Hello Thomaz,

Your question makes a lot of sense.

There are several scales on which teachers can assess their effectiveness. A popular one is the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001), for which there are a number of derivatives - some of which I think are improvements on the TSES. I have never seen convincing evidence of the validity of these scales, although a fair amount of empirical evidence suggests some degree of validity, e.g., by linking sense of efficacy scores with professional burnout. Reliability is usually assessed by Cronbach's alpha which reveals the scales to contain highly redundant sets of items with limited domain coverage. I have seen very few studies assessing test-retest validity of these scales - and any evidence of test-retest reliability was not impressive.

A colleague and I are currently developing scales to assess sense of efficacy for teaching.

In my experience, comparing scores on teacher sense of efficacy scales with what happens in classrooms is seldom examined - and I think it's a very interesting and important issue. What people think about themselves, and what is actually the case, can be quite different things. The only research I am aware of indicates that there is not much similarity between what teachers think of themselves and how others evaluate them. I apologise, but I cannot remember the single piece of research that demonstrated that, but from memory it was published about 20 years ago.

Robt.

Hi Thomaz

It is an interesting and useful question. Self-evaluation is an important tool in the teaching and learning processes. I usually create my own self-assessment questionnaires depending on the subject I teach. A realible questionnaire will increase the quality of teaching.

Hi Robert Trevethan ,

That's exactly the type of answer/help I was looking for. Actually, I already have some rubrics to evaluate in-class teaching and it has been demonstrated to be valid for different context. But now, my goal is to overlap this instrument with a self-evaluation (TSES looks very good for that) questionnaire and check how good (or not) self-evaluation can indicate good teaching practices.

Now, I'll go a bit deeper on TSES and see how I can administered it in Brazil.

Thanks a lot for our help! Hope to share my findings asap

T

Hi Santiago Garcia-Calvo ,

You are completely right. In my case I need a large-scale evaluation instrument for accountability.

Best,

T

Thomaz Edson Veloso da Silva

Hello Thomaz,

I'm glad my answer was helpful. In my view, the TSES is flawed in several respects, for example by having such high Cronbach's alphas that the items are obviously redundant (even just eyeballing the items suggests that) and by not tapping a sufficiently broad range of items that I think are important. Its factor structure is also fluctuant, sometimes changing noticeably with different samples. And I think that having nine response options, as it does, can create problems with skewness and outliers in the data.

If you wanted to email me on [email protected] I might be able to help you further, particularly with scales that we are working on.

Robt.

Hi Robert Trevethan ,

I got your point! These concerns are mine too and I am quite sure that TSES will provide me some different information comparing to what will be observed in class. But that's the point! How good is this kind of questionnaire to predict good teaching practices? Are they really reliable (not statistically speaking)? These are questions that I would like to answer based on my findings.

Good to have your email. For sure I'll contact you in the coming days. Some good hints are always welcome.

Thanks,

T