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A CONTEXTUAL MEASURE OF TEACHER EFFICACY FOR TEACHING PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS WHO HAVE ESL
Donna Tangen – BA, BEd., MEd., Grad Dip (TESOL)
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy within the School of Learning and Professional Studies
Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology Kelvin Grove Campus
September 18, 2007
Citation Tangen, Donna Jean BA UWO, BEd Brock, MEd. QUT, Grad Dip (TESOL) QUT Thesis Title: A contextual measure of teacher efficacy for teaching primary school students who have ESL Supervisors: Dr Ruth Fielding-Barnsley (Principal) Dr Rebecca Spooner-Lane (Associate) Citation: This thesis utilised a modified cyclical model to examine the conceptual measure of teacher efficacy. The study identified teachers’ perceptions of their strengths and needs in relation to teaching students who have English as a Second Language and identified ‘gaps’ in teachers’ understanding of how to differentiate the curriculum to constructively teach these students. Stereotypical assumptions that influence teachers’ efficacy lead to important considerations for educational authorities and for higher education. Australian teachers have been grappling with the issues of teaching students who have ESL for decades and, from the current research, it appears that there is still a long way to go to ensure that teachers have the necessary skills required to meet the needs of these learners. The links with community awareness of the cultural contexts of the research suggest the need for further consideration in this area from the teaching community. Dr. Ruth Fielding-Barnsley (Principal Supervisor) Dr Rebecca Spooner-Lane (Associate Supervisor)
Key Words
cyclical model of teacher efficacy, English as a second language (ESL), ESL contextual considerations, sources of efficacy beliefs, teacher efficacy, teaching strategies
i
Abstract
The current research utilised a modified cyclical model of tracking teachers’ efficacy
beliefs from their source through to their implementation in teaching strategies. Key
inclusions to the model were four factors (personal efficacy, teaching efficacy, classroom
management efficacy and outcome efficacy) of teacher efficacy and four contextual
considerations (culture load, learning load, language load and cognitive load) in relation
to teaching students who have ESL. Data were collected through three studies, ultilising
both qualitative methodologies (focus groups, hypothetical teaching scenarios) and a
quantitative methodology (researcher-generated survey). Results revealed a two-factor
model of teacher efficacy (not a four-factor model) with the two factors being personal
efficacy (general teaching abilities) and teaching efficacy (overcoming environmental
factors such as home life). Culture load and language load were significant contextual
considerations given to teaching students who have ESL. Results of the research
suggested that specific teacher training needs to focus on how to adapt curriculum to
meet the needs of a diverse group of learners, emphasising in particular why chosen
strategies should be used. More training is needed which involves learning how to
include parents and other community members as valuable resources in the learning
processes of the classroom.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Key Words..………………………………………………………………………………..i Abstract…….……………………………………………………………………………...ii Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………....iv List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………… vi List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………. vi Statement of Original Authorship………………………………………………………..vii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..viii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………......1 Purpose of the Research…………………………………………………………………...1 Rationale for Investigating Teacher Efficacy in Relation to Teaching Students
who are ESL………………………………………………………………….........4 Sources of Efficacy Information…………………………………………………………..9 Specific contextual Considerations for Teaching Students who are ESL…………………9 Conceptualisation of the construct of Teacher Efficacy…………………………………11 Research Program Outline……………………………………………………………….13 Study 1…………………………………………………………………………13 Study 2…………………………………………………………………………14 Study 3…………………………………………………………………………15 Contributions to the Field of Research…………………………………………………15 Organisation of the Thesis………………………………………………………………17
CHAPTER 2 Literature Review………………………………………………………………………...18 Conceptualisation of the Construct of Teacher Efficacy………………………………18 Measurement of Teacher Efficacy………………………………………………………19 A Model of Teacher Efficacy……………………………………………………………24 Specific Contextual Considerations of Teaching Students who are ESL………………26 Cognitive Load…………………………………………………………………28 Language Load…………………………………………………………………...30 Culture Load……………………………………………………………………32 Learning Load……………………………………………………………………36 Extending the Cyclical Model…………………………………………………………38 Summary of the Literature……………………………………………………………43
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CHAPTER 3 Methodological Considerations…………………………………………………………46 Sampling Issues………………………………………………………………………….47 Sampling for Study 1……………………………………………………………………48 Preservice Teachers……………………………………………………………48 Inservice Teachers………………………………………………………………49 Sampling for Study 2……………………………………………………………………50 Sampling for Study 3……………………………………………………………………53 Measurement Issues……………………………………………………………………54 Qualitative Research……………………………………………………………………54
Study 1………………………………………………………………………54 Study 3…………………………………………………………………………56
Quantitative Research……………………………………………………………………57 Study 2…………………………………………………………………………58
Item Development………………………………………………………………………58 Exploratory Factor Analysis……………………………………………………………60 Using Qualitative and Quantitative Methodology……………………………………62
CHAPTER 4
Study 1…………………………………………………………………………………...63 Rationale for Conducting Focus Groups…………………………………………………63 Method…………………………………………………………………………………64 Participants………………………………………………………………………………64 Procedure………………………………………………………………………………65 Results……………………………………………………………………………………66 Analysis Procedures for Focus Groups…………………………………………………68 Qualitative Results………………………………………………………………………70 Defining the Term “ESL”………………………………………………………………70 Sources of Efficacy Information…………………………………………………………76 Contextual Considerations………………………………………………………………84 Summary of Results……………………………………………………………………89
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CHAPTER 5 Study 2…………………………………………………………………………………...92 Rationale for Study 2…………………………………………………………………92 Development of the Questionnaire…………………………………………………93 Method…………………………………………………………………………………94 Participants……………………………………………………………………………...94 Results…………………………………………………………………………………..96 Preliminary Data Analysis……………………………………………………………96 Principle Component Analysis………………………………………………………97 Summary………………………………………………………………………………101 Limitations……………………………………………………………………………101
CHAPTER 6
Study 3………………………………………………………………………………….103 Rationale for Utilising Hypothetical Teaching Scenarios……………………………103 Method………………………………………………………………………………….104 Participants……………………………………………………………………………104 Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………………105 Analysis of Data from the Preliminary Questions for Study 3…………………………106 Hypothetical Teaching Scenarios………………………………………………………112 Summary………………………………………………………………………………..123
CHAPTER 7 Discussion………………………………………………………………………………127 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..127 Exploring the Modified Cyclical Model………………………………………………128 Discussion of Results…………………………………………………………………130 Students who are ESL and Students with Learning Disabilities………………………148 Summary of the Research……………………………………………………………154 The Main Finding of the Research…………………………………………………156 Contributions to the Study of Teacher Efficay………………………………………159 Recommendations for Future Teacher Training………………………………………160 Limitations of the Study………………………………………………………………161 Recommendations for Future Research……………………………………………162
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REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………164 APPENDICES Appendix A: Consent Script/Participant Letter of Information.………………………178 Appendix B: The Research Survey………………………………………………….181
LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1 The cyclical model of teacher efficacy………………………………………24, 38 Fig. 2 Cross-lingual dimensions of language proficiency……………………………...31 Fig. 3 Modified cyclical model of teacher efficacy………………………………..39, 127
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.1 Summary of the Three Studies for the Research………………………...16 Table 3.1 Summary Statistics for the Demographic Variables of Preservice Teachers……………………………………………………...51 Table 3.2 Summary Statistics for the Demographic Variables of Inservice Teachers……………………………………………………….52 Table 3.3 Coding Structure for Study 1…………………………………………….55 Table 4.1 Mean and Standard Deviations for Preservice and Inservice Teachers’ Responses to Short Questionnaire – Study 1…………………67 Table 4.2 Themes from Focus Group Interview Responses………………………..69 Table 5.1 95% confidence Intervals of Mean and Standard Deviation of Change for Personal Efficacy and Teaching Efficacy…………………...98 Table 5.2 Pattern Matrix for Oblique Factors of the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for Teaching ESL Learners Scale………………………..99
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STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my
knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made
Donna Tangen 17 September 2007
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisors, Dr Kym Irving and Dr Ruth Fielding-Barnsley for their guidance, help and support throughout the major portions of this research. Each has provided me with unique insights of the research process and have kept me on track and on task over the past three years. I would also like to express my sincerest thanks and gratitude to Dr Rebecca Spooner-Lane whose assistance, knowledge and clarity of thought were invaluable to me in completing this thesis. I would also like to thank my family who were patient and supported me in many different ways throughout the project, my friends who allowed me to use them as sounding boards when I needed to talk and my colleagues who provided advise and encouragement.
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The current research explores the construct of teacher efficacy within
the context of teaching students who are English-as-a second language (ESL)
learners in regular primary classrooms. The research stems from an
understanding that the presence of students who have ESL in the classroom has
always been a challenge for teachers and that such a challenge has a direct
effect on teachers’ efficacy. Teachers’ confidence in their capabilities to teach
these students has far reaching implications in that without a good
understanding of the complexities involved in teaching students who have ESL,
these students may not have their learning needs met and, as a consequence,
may not reach their learning potential.
Research indicates that teacher efficacy is an important construct in
teaching and learning and has been described as teachers’ “…belief or
conviction that they can influence how well students learn” (Guskey & Passaro,
1994, p.528). Teachers who believe that they can perform certain teaching
related tasks will attempt them with the expectation of producing certain
outcomes (high efficacy) while teachers who do not believe that they can
perform these tasks will not attempt them or, if they do, will not persist at them
to attain desired outcomes (low efficacy). There is little evidence in the
literature to suggest that teacher efficacy has been examined in relation to
teaching students who have ESL. The current research aims to address this
issue beginning with an explanation of the purpose for the research.
Purpose of the Research
The purpose of the research is fourfold. First, the thesis explores
teachers’ perceptions and understanding of the term ‘ESL’. There is no single
phrase to describe students who have ESL. Indeed, there is much debate as to
which term to use in identifying these students. Learners who fall into this
category have been variously described as language minority students (Byrnes,
1
Kiger & Manning, 1997; Langman, 2003), limited-English-proficient (LEP)
students (Lee, 1996) and English language learners (ELL) (Cummins, 1997).
The term, ESL, used for the current research describes students in primary
school who are non-fluent English language learners. While perhaps not the
most ideal of labels, if indeed there is such a thing, ESL was chosen for the
thesis because it is the term used by Education Queensland (2006) and so is the
one that was most familiar to teachers in the study (as the research was
conducted in Queensland). However, rather than making an assumption about
teachers’ perceptions of students who are described as ESL it was important to
make this determination at the outset of the research by asking teachers for their
descriptions of these students. These descriptions are presented in Study 1 of
the research.
Additionally, it is proposed in the research that efficacy stems not only
from teachers’ perceptions of ESL students but also takes into consideration
personal sources of efficacy information in association with specific contextual
needs for these students. Sources of efficacy information include mastery
experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion and physiological arousal
(Bandura, 1997) while contextual considerations are culture load, language load,
learning load and cognitive load (see Meyer, 2000). These variables will be
described in more detail later in this chapter and are explored through the
research questions:
How do teachers understand the term, ESL?
What sources of efficacy information are used to teacher students who
have ESL?
What contextual factors are taken into account when teaching students
how have ESL?
