefs?

2.Is there any significant difference among teachers who graduated from different types of secondary schools with regard to their self-efficacy and classroom management beliefs?

1.5       Significance of the Study

In this research, the researcher has focus on the relationship between the teacher’s efficacy and classroom management beliefs. The finding will indicate how the character of the teacher can influence the way the teacher manage the classroom. Besides that the character of the teacher also will determine whether the teaching process will be effective or not. More over, in this study, the character of the teacher will be one of the indicators to show the teacher’s afficacy can give an impact to the classroom management.

1.6       Limitation of Study

This study will be carried out at SK TUDM Subang which the school is situated in town are. The respondents in this survey are the school teacher whereby the students of the school are not taken into account. Thus, the findings of this research are only focuses on the teacher.

Another limitation that has been identified in this study is the respondents might not be able to answer the questions in the questionnaire accordingly. This is because the respondents not necessarily understand the rational of the questionnaire list.

1.7       Operational Definition

1.7.1    Teacher’s Characteristics

Every teacher has their own personalities. The way they carry themselves during the  teaching and learning process is represent their characters.

1.7.2    Teacher efficacy        

Teacher efficacy-“teachers’ confidence in their ability to promote students’ learning” (Hoy,2000).
1.7.3    Classroom Management

Classroom management is a term used by teachers to describe the process of ensuring that classroom lessons run smoothly despite disruptive behavior by students. The term also implies the prevention of disruptive behavior. According to Moskowitz & Hayman (1976), once a teacher loses control of their classroom, it becomes increasingly more difficult for them to regain that control.

References

Bezzina, M., & Butcher, J. (Eds.). (1990). Teacher efficacy and classroom management beliefs. In The changing face of professional education. Collected papers of the AustralianAssociation for Research in Education annual conference (pp. 91-98). North Ryde, NSW: Australian Association for Research in Education.

 Good, T. (1981). Teacher expectations and student perceptions: A decade of research. Educational Leadership, 38(5), 415-422.

Kirk Swortzel (1999) Relationship Between Personality Characteristics and Observable Teaching Effectiveness of Selected Beginning Career and Technical Education Teachers Journal of Vocational and Technical Education .16(1)