Part 5 of the Teacher Comparison Series

Instrument

The degree of teacher efficacy for each subject in this study was determined by using a teacher efficacy instrument that was adapted from Gibson (1983) as cited in Gibson and Dembo (1984) and a questionnaire employed by Naring (1984). Fifteen items relating specifically to individual teacher's behavior were selected from Gibson (1983) and 10 items dealing specifically with a teacher's perception of his or her ability to execute a particular teaching behavior were selected from Naring (1990). Twelve of the fifteen items adapted from Gibson were items relating to personal teaching efficacy. The three other items were included because it was felt that they were fundamental to an individual's developing a sense of personal teaching efficacy. The items from Naring were all indicative of an individual's personal belief about his or her ability to execute the desired teaching behavior.

The instrument was designed as a 6 item Likert Scale. The statements from the Gibson scale were already in the 6 item format while the statements from Naring had to be adapted from a 5 item Likert to a 6 item. The 15 statements from the Gibson scale called for responses ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The ten statements from the Naring questionnaire required each subject to make a judgement of his or her ability to perform specific teacher behaviors, and to indicate that ability on a scale from high to low.

The scale used in this study was designed so that the higher numbers on the scale indicated stronger teacher efficacy and the lower numbers indicated weaker teacher efficacy. A composite score for each subject was obtained by simply adding the response values for each of the 25 items.

A determination of the reliability of the instrument was made by performing a split-half correlation analysis on the data obtained in this study. The odd numbered items were correlated with the even numbered items by employing a Spearman r test. This procedure yielded a reliability coefficient of .79 (p[less than].0010).

Subjects

The Scottish in-service teachers were selected from primary schools in a 25 mile radius of St. Andrew's College in Bearsden, Scotland. Thirty-nine Scottish in-service teachers were included in the study. Scottish pre-service teachers were selected from a group of teacher education students from St. Andrew's College who met the definition of pre-service teacher. Thirty-four Scottish pre-service teachers were included in the study.

American in-service teachers were selected from elementary school teachers in New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Thirty-five American

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