Thirdly, the thesis explores the construct of teacher efficacy. While
teacher efficacy surveys have been used before, no specific measure has been
developed for examining teachers’ efficacy in relation to teaching students who
have ESL. The current research addresses this imbalance through a researcher-
generated measure that focuses specifically on the target student group. In
2
particular, the current research explores four factors of efficacy beliefs
proposed by Brouwers and Tomic (2003) (i.e., personal, teaching, classroom
management and outcome) in association with four contextual considerations
(cognitive load, learning load, language load and culture load). The construct of
teacher efficacy in the context of teaching students who have ESL is explored
in relation to the research question:
What dimensions constitute teacher efficacy for teaching students who
have ESL?
Finally, the study explores how teachers’ efficacy beliefs influence
teaching strategies used to accommodate students who have ESL. Few studies
have tracked teachers’ efficacy beliefs from their source through to their
application as teaching strategies. The exploration of teachers’ confidence in
their teaching strategies is explored in the research question:
How confident are teachers in their chosen strategies for working with
students who have ESL?
In this thesis, the exploration of teacher efficacy is informed by a
cyclical model developed by Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy and Hoy (1998)
(as presented on p.38). It is suggested from the model that teacher efficacy
results from an individual’s interpretation of four sources of efficacy
information through the analysis of a teaching task in association with an
assessment of one’s personal teaching capabilities. The combination of these
variables leads to consequences of teacher efficacy such as developing goals
and/or committing effort and persistence to achieve goals, which ultimately
affects teaching performance (actioning teaching tasks). These actions, in turn,
result in the formation of new sources of efficacy information. The model
developed by Tschannen-Moran et al., however, is not specific to certain
contexts and therefore the current research utilised a revised cyclical model that
includes contextual considerations for teaching students who have ESL (as
presented on p.39). The cyclical model of teacher efficacy as developed by
Tschannen-Moran et al. will be described in the next chapter, The Literature
3
Review, as will be the rationale for the modified cyclical model used in the
current research.
The following section of this chapter describes current provisions made
for primary students who have ESL. Next an explanation will be given of the
sources of efficacy beliefs and the contextual considerations for teaching
students who have ESL. A description of the four-factor model of teacher
efficacy will be given before outlining the research plan. The chapter will
conclude with an explanation of the organisation of the thesis.
Rationale for Investigating Teacher Efficacy in Relation to Teaching Students
who have ESL
In 1987, Lo Bianco, commissioned by the Australian government,
produced The National Policy on Languages (NPL). In the report, Lo Bianco
argued for a greater awareness of English language learning for students for
whom English was not their first language, as well as Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander students in Australia, and recommended that students maintain
their native language while learning to learn in English. Lo Bianco argued
against waiting for English language learning to be ‘complete’ before
introducing students to subject content suggesting that such an action would be
discriminatory and disruptive towards students’ overall academic learning, a
view later expressed by Cummins (1991). A recommendation of the report (Lo
Bianco, 1987) was that all preservice teachers and inservice educators should
have components on language learning, ESL and bilingualism included in their
training.
The Australian government’s ‘Australian Language and Literacy Policy’
(ALLP) and subsequent discussion ‘Green Paper’ (Department of Employment,
Education and Training (DEET), 1990; DEET, 1991), on the whole, did not
follow up on important items in Lo Bianco’s recommendations. Instead, the
Green Paper emphasised that native English language learners should learn to
speak a language other than English but placed little emphasis of the
importance of the mother tongue for ESL students. However, one initiative that
was taken up in the ALLP (Green Paper, 1991) was the 12-month intensive
4
English language program for new arrivals (first phase learners) to Australia,
with provision for federal funding. The ALLP allowed funding for a one-year
intensive English language program for primary students, provided students
began school within 18 months of arriving in Australia. The policy did not
account for students who arrived outside those parameters, nor was there a
provision of funding for ongoing support for students beyond the one-year
intensive program (for so-called second and third phase learners). Such a policy
goes against research that suggests that it can take a student up to 7 years to
become academically proficient (Cummins, 1991) and goes against what Lo
Bianco (1987) recommended in his report, which was to have language and
content integration.
In response to the ALLP paper (DEET, 1991), Christie, Freebody,
Devlin, Luke, Martin, Threadgold and Walton (1991) produced a nationwide
report on preservice training for teaching English literacy identifying a need for
awareness training for preservice teachers on the uniqueness of ESL language
development. The Australian Language and Literacy Council (ALLC; 1995)
subsequently challenged Christie et al.’s findings, suggesting that specific
language development awareness programs were not needed for teaching ESL
students because all teachers in Australia are English teachers, because all
teachers in Australia teach in English. The ALLC (1995) deemed that schooling
for students who have ESL should be the same as that of native English
language learners, with no recognition of support needed beyond the one-year
intensive program. Indeed, the ALLC expressed the view that there is no
‘fundamental difference’ in the process of literacy in a student’s first language
and their second language. The ultimate aim from the ALLC’s report was to
enable students to enter ‘as soon as possible’ into mainstream education where
English is the dominant discourse.
Further to the ALLC (1995) report, Lo Bianco and Freebody (1997)
suggested that there are many students who have ESL entering schooling in
Australia at an age older than 5 years (the age group focused on in the ALLC
report). A policy with a focus on one stage of childhood development is
5
inadequate to address the needs of older students at a different stage of
development. Many upper primary students enter school with insecure literacy
in their home language (for example, refugee children who have received little
or no schooling in their home country). According to Lo Bianco and Freebody,
many students in the second and third phases of English language development
continue having difficulties in their English language and academic
development, suggesting that one year intensive training is not enough to
develop English language skills to cope successfully in school. Students’ gains
in oral proficiency can mask their need for ongoing assistance in academic
language proficiency as children struggle with learning through learning
English (Cummins, 1991).
Intervention programs have been developed to assist mainstream
teachers to teach students for whom English was not a first language. For
example, the State of Victoria, Department of Education and Training (1991)
developed “ESL in the Mainstream”, a program to train teachers and school
administrators in the development of materials and teaching approaches, to
meet the cultural and linguistic needs of students. This program has been
adopted by some schools in Queensland, but it is the choice of the school to do
so. McKay (1997) studied a Queensland school where staff had completed the
“ESL in the Mainstream” program and where the principal of the school
believed that, through such staff training, the needs of students were being met.
However, McKay found that there was little evidence at the classroom level of
students’ cultures being included in texts and classroom activities. Additionally,
the ‘weaker’ ESL learners were not always clear about the purpose of a task and
appeared to lack confidence in individual work. On the positive side, McKay
found that the students felt accepted and a part of the school community.
Davison (2001) suggests that programs like “ESL in the Mainstream” focus on
the ‘how’ (methodologies/strategies for teaching students) rather than the
‘what’ (curriculum content). Such an approach to teaching ESL learners may
become a technical, lock-step approach, without leading teachers to a closer
understanding of the contextual considerations for teaching these students.
6
From the census taken in Australia in 2001, the Australian Bureau of
Statistics (2006) records that 17.2% of respondents in Queensland identified
themselves as ‘persons born overseas’. While the majority of these people were
from English speaking countries such as England, New Zealand and Scotland,
12% spoke a language other than English at home (e.g. Italian, Cantonese,
Mandarin, German, and Vietnamese). Education Queensland (2006) describes
the state’s current cultural and linguistic diversity: 40% of Queenslanders are
migrants or the children of migrants, 10% of Queenslanders over 5 years old
speak a language other than English at home; Queensland is host to more than
200 nationalities. Educators cannot ignore the particular learning needs of ESL
students by treating them the same as students who are proficient in only one
language; English.
Children, who are ESL, aged 5 to 12 and newly arrived in Queensland
(the focus of this study), are usually placed in a regular classroom at their local
school rather than being placed in a special English-as-a-Second Language
(ESL) class as a way to have students assimilate quickly in the established
Queensland school culture (Osborne & Dawes, 1992). According to the current
Minister of Education for Queensland, Rod Welford MP (Welford, 2006),
government funding for teaching students who have ESL is distributed to each
district level which then determines the allocation of money to support the
development, management and implementation of policies. Each district is able
to direct the money to where it sees the most need for both administration
duties and teacher responsibilities.
For example, there are 850 students in the Logan Albert Beaudesert
District who are ESL, including students from the Pacific Islands (45%),
African refugees (30%), and students from Asia, Europe and the Middle East
(25%) (van Gilst & Gura, 2006). Funding to schools in this district is allocated
on a points system with the bulk of the money dedicated towards students’ first
year of schooling. These schools have established ESL programs and are visited
by Advisory Visiting Teachers’ (AVT). AVT responsibilities include providing
classroom teachers with strategies, planning, resources and professional
7
development to teach students who have ESL as well as liaising with
parents/care givers, assessing students and/or directly teaching students either
individually or in small groups. According to van Gilst and Gura (2006), most
AVT’s travel to more than five schools per week. Having to spread themselves
out across a number of schools limits the amount of time AVT’s can spend
working with individual students. With limited student-AVT contact time, the
onus is on classroom teachers to teach the same classroom content to students
who have ESL as that provided to classroom peers.
According to Grimbeek and Carrington (2003), students who have ESL
attend primary schools in every region of Queensland, incorporated under the
umbrella of inclusive education. Inclusive education for this thesis is in line
with the philosophy that schools should provide for the needs of all students in
the community, celebrating the diversity of abilities, cultures, ethnicity and
social backgrounds (Foreman, 2005). In primary schools with high numbers of
eligible students, ESL teachers may be part of the school staff; in other schools,
support is received from visiting ESL teachers (Education Queensland, 2006).
Teachers’ willingness to adapt or modify their strategies to teach to the
differing needs of students will, in part, be manifest through their efficacy
(Allinder, 1994). Research has indicated (Lopez, 2000; Rhine, 1995) that
teachers lack confidence in how to interact comfortably with students who have
limited English language proficiency. Because it is believed that teachers’ self-
beliefs have a direct influence on how they behave with students (Cabello &
Burstein, 1995; Wheatley, 2002), it is important to study teachers’ efficacy in
relation to teaching students who have ESL because, with lowered teacher
efficacy, learning for these students may be compromised. Little research has
investigated teacher efficacy in relation to ESL learners.
The following section will describe the first phase of the cyclical mode
of teacher efficacy, exploring possible sources of efficacy information from
which teachers draw when determining how they will approach teaching
students who have ESL.
8
Sources of Efficacy Information
Efficacy beliefs have to do with self-perceptions of competence rather
than actual levels of competence (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). The
perception that a performance has been successful or unsuccessful raises or
lowers efficacy beliefs and contributes to the expectation of future performance
at a similar task. According to Bandura (1986, 1997) there are four sources of
efficacy information: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal
persuasion and physiological arousal. Mastery experiences, considered the most
powerful source of efficacy information are a person’s actual, past performance
at a task. Self-perceptions derived from the success or failure at completing a
past performance at a task will influence efficacy when one is considering
engaging in a similar task. Vicarious experiences are those in which the skill at
a particular task is modelled by someone else. The degree to which the observer
identifies with the model will influence the observer’s efficacy. The closer the
observer identifies with the model the stronger will be the impact on efficacy. If
a model performs well, the efficacy of the observer is enhanced; if the model
performs poorly, the efficacy of the observer decreases. Verbal persuasion and
physiological arousal are described as specific performance feedback, such as a
‘pep talk’ by a supervisor or colleague. Verbal persuasion can also be derived
from general chatter – in the teacher’s lounge, for example – or from other
sources such as the media, for example, a documentary on the ability of
teachers to influence students. The effects of verbal persuasion and
physiological arousal are limited in their power to create enduring increases or
decreases in efficacy. However, if positive, they may contribute to a person
initiating a task, to attempt new strategies or to try harder to succeed. Set-backs
in performance may instil enough self-doubt to interrupt persistence at a task.
