Impact of Teachers' Professional Efficacy on the academic achievement of Government Secondary School Students

Abstract

This research focused on the impact of teachers’ professional self-efficacy on the academic achievement of government secondary school students. This study mainly examined the impact of teachers’ professional self-efficacy in three areas of teaching and learning process. The three focus areas were students’ engagement, teaching instructions, and classroom management. The study was based on two different frameworks; Teachers’ Efficacy and Teachers’ Self-Efficacy and their relationship with the academic achievement of secondary school students. Main objectives of the study were i) to assess the academic achievement of students belonging different categories of teachers. ii) to measure efficacy and professional self-efficacy of secondary school teachers. iii) to compare the students’ academic achievement belonging to teachers of different categories (based on gender, locality, and discipline of study i.e., science and general). iv) to examine the impact of teachers’ efficacy and teachers’ professional self-efficacy on their students’ academic achievement. v) to examine the relative impact of gender, locality, and subject areas (science and general), on efficacy, and professional self- efficacy on their students’ academic achievement. This study has also two research questions (i) what is the academic achievement of students belonging to different categories of teachers? (ii) what is the efficacy and professional self-efficacy of secondary school teachers? Multi Stage Stratified Random Sample Technique was adopted in order to select the study sample. Data from a sample of 360 senior school teachers (SSTs) including 216 males and 144 females was collected through published and tested instruments of teachers’ efficacy and teachers’ self-efficacy. From each sampled school one science teacher and two general teachers were selected. The students’ achievement data was taken from the concerned Boards xxi of Intermediate and Secondary Education of the related district. Independent sample t tests at 0.05 confidence level were applied to find significant mean score differences for independent variables. The magnitude of correlation between teachers’ performance in terms of their students’ achievement and efficacy was calculated using Pearson Correlation (at 0.05 and .01 levels of confidence). In addition, variance was found by applying one-way Anova. To find out the impact of variables on teachers’ performance in terms of the students’ achievement, regression analysis was carried out. The study found a significant impact of teachers’ efficacy and teachers’ professional self-efficacy on the academic achievement of secondary students with respect to location, gender, and subject. Additionally, a significant correlation between teachers’ self-efficacy/efficacy and teachers’ performance in terms of their students’ achievement was also found. Hence, it was concluded that teachers’ self-efficacy/efficacy is vital to the academic achievement of students. Thus, it becomes necessary to incorporate such modules into teachers’ trainings that will add to their professional self-efficacy in order to enhance students’ learning in terms of their academic achievement.