et al., 2015) and involves individuals comparing themselves with others – and against themselves – with respect to standards of competency and worth (Shavelson et al., 1976). Thus, while both self-concept and self-efficacy include the same central element (perceived competence), Mercer (2008) has explained that self-concept beliefs operate at a higher level, incorporating emotional and cognitive perceptions of competency towards a domain of activity (e.g. towards teaching). The normative assessment of evaluative competency means that self-concept is often assessed with items using ‘I am good at …’ (Pajares, 1996), reflecting beliefs about ‘personal qualities’ and competencies (Zimmerman, 2000: 83). A key component of self-concept involves the integration of comparative information about oneself or one’s abilities within a domain, either versus others or personal benchmarks. On the other hand, self-efficacy refers to the self-beliefs of capability people have towards tasks, which come about from an assessment of their skills to successfully complete them. As a result, although social comparison plays a part in efficacy development (often vicariously, see Section 2.4), the assessment of self-belief is more focused on skills towards the task rather than beliefs about oneself.
Generally, efficacy beliefs have been shown to be stronger predictors of behaviour in comparison to other self-concept measures (Bandura, 1997; Bong & Skaalvik, 2003; Pajares & Miller, 1994) due to their strong task-focused nature. Bong and Skaalvik (2003) have suggested that self-efficacy is a better predictor of performance due to its future orientation and stronger task-focus specificity. As Zimmerman (2000: 84) has explained, an efficacy item may ask students to ‘rate their certainty about solving a crossword puzzle of a particular difficulty level’ while a self-concept item may ask them ‘how well they expect to do on the puzzle in comparison to other students’. The first provides a measure of internal capability to complete a future task, while the second provides a perception of normative ranking. Accordingly, the relationship between the self-concept belief and actual behaviour may become less pronounced.
Efficacy beliefs can also be differentiated from self-confidence, as they reflect not only the strength of a belief, or of one’s general capability, but also perceptions of capability towards a certain task. Confidence primarily ‘reflects a degree of certainty about a perception, event, or outcome’ (Cramer et al., 2009: 322), thus confidence itself is primarily concerned with belief strength (Merkle & Van Zandt, 2006); it does not necessarily include what the belief is about (Bandura, 1997).
Individual ‘self-confidence’ represents the strength of an individuals’ belief in their personal capability or competence, and given the hierarchical nature of self-concept, self-confidence appears to be contributing towards general self-concept (Schunk, 1991). Thus, teachers with strong ‘teacher self-confidence’ may have a general belief that they have high competency as teachers (i.e. stronger teacher self-concept). However, such beliefs about self-confidence are not necessarily predictive of behaviour, as these do not consider the teaching task or context. In other words, such beliefs remain ‘nondescript’ (Bandura, 1997: 382) as they are not focused on capability towards a certain activity, nor are they embedded within a theoretical system that describes how such beliefs may influence behaviour. As a result, researchers (Bandura, 1997; Bong & Skaalvik, 2003; Cramer et al., 2009) have suggested that self-efficacy beliefs are a more appropriate means for investigating task-focused perceptions of perceived capability (e.g. towards L2 teaching activities) in comparison to self-confidence and other self-concept belief constructs.
Furthermore, when some researchers (e.g. Shrauger & Schohn, 1995: 257) have attempted to show how self-confidence at the domain (i.e. a higher-order self-concept belief) level is related to behaviour, they have created new divisions of hierarchy under self-confidence, with ‘situation-specific’ confidence used to describe confidence at the task level. Pajares (1992) warned that teacher cognition researchers should avoid using different names for existing constructs, and the task-focused situation-specific confidence that Shrauger and Schohn (1995: 257–258) refer to is difficult to separate from Bandura’s construct of self-efficacy. Others (e.g. Stajkovic, 2006) accept that self-confidence, as a feature of one’s self-concept, is reflective of various underlying beliefs, including one’s perceptions of capability to carry out tasks within specific contexts (i.e. self-efficacy). Indeed, it is now generally accepted that efficacy beliefs do contribute towards self-concept (Mercer, 2008; Williams et al., 2015) as individuals with greater perceived capability towards tasks within a domain may be more likely to have stronger perceptions of ability about their competence towards them. Also, as efficacy beliefs are theorised to contribute towards teacher agency, accordingly they may also influence wider, dynamic constructs such as teacher identity (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009).
Given its original in psychology, it is important to note that teacher efficacy is a tightly controlled construct; it may not necessarily provide insights about how teachers view themselves or their general competence. The efficacy beliefs that individuals’ hold towards different tasks can be grouped together towards certain dimensions of activity (usually via the use of factor analysis on questionnaire data), providing researchers with information about individuals’ perceptions of their skills for achieving outcomes within different areas of teaching (e.g. towards instruction, towards discipline). However, the insights gained from such dimensions are tightly limited to the self-beliefs of capability towards carry out actions; they do not necessarily provide information about the value that teachers place on them, nor the extent to which teachers appraise them in their self-evaluations of esteem. Thus, a teacher could have strong efficacy for some teaching tasks but also consider themselves to be a poor teacher, due to the different ‘self-esteem reactions’ (Zimmerman, 2000: 84) that they attend to (e.g. the perceived value of the task) when constructing their self-concept beliefs about their ability as a teacher. As a result, while efficacy may contribute towards other self-beliefs, equally, substantial gaps may be present between efficacy expectations, self-concept beliefs, self-esteem evaluations and broader constructs such as teacher identity.
2.4 The Development of Efficacy Beliefs
Bandura (1977, 1986, 1997) posited that the development of self-efficacy beliefs is based on individuals’ interpretations of their experiences, others’ reactions and their emotions. He ascribed the development of self-efficacy beliefs to four factors: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion and physiological states.
Mastery experiences are based on perceptions of direct performances, where (perceived) successful performance of a task or activity leads to greater confidence in being able to complete the task proficiently in the future. It is argued that these are the strongest drivers of self-efficacy beliefs. The second factor is vicarious experiences; watching others or self-modelling one’s own performance may lead to increased efficacy. Social persuasion constitutes the third factor, as positive feedback or encouragement from others can be useful for overcoming self-doubt. Finally, an individual’s emotional and physical reactions and responses can influence their self-efficacy beliefs. Equally, while these factors may contribute positively (i.e. lead to stronger efficacy), negative attributions (i.e. perceptions of failure) can lead to weaker efficacy beliefs, as the interpretation of the event is crucial. Thus, for some teachers, attributions from perceiving a higher heart rate (i.e. a physical response) prior to a class may be interpreted negatively as a sign of nervousness, while for others it may signal excitement and be interpreted positively. For example, positive physiological states have been shown to be related to stronger teacher efficacy beliefs, with teachers feeling ‘excitement while teaching literature’ (Mills, 2011: 71) or ‘feeling energized’ (Morris & Usher, 2011: 238) after class, leading to stronger efficacy beliefs.
Within a teaching context, the development of teacher efficacy beliefs may therefore be influenced by the interpretations of teachers about their experiences as a trainee or teacher; self-modelling and observation of others (e.g. participation in seminars); feedback and encouragement from other teachers, students and parents; as well as affective processes such as anxiety or perceived stress. Research has provided support for the four factors theorised to influence self-efficacy beliefs, and generally substantiated the claim that mastery experiences tend to be the strongest influence on teacher efficacy beliefs (Morris & Usher, 2011; Mulholland & Wallace, 2001; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007). For