The potency of persuasion depends on the credibility, trustworthiness and
expertise of the persuader (Bandura, 1986).
Specific Contextual Considerations for Teaching Students who have ESL
Teacher efficacy is widely acknowledged as being context specific
(Bandura, 1986, 1997; Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy & Hoy, 1998). The
9
specific context for the current research is teaching students who have ESL in
regular primary classrooms. Identifying the context for studying teacher
efficacy is important because evidence suggests that there are cultural and
language differences to which teachers must attend when teaching students who
have ESL (Igoa, 1995; Jones, 2000; Ogbu, 1994). It is hypothesised in this
thesis that contextual considerations will have a bearing on teaching strategies
chosen by teachers as a consequence of their efficacy beliefs. Researchers agree
that teaching students who have ESL in mainstream classrooms has added
complexities to teaching native-English language learners in the same class
(Jones, 2000; Meyer, 2000). Meyer (2000) suggested that there are four
contextual considerations in relation to teaching students who have ESL:
cognitive load, learning load, language load and culture load which are briefly
described below.
Cognitive load refers to teachers having an understanding that primary
school students must process information in at least two languages; these
students must transfer thoughts from one language (English) to another (home
language) and then back again to English in order to demonstrate their learning.
Such mental processing requires more time and effort than that required of
students who are processing learning and understanding using only one
language. Learning load describes teachers’ perceptions of how students learn,
in effect, what teachers ask students to do in set learning activities and tasks. It
is concerned with how teachers accommodate ESL students’ learning to help
them meet instructional outcomes that are on a par with their native-English
language peers. Language load refers to teachers’ use of language in the
classroom and the fluidity of communication that students must understand in
order to learn. Regardless of their particular backgrounds, cultures and
languages, the one constant for all students is school (McKay, Davies, Devlin,
Clayton, Oliver & Zammit, 1997) and schools in Australia are purposely
language-rich. Therefore, the language load expected of students is set by
predetermined standards common for all students and students who have ESL
must adapt to these demands. Culture load refers to teachers’ understanding of
10
the differences and similarities of culture through language (i.e. through world
views, classroom talk) (Meyer, 2000). Culture load is also concerned with how
much new culture a student must comprehend to participate in learning
activities, how aware teachers are of the differences in culture between the
dominant Australian culture and that of their student(s) and what teachers do to
address these differences to assist students in their learning.
Conceptualisation of the Construct of Teacher Efficacy
The current research examines contextual considerations for teaching
students who have ESL in association with the construct of teacher efficacy. As
a construct, teacher efficacy attempts to identify both teachers’ motivation to
persist at a teaching task and teachers’ willingness to overcome teaching
difficulties (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). Teacher efficacy, like Bandura’s
(1986) concept of self-efficacy, relates to individuals’ judgements about their
capabilities to execute behaviours needed to produce or attain designated
outcomes. For instance, Ghaith and Shaaban (1999) found that teachers with
high efficacy were more likely to stay in teaching because they attribute
students’ successful achievements to their own personal efforts and abilities to
teach. Teachers with a strong sense of efficacy put more effort into meeting the
learning needs of their students, showed more enthusiasm for teaching and set
higher goals for themselves as well as for their students. Rimm-Kaufman and
Sawyer (2004) found that teachers who felt high efficacy and expressed
positive attitudes towards teaching also reported high efficacy in their
capabilities to establish and maintain classroom discipline.
The following section of the thesis provides a description of teacher
efficacy as it was conceptualised for the research. As a multifaceted construct,
teacher efficacy has generally been examined as a two dimensional construct
(Gibson & Dembo, 1984; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990); it has also been explored as
a three dimensional construct (Soodak & Podell, 1996) and as global construct
(Deemer & Minke, 1999). By and large, it is considered a two-dimensional
construct with the two dimensions being personal efficacy and teaching efficacy
11
derived from the most widely used measure of teacher efficacy developed by
Gibson and Dembo (1984).
In relation to a two-factor solution, it has been suggested that personal
efficacy is a teacher’s general sense of their capabilities to do the job (Gibson &
Dembo, 1984; Soodak and Podell, 1996). This kind of efficacy influences how
much effort a teacher will expend in working with students. Personal efficacy
has been strongly represented in teacher efficacy research and appears to be
easily identifiable by teachers.
Teaching efficacy is related to activities to overcome environmental
factors on student learning such as family life and socio-economic status. The
Hobart Declaration on Schooling (1989) and the follow-up, Adelaide
Declaration on National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century (1999)
(Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs
(MCEETYA), accessed 4/11/2004), state that one common and agreed goal for
schooling in Australian is to strengthen schools as learning communities where
teachers, students and their families work together in partnership with business,
industry and the wider community. Teaching efficacy measures teachers’
confidence to develop and maintain those links beyond the classroom. Links
with the community fall within the parameters that suggest that learning is
located not only in people’s minds but also in their social interactions (Hendry,
1996). Therefore, teachers of students who have ESL cannot ignore that
environmental factors must be salient variables to consider.
However, in a study of 540 teachers, Brouwers and Tomic (2003) tested
different factorial models proposed by authors including Gibson and Dembo’s
(1984) two-factor model which includes personal efficacy and teaching efficacy,
Emmer and Hickman’s (1991) three-factor model that included classroom
management efficacy and Soodak and Podell’s (1996) four-model that included
the factor of outcome efficacy. Factor analysis revealed that the four-factor
model fitted the data significantly better than the other models, although its fit
did not reach the recommended criterion of adequately fitted models
statistically. One possible reason for an inadequate fit may have been due to the
12
employment of a global measure of teacher efficacy rather than context-specific
measure. It is continually recommended that teacher efficacy is context-specific
(Bandura, 1997; Pajares, 1992); therefore, the current research sought to
measure the construct within the context of teaching students who have ESL.
Little research has focused on the four dimensions of teacher efficacy; however,
the four dimensions identified by Brouwers and Tomic (2003) describe
meaningful aspects of effective teaching: classroom management, outcomes,
overcoming environmental factors and having confidence in one’s own
teaching abilities. It is proposed in the current research that teachers lacking in
efficacy beliefs in any of these four dimensions are unlikely to promote wholly
successful learning situations for their students. Further discussion of teacher
efficacy is provided in the next chapter, The Literature Review.
Research Program Outline
Using a cyclical framework of teaching efficacy, Tschannen-Moran et al.
(1998) examined the pathway of efficacy from the sources of efficacy
information (i.e., verbal persuasion, vicarious experience, physiological arousal
and mastery experience) through to the manifestation of efficacy beliefs (i.e.,
goals, effort and persistence), which in turn leads to the formation of new
efficacy beliefs (as presented on p. 46). What is missing from the model is a
specific context for examining teacher efficacy. The present study modified the
Tschannen-Moran et al. model to include the four specific contextual
considerations (i.e. cognitive load, language load, learning load and culture load)
associated with teaching ESL students and four factors of teacher efficacy (i.e.
personal efficacy, teaching efficacy, outcome efficacy and classroom
management efficacy) (as presented on p. 46). The cyclical model and the
modified cyclical model are described in Chapter 2, The Literature Review.
The current research program, which consisted of three successive
studies, is briefly outlined below.
Study 1
The first study commenced in February, 2003. Study 1 involved a qualitative
component of the research program in which focus groups were conducted with
13
17 preservice teachers (14 female and 3 male) and nine inservice teachers (8
female and 1 male). Focus groups are defined as “in-depth, open-ended group
discussions that explore a specific set of issues on a predefined and limited
topic” (Robinson, 1999, p.905). The issues explored in Study 1 included
examining sources of teachers’ efficacy beliefs to teach the target group of
students and examining associated contextual factors related to teaching
students who have ESL as per the first phase of the cyclical model of teacher
efficacy.
Study 1 was designed to address the principal research questions:
(1) How do teachers understand the term, ESL?
(2) What sources of efficacy information are used to teach students who
have ESL?
(3) What contextual factors are taken into account when teaching
students who have ESL?
Findings from research questions (2) and (3) in Study 1 were taken into
consideration in the development of survey items for Study 2. Findings from
research questions (1) and (3) in Study 1 above were utilised to feed into the
development of hypothetical teaching scenarios used in Study 3. Study 2 will
now be outlined.
Study 2
The qualitative data from Study 1 provided insights into context specific
components of teaching students who have ESL in regular classrooms. The four
contextual components examined were: cognitive load, learning load, language
load, and culture load. These findings enabled the researcher to conceptualise
the teacher efficacy construct in relation to teaching ESL students and thereby
address the principal research question for Study 2:
What dimensions constitute teacher efficacy for teaching students who
have ESL?
14
A questionnaire to measure the four factors of teacher efficacy within
the context of teaching ESL students was then developed for the second study
of the research. The four factors examined were: personal efficacy, teaching
efficacy, outcome efficacy, and classroom management efficacy.
Little is known about the dimensions comprising teacher efficacy in
relation to teaching students who have ESL. Evidence of their construct validity
and reliability in the current research was demonstrated using a number of
statistical procedures. To assess the factor composition of these scales, the
statistical technique known as factor analysis was conducted utilising the
statistical package SPSS 12.0.1 for Windows.
Study 3
The qualitative findings from Study 1 and information from the
literature were utilised in Study 3 to develop hypothetical teaching scenarios to
examine how efficacy beliefs might influence teaching performance as per the
final phase of the modified cyclical model (Performance) (Tschannen-Moran et
al., 1998). Based on their analysis of a teaching task in association with an
assessment of their capabilities to do the task, teachers set goals and commit to
a course of action (performance) to accomplish the task. The current study
explored the research question:
How confident are teachers in their chosen teaching strategies for
working with students who have ESL?
Contributions to the Field of Research
Few studies have examined preservice and inservice teachers’
understanding of students who have ESL and how such understanding
influences teacher efficacy beliefs and subsequent teaching strategies.While
there is much information describing approaches teachers could take to teach
students who have ESL (see Dare & Polias, 2001; Gibbons, 1991; Rose, Gray,
& Cowey, 1999; Sale, Sliz, & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2003), there is little
information on teachers’ efficacy in this context.
In particular, there are no studies that examine contextual considerations
as they pertain to teachers’ efficacy for the target student group of the current
15
research. This area of teacher efficacy warrants closer scrutiny so that the best
outcomes for ESL students can be reached by teachers who feel confident that
they understand how best to facilitate learning for these students.
Important to the research is the inclusion of a four-factor model of
teacher efficacy (Brouwers & Tomic, 2003) as a means to more clearly define
the construct of teacher efficacy. The utilisation of this factoral model breaks
new ground in that such a model has not been tested specifically to teaching
students who have ESL. Furthermore, research on teacher efficacy traditionally
employs self-report scales. The current research uses a mixed-method approach
to more comprehensively explore the various features of teacher efficacy.
