Despite a rising interest in studying the effects and the antecedents of teacher efficacy, a
review of literature indicated that an important individual variable has been left out of these
studies. This is the cognitive component which Bandura (1977) suggests is central to the process
of efficacy formulation. Specifically Bandura (1977) argues that for performance to be instructive
for efficacy formulation, a type of cognitive appraisal needs to be present. To date, this cognitive
appraisal has not been identified in teacher efficacy studies. The purpose of this thesis is to search
for a way to represent this cognitive component and to examine its role in teaching performance
and efficacy formulation. Two variables are selected as possible representations of this cognitive
component. They are wisdom and wisdom in teaching.
The two research questions developed for this study are: (1) What is the relative
contribution of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, personal teaching efficacy, and general teaching
efficacy to teaching performance? And (2) What is the relative contribution of wisdom, wisdom in
teaching, and teaching performance to the formulation of personal teaching efficacy and general
teaching efficacy?
Eighty-nine final year student teachers were asked to respond to three instruments that
measured their level of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, and teacher efficacy. These instruments
were: (1) Life planning dilemma "Jack" (Smith & Baltes, 1987), (2) Teaching dilemma
"Perimeter" (Arlin, 1987), and (3) The teacher efficacy scale (Gibson & Dembo, 1984). The
participants were also asked to submit their teaching practicum marks. This mark represents their teaching performance.
Teaching performance was best explained by the combined effects of wisdom in teaching
and personal teaching efficacy than by either of them alone. Jointly these two variables accounted
for 54% of variance in teaching performance.
Wisdom in teaching and teaching performance provided a better explanation for the
formulation of personal teaching efficacy than each taken in turn. The joint effects of wisdom,
wisdom in teaching, and teaching performance accounted for 7% of variance in the formulation of
both personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy.
An important finding from this study is that wisdom in teaching has the greatest impact on
teaching performance. An implication of this finding is that teacher educators should develop and
provide programmes which can help facilitate the growth of wisdom in teaching.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/4811 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Fung, Mary Lena |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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