Degree Name

EdD (Doctor of Education)

Program

Educational Leadership

Date of Award

5-2011

Committee Chair or Co-Chairs

Pamela H. Scott

Committee Members

Donald W. Good, Elizabeth Ralston, Eric S. Glover

Abstract

Teachers continue to experience an increased sense of responsibility as it relates to job performance while still being required to produce at the same level with relation to student performance. This can cause an increase in personal stress and result in lowered feelings of self- worth, having a negative impact on service delivery to children and overall job performance.

Bandura (1997) defined self-efficacy as a judgment of one's ability to organize and execute given types of performances. Furthermore, he suggests that the outcomes people anticipate depend largely upon their judgments of how well they will be able to perform in given situations. The same can be said for teachers in relation to their beliefs and attitudes toward their students' overall performance.

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether a relationship exists between teachers' feeling of self-efficacy and their students' overall achievement with respect to North Carolina Reading and Math End-Of-Grade tests. Surveys were administered to teachers in grades three through eight, in eight Pre-K through 8th grade schools. Data collected focused on teachers' feeling of self-efficacy. This study employed qualitative data gathered from participant surveys. Participating teachers in this study are in high performing schools as defined by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Their students have good academic records, coupled with high parental involvement (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2010).

Six of the 14 comparisons within this study did not reveal a significant relationship between perceived teacher self-efficacy and North Carolina End-of-Grade reading and math test scores. However a relationship between perceived self-efficacy within gender did reveal that female participants tended to have higher perceived self-efficacy than that of the male participants. Male teacher participants tended to have higher North Carolina End-of-Grade reading test scores than those of female teacher participants. It was also discovered that each of the respondents, regardless of perceived self-efficacy score, had test results in both reading and math that were significantly higher than the state average. Finally it was also discovered that a relationship existed between teacher respondents with lower perceived self-efficacy scores and North Carolina math test scores.

Document Type

Dissertation - unrestricted

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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