While other researchers have employed mixed-method approaches (see Hebert,
Lee, & Williamson, 1998), the current research aimed to extend previous
approaches to studying teacher efficacy by utilising three studies to explore the
specific facets of the construct within a cyclical model. Such a program of
research has not been undertaken before. The research questions that guided the
research were derived from the literature are posited in Chapter 2.
To test the factoral structure of the construct, a new measure of teacher
efficacy was developed for this research, the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale
for Teaching ESL Learners scale. No such teacher efficacy scale exists for this
population. Understanding teachers’ confidence to teach students who have
ESL will help to identify professional development and further resources
needed to achieve optimal teaching practices for working with these students.
Below (Table 1.1) is a summary of the three studies for the research.
Table 1.1
Summary of the Three Studies for the Research _________________________________________________________________________
Research Questions
_________________________________________________________________________
Study 1 1. How do teachers understand the term ‘ESL’?
2. What sources of efficacy information are used to teach students who
have ESL?
16
3. What contextual factors are taken into account when teaching students
who have ESL?
Study 2 1. What dimensions constitute teacher efficacy for teaching students who
have ESL?
Study 3 1. How confident are teachers in their chosen strategies for working with
students who have ESL?
Organisation of the Thesis
Chapter 2 presents a review of the literature on teacher efficacy and on
teaching students who have ESL is presented to provide a framework for
analysis of data within the cyclical model of teacher efficacy (Tschannen-
Moran et al., 1998). A modified version of the cyclical model developed for the
research is presented with an argument for its inclusion.
Chapter 3 provides an overview of the research methodology, including
sampling techniques, strategies used to enhance reliability and validity of the
findings, a rationale for using both qualitative and quantitative methodology,
data analysis techniques and the principle research questions. Chapters, 4, 5 and
6 describe the three studies comprising the research, the methodology of each
successive study and their results. Chapter 7 discusses how the three studies are
related with a discussion of the findings with recommendations for future
teacher preparation, limitations of the research and recommendations for further
research in the field.
17
CHAPTER 2 Literature Review
This chapter presents a review of the literature on teacher efficacy and
contextual considerations in relation to teaching students who have ESL.
Consideration will be given to how teacher efficacy is presently conceptualised
in the literature before presenting a discussion of the measurement of teacher
efficacy. Next a model of teacher efficacy that tracks efficacy beliefs from their
source to subsequent teaching application will be critiqued before an extended
cyclical model which includes four factors of teacher efficacy and specific
contextual considerations will be described. This extended model is used as the
basis for exploring the nature of teacher efficacy and how it influences teaching
ESL students in the current research.
Conceptualisation of the Construct – Teacher Efficacy
The construct of teacher efficacy is derived from Bandura’s (1986, 1997)
notion of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is concerned with people’s beliefs in their
capabilities to produce given attainments. According to Bandura, efficacy
beliefs can be self-enhancing or self-debilitating and play a part in determining
an individual’s choice of what course of action to pursue, how long a person
will persevere along that course of action in the face of obstacles and in an
individual’s resiliency to adversity. The stronger the sense of efficacy at a task
in a given domain, the greater will be the individual’s perseverance to keep at it
and the higher the likelihood that the person will perform the chosen activity
successfully.
One of the great appeals of teacher efficacy for researchers is that it is
one of the few teacher characteristics that is related to student achievement
(Woolfolk Hoy & Spero, 2005); teachers can make self-judgements on their
teaching based on the achievements their students produce. Teacher efficacy is
a self-perception of competence rather than a measure of actual competence.
18
Allinder (1994) suggested that efficacy beliefs appear to affect the level of
effort a teacher will invest in a teaching task; the stronger a teacher’s efficacy
beliefs, the better planning, organisation and greater enthusiasm for teaching
appears to occur. It would seem natural then that schools would prefer to have
teachers who have high efficacy working for them. However, Wheatley (2000)
suggests that high efficacy beliefs can be misplaced. For example, if teachers
feel pressured they may purport to be efficacious at a task when in reality they
do not feel confident they can do the job at all, exhibiting what Wheatley
describes as a “pretend efficacy”, for example, pretending to be efficacious in
order to save face. Alternatively, teachers may have found a level of teaching at
which they perceive themselves to be efficacious but one in which they are
resistant to change or reform. Wheatley (2000) described this efficacy as “too-
certain efficacy” where teachers believe that they have the curriculum “all
figured out” (p.19), implying that they have a fixed procedural approach to
teaching that eliminates opportunities for change and growth.
Wheatley (2002) further suggests that having doubts about one’s
teaching capabilities can foster a sense of disequilibrium, which in turn can
foster self-reflection. With support, teachers can learn to handle self-doubts and
become responsive to reforms and a greater diversity in the teaching/learning
context. However, having “overly-optimistic efficacy” can set the stage for
disillusionment. Teachers’ expectations of their capabilities may be challenged
in real teaching situations, which may cause innovative teaching practices to be
abandoned for a safer more established approach to teaching.
Measurement of Teacher Efficacy
In measuring efficacy, people are being asked to judge their operative
capabilities as of now (Bandura, 2001). That is, individuals judge their
capabilities against an activity that may occur in the imminent future rather than
in the more distant future. Efficacy beliefs influence motivation through
individuals having a sense of persistence at achieving set goals and it supports
motivation in the degree of optimism individuals have in their capabilities to
attain their goals.
19
Seminal research in teacher efficacy was conducted by Gibson and
Dembo (1984) who developed an efficacy scale that produced two factors:
personal teaching efficacy (a person’s belief in their capability to do the task)
and teaching efficacy (outcome expectations in regards to the degree to which
students can be taught given their family background, socioeconomic status and
school conditions). Gibson and Dembo (1984) found that teachers with high
efficacy were more effective in classroom management issues than teachers
with low efficacy. For example, teachers with high efficacy were observed to be
able to provide supervision to the whole class, even while working with a small
reading group, whereas teachers with low efficacy appeared to be flustered if
interrupted while working with a small group.
Since its introduction, the Gibson and Dembo scale has been the basis
for most teacher efficacy research (Ghaith & Shaaban, 1999; Hebert, Lee &
Williams, 1998; Hoy & Woolfolk, 1993; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990). What
follows is a brief history of teacher efficacy research to the present day.
Woolfolk and Hoy (1990) examined prospective teachers’ efficacy in relation to
control and motivation. They found that teachers with high efficacy anticipated
being loyal members of a school’s organisation (and thus be controlled by the
hierarchical rules of the organisational structure) but the same teachers also
expected to deal with their students in a personal and humanistic way, allowing
their students to control their learning. Woolfolk and Hoy described this as a
dichotomy where teachers held positive efficacy about being controlled but
negative efficacy about controlling their students. Like Gibson and Dembo
(1984), Woolfolk and Hoy (1990) found two formulations of the efficacy
construct: teaching efficacy and personal efficacy.
Guskey and Passaro (1994), however, found an anomaly for both the
Gibson and Dembo (1984) scale and the Woolfolk and Hoy (1990) scale. In
both scales, items that loaded on the personal teaching efficacy factor were all
positively described, had an internal locus of control and used the referent ‘I’
(e.g. “I can…”). Items that were loaded on the teaching efficacy subscale were
negatively described, had an external locus of control and used the referent
20
‘teachers’ (e.g. “teachers cannot…”) (p. 628). Guskey and Passaro suggested
that a scale based on an internal-external distinction would produce more
reliable results than the ‘personal’ and ‘teaching’ efficacy scales; however,
there has not been widespread acceptance of this distinction. For example,
Soodak and Podell (1996) argued that the concept of locus of control should be
viewed as a continuum, making reliable identification of either an internal or
external orientation difficult. Bandura (2001) argued that because locus of
control is different to self-efficacy it should be measured as a separate construct.
Unlike Gibson and Dembo (1984) and Woolfolk and Hoy (1990),
Soodak and Podell (1996) retained three factors of teacher efficacy, which they
described as teaching efficacy, personal efficacy and outcome efficacy.
Teaching efficacy measured activities to overcome environmental factors such
as family life. Personal efficacy measured teachers’ assessment of their
teaching ability while outcome efficacy reflected teachers’ beliefs about the
extent to which desirable outcomes are the result of their actions. The scale
used for the Soodak and Podell study included 16 items from Gibson and
Dembo’s (1984) original scale and an additional 18 times with a particular
focus on examining the role of outside influences on teachers’ beliefs.
Woolfolk and Hoy (1990) posited that in a three-factor solution, personal
efficacy would be differentiated by positive versus negative student outcomes;
Soodak and Podell suggest that it is not a positive-negative differentiation but
that personal efficacy was comprised of two different factors: personal efficacy,
which refers to teachers’ beliefs about their teaching skills and outcome efficacy,
which refers to teachers beliefs about the effectiveness of implementing those
skills. Soodak and Podell (1996) argued that the distinction between personal
efficacy and outcome efficacy demonstrated independent aspects of efficacy and
so found that there were three factors not two as is generally accepted.
In contrast, Deemer and Minke’s (1999) study revealed that teacher
efficacy may, in fact, be a unidimensional construct, at least in relation to the
Gibson and Dembo (1984) scale. Deemer and Minke tested a modified version
of the Gibson and Dembo scale developing two forms using only the referent
21
“I”, to examine the positive-negative wording orientation of the original Gibson
and Dembo scale. In the original scale, positive wording orientation of items
used the referent “I can” while negative wording orientation used the referent
“teachers cannot”. On the Deemer and Minke (1999) scale each item from the
Gibson and Dembo (1984) scale was revised so that a positive and negative
version of each item was available, using only the referent “I” for both modified
versions. For example, an original item from the Gibson and Dembo scale reads:
When a student does better than usual, many times it is because I exerted a
little extra effort. A revised version on the Deemer and Minke scale reads:
When a student does better than usual, it is often not because I exerted a little
extra effort. Deemer and Minke found that in the absence of wording confounds,
the items loading as teaching efficacy were primarily an internal dimension of
personal efficacy, with a separate external factor not identified. Deemer and
Minke suggested that the two factor structure of the Gibson and Dembo (1984)
scale may be partially “…an artefact of item wording and not the result of
underlying, distinct construct dimensions” (p 5 of 24). According to Deemer
and Minke (1999), the Gibson and Dembo scale did not appear to represent the
two dimensions of teacher efficacy that the authors claimed it did.
Lately researchers have begun to develop new ways of examining
teacher efficacy. Hebert, Lee and Williamson (1998) used both quantitative and
qualitative measures of teacher efficacy. As well as using the Gibson and
Dembo (1984) scale, Hebert et al. took observations of teacher behaviour and
found this approach added depth and understanding to the numerical ratings and
provided a contextual underpinning for teachers’ expressed efficacy beliefs.
Gerges (2001) found that that there was a rich source of data gleaned from
qualitative methodology. The qualitative data in Gerges’ study was collected
through structured interviews, direct observation and written documents and
revealed that preservice teachers with high efficacy were able to adapt to their
new frame of reference (the reality of the classroom) much more readily than
preservice teachers with low efficacy and that high efficacy had an impact on
instructional choice in delivering content in the classroom. Extending teacher
22
efficacy research beyond a single scale measure adds depth to our
understanding of the construct within a particular context.
Brouwers and Tomic (2003) found that a four-factor model showed a
‘significantly better fit’ than other models. The four factors from Brouwers and
Tomic’s study were teaching efficacy (overcoming environmental factors),
personal efficacy (one’s teaching/instruction activities), outcome efficacy
(activities to reach educational outcomes) and classroom management efficacy
(activities to manage student behaviour). Three of these factors are consistent
with those advocated by Soodak and Podell (1996): teaching efficacy, personal
efficacy and outcome efficacy. However, Brouwers and Tomic (2003) included
the additional factor of classroom management efficacy from a study conducted
by Emmer and Hickman (1991).
Furthermore, Brouwers and Tomic found that teacher efficacy had been
measured as a global construct when it should have been contextually based
(Bandura, 1997; Pajares, 1991; Tschannen-Moran et al. 1998). For example,
thinking about being able to manage a classroom in a global sense is different
to managing a classroom of students within a specific context such as having
students who have ESL in the class, and so one’s efficacy in both cases could
be different. According to Bandura (1986, 1997), measuring efficacy as a global
construct cannot produce reliable results because from its conception efficacy
has been described as context specific, in this, Brouwers and Tomic’s (2003)
study has added to the argument that teacher efficacy should be measured
within a specific context.
In the present thesis quantitative data combined with qualitative data is
combined to enhance our understanding of the construct of teacher efficacy
within the context of teaching students who have ESL. Elaboration of the
description of the research methodologies to test teachers’ efficacy in relation to
teaching students who have ESL used for the current research is provided in
Chapter 3, Methodological Considerations.
23
A Model of Teacher Efficacy
As a new way to conceptualise the construct, Tschannen-Moran,
Woolfolk Hoy and Hoy (1998) proposed a cyclical model of teacher efficacy.
This model (see Figure 1) tracks the pathway of efficacy from the source of
efficacy information through to the development of new efficacy beliefs.
According to the model, efficacy beliefs are manifest as goals, effort and
persistence, which in turn leads a commitment to teaching performance
resulting in the formations of new efficacy beliefs.
Figure 1: The cyclical model of teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy & Hoy, 1998)
According to Tschannen et al. (1998), interpretation of the four sources
of efficacy information and the analysis of a teaching task in relation to the
assessment of one’s competence at that teaching task are major influences on
efficacy beliefs. It may be recalled that sources of efficacy information derived
from Bandura’s (1986, 1997) description of self-efficacy include verbal
persuasion, vicarious experience, physiological arousal and mastery experience.
Verbal persuasion refers to a ‘pep talk’ or specific performance feedback.
Alone it cannot create enduring increases in efficacy beliefs, but can provide a
24
persuasive boost that will lead to an increased effort and/or persistence to
succeed. Vicarious experiences occur when someone else models an
accomplishment. The more closely one identifies with the model, the greater
impact on a person’s sense of efficacy that they can also do the task.
Physiological arousal refers to an individual’s overall feeling about their
capabilities. An individual who feels positive about their capabilities will
persist to achieve their goal whereas individuals who do not feel positive may
have to dig deeper to convince themselves that they can succeed, or may give
up altogether. Mastery experiences are one’s own direct experiences and are
considered the most powerful source of efficacy information.
When presented with a potential situation, an individual taps into their
sources of efficacy beliefs as a starting point to determine how capable they feel
about committing to this new activity or course of action. What has been
experienced or remembered in the past has an impact on efficacy beliefs. An
individual may feel optimistic or pessimistic in their expectations of meeting
the demands of a new task based on pre-existing beliefs and the sources of
information they attend to or consider important (Bandura, 1997), for example,
if a teacher has met with success at a teaching task previously (mastery
experience), they will feel more efficacious to do the same or a similar task
again. Teachers consider both internal and external factors in attributing past
success or failure. In the cyclical model, the cognitive processing that
teachers undertake is believed to be an analysis of a teaching task in
conjunction with an assessment of one’s personal teaching competence. The
analysis and assessment process is carried out through the filter of current
efficacy beliefs that are based on sources of efficacy information. An example
of this process using mastery experience as the source of efficacy information
would be for the teacher to analyse the proposed teaching task – teaching
students who have ESL - against their pre-existing schemata of doing such a
task – for example, have they already taught students who have ESL. The
teacher would then analyse the perceived difficulty of the new task in relation
25
to the perceived capabilities needed to successfully complete the task as a way
to evaluate the probability of attaining the desired trajectory.
In the next stage of the model, the teacher sets goals and expends effort
and/or persistence to complete the task, which is described as the consequences
of teacher efficacy. As a result of these consequences teachers commit to a
course of action which is described as teaching performance which, in turn,
leads to new efficacy beliefs.
According to Tschannen- Moran et al. (1998), efficacy information is
more likely to be processed positively when individuals assess themselves as
continually improving on a task in spite of periodic setbacks, rather than when
individuals perceive that they have reached the limit of their capabilities to do
the task. In Tschannen-Moran et al.’s cyclical model, high efficacy leads to
better teaching performance, which in turns leads to greater efficacy whereas
low efficacy leads to less effort and giving up, which leads to poor teaching
outcomes and produces decreased efficacy for the next task. However, to date,
this model has not been utilised to examine teacher efficacy.
Furthermore, it has been repeatedly cautioned that teacher efficacy must
be measured within a particular context (Bandura, 1997; Pajares, 1992;
Whealtey, 2001). That being so, it should be noted that the above cyclical
model does not include a particular context (other than overall teaching) and so
is limited in examining teachers’ efficacy beliefs in relation to teaching students
who have ESL. Therefore, modifications to the model are needed. One such
modification is the inclusion of contextual considerations for teaching students
who have ESL. Below is a description of these contextual considerations.
Specific Contextual Considerations for Teaching Students who have ESL
As previously described in this thesis, there is no overall description of
students who have ESL. For the current study, these students include those who
have limited (or no) English language proficiency at peer level in the classroom
and come from a variety of backgrounds. For example, the report from the
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1999) described
26
many barriers migrants face as they begin their new lives in Australia, barriers
such as language and cultural differences and racism, which can make the
experience of migration a highly stressful one. As well as non-English speaking
migrants newly arriving in Australian schools, there are also second-generation
Australian-born children who begin school with little or no English (Iredale,
1997). While the Australian Bureau of Statistics keeps records on newly arrived
migrants who have limited English, they keep no records on second-generation
students who enter school. However, the researcher, who has taught ESL
students in primary classrooms would suggest that in spite of the lack of
statistical evidence of second-generation migrant children entering school with
limited English language proficiency, at the classroom level these children exist
and must be given the same consideration as those newly arrived. Additionally,
there are Indigenous Australian students who do not speak English as their first
language.
For their part, educators are challenged to meet the needs of this diverse
group of students, some of whom have had a smattering of schooling, some
who have had a good foundation for schooling and others who have had no
schooling at all (Campey, 1992). Iredale (1997) suggested that many children
continue to miss out on adequate English language instruction due to limited
teacher preparation, limited resources and government policies on education. It
would appear that there are no simple answers to ease the challenges teachers
face in teaching students who have ESL.
Meyer (2000) identified four barriers in relation to the cultural exchange
between teachers and students who have ESL in providing meaningful
instruction. These contextual considerations are: cognitive load, culture load,
language load and learning load. These contextual considerations are not
mutually exclusive; for example, it would be difficult to talk about language
load without also referring to cognitive load. Indeed, it would be impossible to
fully separate these contextual considerations as each has an impact on the other.
What follows is a description of each.
27
Cognitive Load is described by Meyer (2000) as the number of new
concepts embedded in a lesson or text with which a student who is ESL must
deal. Cognitive load involves two different operations, one is translating
language and the other is in understanding the context/language interface. A
child who is not yet proficient in English relies on their first language for
interpretation of meaning. For example, a child reads something in English but
must translate what he has read into his home language so it makes sense to him
(however accurate or inaccurate their interpretation is). He must then translate
his home language meaning back into English to demonstrate his understanding
to the teacher. At the same time that translations are being made, the child must
also make meaning of the content being read and that the meaning made must
approximate that of the other children in the class. In this sense, cognitive load
has a strong connection to language load (which is described below).
Factors that affect students’ cognitive development include parents’
level of education, the literacy environment at home and at school, the level of
first language proficiency and group identification (Kagiteibasi, 1996). While
some children who are ESL have had little experience of schooling before
arriving in Australia, many experience gaps in their schooling as they move
from their home culture to their new culture. These children are more than
‘language minority’ children; they are children who have been uprooted from
all that was familiar to find themselves constantly trying to make adjustments to
new situations that continually change. Their sense of group identity is
constantly challenged, which in turn has an impact on their ability to learn
(Campey, 2002; Kirova-Petrova, 2000).
The literature suggests, however, that learning a second language
contributes to students’ cognitive flexibility as students must utilise the
processes of cognition (categorising, analysing, selecting and integrating
information/concepts) in two languages (Cummins, 1980; Lo Bianco, 1987).
Bialystock (2002) posits that children at a very early age practice inhibiting
linguistic processing in order to use one language over another. Children in her
study were able to cognitively control the inhibition of attention to one
28
language in order to attend to the other language; this selective attention is a
primary mechanism in cognition. According to Bialystock, this highly
developed cognitive strategy was less developed in mono-linguistic children;
mono-linguistic children, she claims, did not need to think about language
strategies before using language. Furthermore, Bialystock found that the
bilingual children were able to transfer their cognitive skills to other domains
such as performing mathematical functions. Language development, therefore,
appears to be intimately connected to cognitive development and the cognitive
skills of selective attention inhibition are developed in relation to language use.
It has been claimed that children who are ESL begin to connect with
new concepts taught in school when lessons convey meaning to them, whether
they understand English or not, simply by being in the classroom environment
(Curtain & Dahlberg, 2004; Gardner, 1983, 1999). Indeed, it is suggested that
cognitive development will occur along with language development but there is
no need to wait for oral language proficiency for a student to develop
understanding of the content (Baca & Cervantes, 1989; Gibbons, 1991;
Halliwell, 1998; Watts-Taffe & Truscott, 2000). Cognitive demands on children
are determined by the complexity of the learning task relative to students’
abilities. As there appears to be universal cognitive capabilities across cultures
(such as the ability for abstract and logical reason, the capacity to remember
and/or categorise and being able to generalise in forming concepts), it is
suggested that students have the capabilities to learn new ways of thinking as
required according to their new cultural reference (Kagitcibasi, 1996; Kirova-
Petrova, 2000). Therefore, it would seem to be appropriate that addressing the
development of students’ cognitive capabilities is an important factor for their
academic success.
Carrasquillo and Rodriguez (1995) suggest, however, that many
mainstream teachers have not been trained to teach students who have ESL.
The main focus in these classrooms becomes the development of English
language skills more so than on students’ cognitive development. Gersten (1999)
describes these as lost opportunities for teachers who choose to focus on
29
reduced cognitive demands for their students, having them do vocabulary
building, spelling and grammar skills rather than engaging these students in
more cognitively demanding work alongside their classroom peers. Teachers
can become focused on the product of the work (correct spelling and grammar)
and not the process of learning (Nunan, 1999). For effective cognitive
development, there is a need for attention on both process and product to be
incorporated when teaching students who have ESL.
Language Load refers to the amount of English words in academic texts
or talk, including teacher talk with which students who have ESL are expected
to cope (Meyer, 2000). Students who have ESL must learn both academic
English and everyday English and in which circumstances each is appropriate.
In understanding academic language students must learn to understand what
teachers expect of them, whether through written or oral discourse. How a
teacher delivers instructions is as important as the instructions themselves.
Genesse (2002) found that young children demonstrated code-mixing
when they began to learn a second language and that they generally became
more proficient in one language over another. However, if young children are
not fully proficient in their first language before they begin to learn a new
language, they may stop using the first language altogether. For example,
students may pour all their efforts into learning English because that is what
teachers emphasise as their priority in order for students to fit in with their
peers at school (Wong Fillmore, 1991). Wong Fillmore found that often
younger children who did not have a strong first language will lose that
language if there is no concerted effort on the part of their parents/caregivers
and teachers to have them maintain it. She also found that older students may
learn to speak a ‘fossilised version’ of inter-language, a hybrid of their first
language and English, so they end up speaking neither proficiently.
Cummins (1980, 1991, 1997) suggests that there is a close connection
between conversational language proficiency and academic language
proficiency, but with a distinction made between the two. The distinction drawn
by Cummins is between contextualised and decontextualised language.
30
Cummins describes two dimensions of language proficiency: basic
interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive/academic language
proficiency (CALP). BICS tends to measure surface fluency of a language
whereas CALP is tapping into more complex cognitive and academic aspects of
English language learning. Below is Cummins’ (1991) model (see Figure 2)
that demonstrates the various aspects of language proficiency development.
Figure 2: Cross-lingual dimension of language proficiency
(Cummins, 1991)
In the model above, two intersecting axes are portrayed where the
horizontal axis indicates the level of contextual support of language use while
the vertial axis indicates the cognitive demands on the language user. The
quadrants of the model portray the progress of students’ learning from context-
embedded, cognitive undemanding (A) through to context reduced, cognitive
demanding (D) language understanding and use. Context-embedded
communications allows participants to actively negotiate meaning by having
language use supported by a range of meaningful interpersonal and situational
cues. Context-reduced communication relies on linguistic cues to provide
meaning. Thus, successful interpretation of the message depends on one’s
knowledge of the language itself (Cummins, 1991). Quadrant A and C represent
conversational skills that develop fairly rapidly (approximately 2 years to be
conversationally proficient) and lower level academic skills. Quadrant B and D
represent more complex skills such as persuading others of your point of view
31
or writing an academic essay (skills that may take up to 7 years to master).
Cummins suggestes that access to interactions with native English language
speakers is a major causal variable to the success of developing English
language proficiency.
Gersten and Baker (2000) claimed that using lesson content as a way to
develop language limits students’ opportunities to develop the complexities of
their new language with an increased risk that their language learning becomes
either truncated or omitted altogether. They suggested that language
development and cognitive development should have separate goals to
underscore the double demand placed on these students. However, Cummins
(1991) argues that teaching English to ESL students must occur simultaneously
with their academic learning, appropriate to students’ cognitive development.
Cummins points out that while students who have ESL are learning through
learning English, native English language learners do not stop their learning to
wait for ESL students to catch up, so in order to keep up to what their peers are
learning, students who have ESL must be taught the same content as their
native English speaking peers.
It should be noted that children who are ESL begin school in
Queensland with the same language development as native English-speaking
children but in a language other than English. However, teachers may say of the
child, “…s/he has no language” (Makin, 1992, p. 35) meaning that the child
does not speak English. In effect, these teachers are equating the lack of English
with a lack of language development. One role of teachers is to assess where
the student is at in their language development and then provide the support
(scaffolding) needed to help with learning through learning English. To do this
successfully, teachers need an awareness of how to teach students who have
ESL in a range of contexts where students will have to use language to make
meanings appropriate to those contexts (Dare & Polias, 2001; Hammond, 2001)
at the same cognitive and language load as their peers.
Culture Load refers to the amount of cultural knowledge required but
never explicitly explained in order for the learner to accurately comprehend the
32
meanings of a text or to appropriately participate in a learning activity in
English (Meyer, 2000). Culture load, in this sense, is concerned with the
meaning of words, how one word has different meanings in different cultures
and contexts. For example, the word ‘chips’ in Australia means hot chips
whereas in the USA ‘chips’ means the same as Australian potato crisps.
However, as more Americanised language infiltrates Australian lexicon, the
word ‘chips’ now also means Australian crisps. To add to the confusion, hot
chips in the USA are called, French fries or simply fries. Chips are also called
French fries at Australian fast-food take-away restaurants, mainly American in
origin, but at Australian fish and chip shops, which are relatively unknown in
the USA, chips remain chips. Such is one aspect of the culture load ESL
students face in learning English.
Through culture load, migrant children may experience feelings of
isolation, exhaustion, cultural disorientation and loneliness. When they begin
school in their new country they often lapse into a period of silence where they
may appear unwilling to communicate with the teacher and their peers. To
some teachers it may appear that the child is dysfunctional and uncooperative,
but Igoa (1995) describes this silence as a period of incubation, a survival tactic
needed for children to come to grips with their new situation and one in which
they will come through successfully with positive teacher support. Students
who have ESL may experience a discontinuity of their home customs and
practices as they relate to new religious observances, food, dress, manners and
language use in their new culture (Sing Ghuman, 1994). Tileston (2004) and
others (Major & Celedon-Pattichis, 2001; Peragay & Boyle, 2000; Rueda,
MacGillivray, Monzo, & Arzubiaga, 2002; Williams, 2001) argue that for
teachers to become responsive to teaching to a culturally diverse group of
students they must examine their own cultures and be sensitive to the idea that
they also possess a cultural and ethnic identity. Sheets and Fong (2003)
advocate that teachers need to explore ways to use their own personal cultural
knowledge and pedagogical strengths to develop and implement curriculum
with a focus on including cultural awareness for all their students.
33
The socialising and academic focus of parents and families can have a
profound effect on a child’s preparation for school. There is some evidence in
the literature to indicate that parents’ level of education may have a significant
bearing on the academic support they offer their child (Bialystock, 2002; Igoa,
1995). For example, Li (2002) found that university educated parents felt
compelled to tutor their child at home to ensure that the child would succeed
academically in a ‘western’ school. These parents also worried about their
child’s social development and saw having their child participate in extra
curricular activities with other children as a positive avenue for both social
development and English language development. In comparison, in another
family in Li’s study, parents who were not highly educated owned a restaurant
and had little time to spend with their children because of the demands of
running their business in a new country. The youngest child in this family was
completing Grade One for the third time and exhibited behaviour problems in
the classroom. His level of English language proficiency was poor and his main
source of information came from watching television. In this house there were
few books and the television stayed on all day. Li (2002) claims that the literacy
experiences of the parents played a large part in the literacy practices with their
children. While it is an overgeneralisation to suggest that the education of the
parents will produce the same results as those described above, it would appear
that the literacy habits of parents can be a factor in children’s cultural and
linguistic development.
Teachers, for their part, may adopt a negative attitude towards children
if parents are perceived to be uninvolved (Huss-Keeler, 1997). Huss-Keeler
observed teachers who did not have high expectations of ESL students whose
parents did not attend school activities. However, upon visiting the home of one
of these students, these same teachers were surprised to find that the home was
clean, the children were well behaved and the parents were actually interested
in their children’s schooling. As it turned out, the parents had limited English so
would not have understood what was going on during organised school
activities without an interpreter, which the school did not supply. After the
34
home visit, the teachers changed their behaviour towards the student and gave
him more challenging work, appropriate to his abilities with positive results for
the student.
In her study of Hispanic families in the south-west United States of
America, Valdes (1996) found that Hispanic parents were neither committed to
nor involved in their children’s education. Culturally, Hispanic parents valued
education in as much as they believed English was necessary for their children
‘to get on in life’, but school success generally meant that someone was ‘book
smart’. Being book smart was viewed by the parents as an individual talent that
not everyone shared. Parents were prepared to accept that some children simply
struggle with school work and so schooling was less important for these
children. In the Hispanic community of Valdes’ study, people who did well in
school were not considered particularly gifted over other people. The view was
that all people have talents and everyone should be respected for their
individual talent. School activities for parents, such as parent-teacher interviews,
were viewed as social occasions rather than times to learn about their child’s
level of academic achievement, much to the frustration of teachers who were
white, Anglo-Americans.
Malin (1990) describes a similar situation with Aboriginal children in
Australia. In this research, the teacher treated Aboriginal children in the class
differently to bicultural Aboriginal-Anglo children and children who were
Anglo-Australian. Malin found that Aboriginal parents did not expect their
children to immediately obey their directives and used modelling and informal
conversation to indicate desired behaviour. In contrast, teachers did expect
children to obey instructions. When Aboriginal children did not follow the
teacher’s directives immediately, they were seen to be defiant of authority and
punished.
As stated earlier in this chapter, one cannot view students who have
ESL as a single group. Indeed, there is as much dissimilarity as there is
similarity. For example, length of residency in the host country will have a
bearing on the way children interpret culture. Sing Ghuman (1994) describes
35
how first generation migrants cling to their home cultures for an extended
length of time while they settle in to their new environment. The second
generation have a stronger affinity for the host culture because they are born in
the country, taking up the norms and habits of that country, sometimes in
conflict with the culture of their parents. The literature reviewed suggests that
teachers need to be aware of the cultural diversity that each child brings to the
classroom in order to overcome the barriers of culture load.
Learning Load refers to what teachers ask students to do in set learning
activities and tasks (Meyer, 2000). Meyer describes whole-class brainstorming
as one such learning load. Brainstorming is a fast-paced, unstructured flow of
ideas unsupported by visual aids or contextual clues. This kind of activity very
often proves to be too linguistically challenging and too conceptually abstract
for students who have ESL, especially students newly arrived in Australia.
When children lose their ability to communicate at the same level as their peers,
they experience a sense of loss of personal power (Makin, 1992). They are
forced to use body gestures and restricted utterances to convey what they
understand, which can become a frustrating and humiliating form of
communication. Their previously learned cultural tools of communication may
become ineffectual and inefficient in their new environment. Penfield (1987)
suggests that students in these situations sit through a class neither trying to
participate nor encouraged to participate by the teacher.
Clair (1995) suggests that many teachers do not understand the
complexity of learning that students who have ESL must undertake. Not only
must these students learn the same content as the native English language
learners in the class but they must process that learning through two languages,
in effect learning through learning English (as described by Cummins (1991)
above). Teachers who do not know how to teach students who have ESL may
keep students engaged at busy work (non-academic or lower academic work
than what the rest of the class are doing) so that it appears as if these students
are on task (Gersten, 1996). Busy work, however, requires constant vigilance
on the part of the teacher to ensure that students keep busy. Students, for their
36
part, express embarrassment that they have to do what they perceive to
be ’baby’ work (Gersten, 1996), so it is not surprising that students become
bored and distracted being in the same class as their English proficient peers.
Students expect to work at the same age and grade level as their peers, not be
stigmatised at working way below that level.
A teacher may misinterpret the learning styles that students who have
ESL exhibit as demonstrating disinterest, misunderstanding or defiance to
comply with the expected mode of learning in the classroom. Kagitcibasi (1996)
has extensively studied comparisons between majority and minority cultures
and describes these quiet periods as modes of learning, similar to the periods of
silence described by Li (2002). According to Kagitcibasi (1996), in minority
cultures such as rural Turkish (Kagitcibasi’s home culture) and other rural
European cultures, east-Asian cultures and African cultures, children are taught
by observing an adult do a task without verbal explanation. The child then
imitates the task until they have acquired the skills needed. This approach to
teaching is in contrast to that utilised in urban industrialised Western schools
(what Kagitcibasi described as majority cultures). Western schools are
language-rich; children are taught and are expected to use language in all its
forms to demonstrate learning. Children who have been taught to quietly watch
how to perform a task can become overwhelmed with the amount of verbal and
written instructions that occur in the general ‘Western’ approach to teaching.
Educators advocate that teaching to the whole child (social, emotional,
intellectual spheres) helps students to become participants in classroom
activities rather than leaving them in isolation for part or parts of the school day
due to their limited English proficiency (Hollins, 1993; Williams, 2001).
Creating a supportive classroom by developing interpersonal relationships helps
to promote greater learning performance. It has been suggested that strategies to
involve ESL students in the learning process do not have to be any more
elaborate than those a teacher would generally employ. For example, Vaughn,
Bos, and Schumm (2006) suggest using a variety of examples of content from
different cultures to illustrate concepts, principles and general theories to
37
provide alternative views to Anglo-European views. Teachers might affirm the
diversity of students by hanging posters or pictures, reading books or music of
different cultures integrated into a unit of study.
The four barriers to learning posited by Meyer (2000) provide a specific
context for testing teacher efficacy within the context of the current research.
What follows is a description of how these contextual considerations can be
placed in the cyclical model of teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998)
to provide the context specific focus needed to understand the construct better.
Extending the Cyclical Model
A modified version of the cyclical model of teacher efficacy is
presented below (see Figure 3) and was the model used for the current research.
The original model from Tschannen-Moran et al.’s (1998) study (Figure 1) is
also presented to indicate where the modifications have occurred. It should be
noted that the cyclical model has not been used in research to date, so the
modified model is at best a first attempt to track efficacy beliefs for teaching the
target group for the current research. The modified model includes contextual
considerations for teaching ESL students as well as the four-factor model of
teacher efficacy. As with the original model, the modified model examines
teacher efficacy from its source through to the implementation of teaching
practices.
Figure 1: The cyclical model of teacher efficacy
(Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy & Hoy, 1998)
38
Figure 3: Modified cyclical model of teacher efficacy (Original from: Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy & Hoy, 1998)
Sources of Efficacy Information
Verbal Persuasion
Vicarious Experience Physiological Arousal Mastery Experience
New Sources of Efficacy Information
Cognitive
Processing
Four-Factor Model of Teacher Efficacy Analysis of Teaching Task Assessment of Personal Teaching Competence (Personal Efficacy) Assessment / Attaining Learning Outcomes (Outcome Efficacy) Assessment / Attaining Classroom Management (Classroom Management Efficacy) Assessment / Overcoming Environment Factors (Teaching Efficacy)
Consequences of Teacher Efficacy
Goals, effort, persistence
Etc.
Performance
Teacher Efficacy
Contextual Considerations
Cognitive Load Language Load Learning Load Culture Load
As with the original model, there are four sources of efficacy beliefs:
verbal persuasion, vicarious experience, physiological arousal and mastery
experiences. In the modified model, these sources of efficacy information are
linked to contextual considerations and form the basis for Study 1 of the current
research in an attempt to examine teachers’ use of efficacy information
specifically in relation to teaching students who have ESL. Students who have
ESL have the double demand of learning academic content as well as learning
the pragmatics of using a new language within a new culture (Gerston & Baker,
2000; Makin, 1992; Vaughn, Bos & Schumm, 2006). Therefore, contextual
considerations need to be included because of the immediate impact they have
teachers’ perceptions of their capabilities within the specific teaching/learning
situation of teaching students who have ESL.
In considering a new teaching situation, a teacher’s efficacy response
will depend upon their sources of efficacy information filtered through the
contextual considerations of the teaching task. For example, a teacher who has
observed someone else teach a student who is ESL (vicarious experience) or
who has their own experience of teaching a student who is ESL (mastery
experience) may be aware of the cognitive load or language load experienced
by such a student in that the student has to think and understand concepts from
the framework of two languages. Or the teacher may be aware of the culture
39
load such as particular religious customs different from the classroom norm.
The teacher then may assess their capabilities to meet the particular needs of the
student’s cognitive load (personal efficacy) and/or culture load (teaching
efficacy) to engage a student into being a contributing member of the class.
In the original cyclical model (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998), teachers’
self-perceptions of teaching competence are the judgements they make about
their capabilities or deficits in relation to a teaching task while, at the same time,
analysing the resources and restraints in a particular teaching context (analysis
of teaching task/assessment of personal teaching competence). That is, teachers
weigh their self-perceptions of teaching competence in light of assumed
requirements of the anticipated teaching task. In the current research, the
teaching task under analysis is teaching students who have ESL and teachers’
assessment of this task is examined using the four-factor model of teacher
efficacy (Brouwers & Tomic, 2003). This phase of the model is the focus for
Study 2 of the research (examining the four-factor model of teacher efficacy in
association with the four contextual considerations for teaching students who
have ESL in regular primary classrooms).
Awareness of ESL contextual considerations in relation to a teaching
task may have the teacher modify their teaching strategy/lesson plan to
accommodate for students’ particular learning needs. Successful execution of
the teaching/learning situation would result in the teacher feeling positively
efficacious about their ability to complete the task successfully in the future. A
teacher with low efficacy may not feel confident to modify strategies or lessons
or may transfer responsibility to the student claiming that “…the problem is in
the student and not in the educational system, the teacher or the school”
(Carrasquillo & Rodriguez, 1995, p.10), expecting the student to adapt to the
new circumstances. Teachers may feel like failures in their inability to have
students produce results at age and grade level with their peers. In this case,
teachers may not feel efficacious about their abilities to teach students who
have ESL in the future. Clair (1995) cautioned against mainstream teachers
assuming that “good teaching is good teaching” without taking into
40
consideration the modifications to teaching required for addressing the needs of
students who have ESL. Clair found that many teachers did not accommodate
for ESL students’ language or cultural needs during lessons even though they
rated themselves as good teachers.
Byrnes, Kiger and Manning (1997) found that teachers who did not
have knowledge of ESL contextual considerations became frustrated more
easily in teaching students than teachers who had formal training or some
previous experience with language minorities, either through teaching or
through their own experience as a traveller or worker in a non-English speaking
country. Teachers who could relate former experiences to the students’
difficulties in their classrooms felt a higher sense of personal efficacy to teach
these students. Making adjustments for students may be as simple as providing
more visual aids or writing instructions on the board to support verbal
instructions (Knobel, 1997) to assist with the cognitive, language and learning
load for students. Kennedy and Kennedy (1996) suggest that there is sometimes
a gap between statements of intent and the reality of what happens in the class.
That is, teachers may have every intention of working towards meeting the
needs of students who have ESL, but in reality may not have the knowledge or
capability to carry those intentions through to implementation. The third study
of the current research, then, examines teaching strategies (performance in the
cyclical model) used to teach students who have ESL which are derived from
self-perceptions teachers have of their capabilities and from their interpretation
of the expected teaching task.
As described earlier in this literature review, many teachers have
misconceived views of students’ home life and the impact their culture has on
learning (Sing Ghuman, 1994; Valdes, 1996; Huss-Keeler, 1997). For example,
students who come originally from rural backgrounds struggle with adapting to
an urban industrial society, which tends to emphasise the cultural differences
between them and those of the dominant group (Kagitcibasi, 1996; Ogbu, 1994).
Burtonwood (2002) suggests that some teachers are culturally ignorant (having
few sources of efficacy information) rather than hostile to minority cultures and
41
advocates for more training to enrich teachers’ perceptions of culture (culture
load) and to create a ‘permeability of cultural boundaries’ to create greater
awareness and acceptance of differences.
Students may need considerable time before they are able to adequately
cope with the expectations of the classroom, both explicitly stated and
implicitly implied. For example, McKay (1997) suggests that it is unfair to
expect students who have ESL to be tested alongside native English language
peers, particularly when there is a lack of resources and a lack of professional
development to appropriately teach students who have ESL in mainstream
classrooms. Teachers who do not have specialised training may not take into
account the impact of ESL contextual considerations of students’ learning
(learning load/ cognitive load/language load) but teachers with high efficacy
have the capabilities to modify curriculum and classroom activities for effective
learning to occur (Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990; Hebert, Lee & Williams, 1998).
Valdes (1996) and Li (2002) found that children who begin to fall
behind in schoolwork due to cultural (culture load) and linguistic differences
(language load) can begin to act out their frustrations and become behaviour
problems for the classroom teacher. Valdes relates that, in her study, the vast
majority of parent-teacher interviews in the Hispanic community were focused
on behaviour issues rather than academic achievement issues. Ogbu (1994)
claims that there are two types of minority students: voluntary and involuntary
and that each responds differently to being in their new countries. Voluntary
minorities have chosen to immigrate to a new country and on the whole work
hard to fit into their new lives through all facets of contextual considerations.
Involuntary minorities are peoples who have been colonised, enslaved or
conquered and/or have moved from their home country due to political and
social unrest, are resentful and threatened by the dominant culture and so act
out negatively against the host society. According to Ogbu (1994), each group
approaches the learning situation from different needs and desires.
For example, the Hispanic students in Valdes’ (1996) study would fall
into the involuntary minority group because they were initially incorporated
42
into American society against their will (Ogbu, 1994). The Aboriginal students
in Malin’s (1990) study would also fall into this category as they have been
dominated by Anglo-Australian culture and politics since the arrival of the first
European settlers. The Hispanic and Australian Aboriginal people have been
‘traditionally’ treated as inferior in the majority culture and the interpretation of
such treatment has been reflected generally in low academic achievement
(cognitive load/learning load/language load) and a rejection of many of the
cultural norms (culture load/language load) of the majority culture. On the other
hand, voluntary minorities generally have established cultural frames of
reference that predate their arrival in their new country so they do not have the
same sort of negative reactions to their host country as involuntary minorities.
They approach being in their new country as an improvement for them from
living in their home countries (Sing Ghuman, 1994). Without teachers attending
to the contextual considerations that shape students’ lives, students can be
disadvantaged in their learning.
Summary of the Literature
A review of the literature shows:
- Teacher efficacy is a multifaceted construct (Pajares, 1992) with
a suggestion that there are at least two factors: personal efficacy
and teaching efficacy (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1996) but that
there is a possibility that there may be four factors: personal
efficacy, teaching efficacy, classroom management efficacy and
outcome efficacy (Brouwers & Tomic, 2003).
- Teachers must be aware of and understand the barriers to
learning (Meyer, 2000) that face students who have ESL in order
to provide effective learning experiences for these students. In
the current thesis, these barriers are described as contextual
considerations and include: culture load, language load, learning
load and cognitive load.
- The modified cyclical model of teacher efficacy (from the
original developed by Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998) offers the
43
possibility of examining the construct in greater depth using a
mixed-method of research rather than utilising the often used
Gibson and Dembo (1984) “Teacher Efficacy Scale” as a stand-
alone measure.
A review of the literature also demonstrates that there is no evidence
that the cyclical model of teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998) has
been used to examine primary teachers’ efficacy to teach students who are non-
native English language learners. There is no evidence of research done on
primary teachers’ efficacy in relation to teaching ESL students and in particular
through the utilisation of the cyclical model. Because there is evidence that ESL
continue to enrol in Australian schools, it is important that teachers’ efficacy to
teach these students is measured to indicate areas of strengths for teaching and
areas where professional development should occur to prepare teachers to more
effectively teach students who have ESL.
In summary, the current research addresses these gaps in the literature
through 3 studies. Study 1 of the research explores sources of teacher efficacy
in relation to contextual considerations for teaching students who have ESL,
responding to the research questions:
How do teachers understand the term, ESL?
What sources of efficacy information are used to teach students who
have ESL?
What contextual factors are taken into account when teaching students
who have ESL?
Study 2 of the research explores teachers’ self-perceptions across the
four components of teacher efficacy in association with contextual
considerations for teaching students who have ESL, responding to the research
question:
What dimensions constitute teacher efficacy for teaching students who
have ESL?
44
Study 3 of the research explores the influence of efficacy beliefs on
expected teaching strategies used for teaching students who have ESL,
responding to the research question:
How confident are teachers in their chosen strategies for working with
students who are ESL?
The following chapter will describe methodological considerations
related to the current research.
45
CHAPTER 3 Methodological Considerations
In this chapter methodological considerations pertinent to the research
are described. Included are matters related to choosing a representative sample.
Next, the strategies used to enhance the reliability and validity of the finding
are discussed. This chapter also describes the rationale for employing a
qualitative research methodology in Studies 1 and 3 and a quantitative
methodology for Study 2 of the research program. An overview of the data
analysis techniques performed for each study are briefly summarised followed
by a delineation of the principal research questions that comprised the three
studies.
It may be recalled that the research questions for the research are as
follows:
Study 1: How do teachers understand the term, ESL?
What sources of efficacy information are used to teach students
who have ESL?
What contextual factors are taken into account when teaching
students who have ESL?
Study 2: What dimensions constitute teacher efficacy for teaching
students who have ESL?
Study 3: How confident are teachers in their chosen strategies for
working with students who have ESL?
Study 1 utilises focus group interviews as the data collection
methodology, Study 2 utilises a researcher generated survey and Study 3
utilises written, hypothetical teaching scenarios. Studies 1 and 3 utilised
qualitative measures and Study 2 utilised a quantitative measures. Issues related
to methodology for the three studies will be discussed further in this chapter.
An initial consideration for conducting research is sampling, which will be
discussed next.
46
Sampling Issues
Participants in the research were primary school preservice teachers or
primary school inservice teachers. For the current research, primary school
teacher refers to teachers who are teaching (or training to teach) students from
kindergarten through to Year 7 (approximately ages 5 to 13) and who have not
taken further training as a specialist in teaching ESL. This description of the
participants does not exclude, however, any inservice or further courses
teachers may have taken as a matter of professional development, whether these
courses were taken as part of a university degree or participation in
workshops/seminars for teaching students who have ESL.
Inservice teachers in the current research are described as qualified and
registered teachers currently working in primary classrooms in schools.
Preservice teachers are described as university students in a Faculty of
Education in a Queensland university. Preservice teachers had completed at
least one field experience placement in a school as part of their teacher
preparation and as a condition for participation in the research. Field experience
practicum in schools for these students runs over a 4-week period. The reason
for this condition was that without some personal classroom experience as a
teacher (albeit a teacher-in-training) preservice teachers would have only theory
from which to draw for their responses to research questions. Field experience
placements provide scope for preservice teachers to connect theory to practical
classroom application. The use of these two sample groupings was consistent
across all three studies of this research.
It is recognised that the possibility of limitations in regards to recruiting
participants; therefore, it is important to consider what kind of sampling
techniques should be used in any given study. Purposive sampling techniques
were used in the research to define the sample and to place a control on the
possibility of gaining highly erratic data (Hansen & Hauser, 1971). Sampling
techniques for each of the studies are described below.
47
Sampling for Study 1
Focus group methodology was used to explore teachers’ perceptions
about the term “ESL” as well as to explore teachers’ efficacy in relation to
teaching ESL students in response to the three research questions for Study 1:
How do teachers understand the term, ESL? What sources of efficacy
information are used to teach students who have ESL? and What contextual
factors are taken into account when teaching students who have ESL?
It was proposed at the beginning of the study that two to four focus
group interviews for each participating group of teachers would be conducted.
Therefore, there would be two to four focus groups with both preservice
teachers and inservice teachers. A general guide is to continue conducting focus
groups until little more information can be gathered and the moderator of the
focus groups can predict what will be said in the next group (Krueger, 1994;
Morgan, 1988). There is no consensus on how many participants should
comprise each focus group. Numbers range from 6 to 12 participants and as few
as three (Morgan, 1988). In the current study, practical constraints, such as the
fact that participants were either busy with the requirements of course studies
(assignment due dates, studying for exams) or busy with duties such as class
teaching limited the number of each group towards the lower numbers (3-6) of
participants.
Preservice Teachers: The researcher was granted permission to canvas
undergraduate Bachelor of Education students in one unit of study at a Faculty
of Education in a Queensland university. An invitation to participate was sent
via an email attachment to students in the unit by the unit coordinator. The
email requested volunteers for the study, detailed the format and nature of the
study, provided information with regards to ethical clearance from the
university ethics committee to conduct the research and assured participants of
anonymity throughout their participation in the research. Two hundred and
fifty-three students were enrolled in the targeted undergraduate unit of study; 17
(3 male and 14 female) students agreed to participate in the focus groups (a
participation rate of 7%). Five focus groups were conducted with four
48
participants in the first three groups, three in one of the focus groups and
initially three in a fifth group, although one participant left half-way through,
leaving only two preservice teachers in this focus group. With regards to the
preservice teacher participants, 18 % stated that they had some training to teach
students who have ESL through their university course work; however, 59%
stated that they had taught students who had ESL during their field experience
placements.
Inservice Teachers: Inservice teachers were recruited via a snow-balling
technique whereby three primary school teachers were invited to participate in a
group interview and these invitations were extended to other teachers. In all, 9
teachers (1male and 8 female) participated in the group interviews. Three focus
groups were conducted with inservice teachers with three participants attending
each. One participant in the second focus group attended via telephone
conferencing. Fifty-seven (57) % of inservice teachers claimed to have had
some training to teach students who have ESL through workshops and/or by
attending seminars; 86% claimed that they had taught or were presently
teaching students who are ESL.
A difficulty with focus groups is having people not attend after having
initially expressing an interest (Morgan, 1988). As an example to illustrate this
for the current research, the researcher had made arrangement for eight people
to attend each of the preservice teacher focus groups but only half that number
actually attended. For the inservice teacher focus groups, the research initially
had commitments from six people for each group with only half that number
actually attending.
The researcher acted as facilitator for the focus groups. One reason for
this arrangement was the facilitators’s familiarity with the subject matter
(Morgan, 1988). The researcher/facilitator is a primary school trained teacher
who has specialist training as an ESL teacher. The researcher acknowledges
that there is a potential for bias to occur through this method; however, a semi-
structured interview guide was used, with the same list of questions prepared
for use in all interviews as a way to minimise bias.
49
The focus group questions will be described further in this chapter in the
discussion of the measurement issues. A pilot test was conducted to determine
participant understanding of the questions and to clarify procedures for the
group discussion. The focus group began with the researcher introducing
herself, the topic and by outlining the group rules and procedures. During initial
contact, participants had been informed that the focus group would be audio-
taped but upon attendance were once again reminded that they were being
audio-taped. They were assured of the confidentiality of the information
gathered and of their anonymity in attending. It was explained to participants
that their participation was voluntary and that they could pull out of the focus
group at any time without penalty.
Sampling for Study 2
Study 2 of the research was conducted through the completion of a
researcher-generated survey, Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for Teaching
ESL Learners (a copy of the survey is found in Appendix B, p181), to examine
a four-factor model of teacher efficacy in association with contextual
considerations related to teaching students who have ESL in response to the
research question for Study 2: What dimensions constitute teacher efficacy for
teaching students who have ESL?
Data in Study 2 were analysed through factor analysis. There is little
agreement with regards to sample size when conducting factor analysis. Pett,
Lackey and Sullivan (2003) suggested that the number of subjects needed for a
study will depend on the number of items that are initially included in the
measure developed. Ratios of subjects to variable range from as low as 2:1 to as
high as 20:1 (Kline, 1994). The general suggestion is to have a range of 10 to
15 subjects per initial item (Kline, 1994; Norman & Streiner, 1997; Pett et al.,
2003), with 10 subjects per item tending toward the norm. Kline (1994)
recommended that with data that has a clear factor structure, a sample of 100-
200 is sufficient. Tabachnick and Fidell (2001) recommended having at least
300 cases for factor analysis. However, Pett et al. (2003) pointed out that the
number of subjects used may depend on availability.
50
In the present study, two hundred and fifty surveys were delivered to
preservice teachers in an undergraduate teaching program; 211 completed
surveys were returned (a return rate of 88%). Seventy-five surveys were
delivered to inservice teachers currently employed as primary school teachers;
39 completed surveys were returned (a return rate of 50%). In total of 250
questionnaires were completed and analysed. This sample size fits within the
parameters of subjects needed as suggested from the literature as somewhere
between 200 and 300 participants for the study. A further discussion of the
methodology for Study 2 is described in Chapter 4 of this thesis.
Descriptive statistics for preservice teachers in Study 2 and Study 3 are
presented in Table 3.1. Participant numbers and percentages are reported for
gender, age, whether the subject has had training to teach ESL students,
whether the subject has already taught ESL students, whether the participant
had studied a language other than English and how long the participant had
been overseas in a non-English speaking country.
Table 3.1 Summary Statistics for the Demographic Variables of Preservice Teachers Variable Categories n % Gender Male 53 25 Female 158 75 Age 18-25yrs 144 68 26-33yrs 36 17
34-42yrs 21 10 43-48yrs 7 3
>49yrs 3 1
Training Yes 52 20 No 159 80 Have taught Yes 67 27 No 144 73 Studied LOTE Yes 135 64 No 76 36 Visit non-English 0 (never) 110 52
51
Country 0-1week 32 15 2-4weeks 28 13 5-6weeks 22 10 >7weeks 19 9
Table 3.1 indicates that there were more participants between the ages
of 18 to 25 (68%) than all the other age group combined but that is not
surprising in a university setting where the overall demographics for primary
school trainees are within this age bracket. The majority of participants (52%)
had never been to a non-English speaking country; 80% indicated that they had
not received any training to teach students who have ESL while 27% claimed
that they had taught ESL students while on their field experience placements.
Table 3.2 describes the demographics for the inservice teachers.
Table 3.2
Summary Statistics for the Demographic Variables of Inservice Teachers
Variable Categories n % Gender Male 4 10 Female 35 90 Age 18-25yrs 2 5 26-33yrs 16 41
34-42yrs 7 17
43-48yrs 10 25 >49yrs 4 10
Training Yes 12 30 No 27 69 Have taught Yes 33 84 No 6 16 Studied LOTE Yes 14 35 No 25 65 Visit non-English 0 (never) 16 41 Country 0-1week 5 12 2-4weeks 9 23 5-6weeks 7 18 >7weeks 2 5
52
Despite a lower response rate than desired, it can be seen from Tables
3.1 and 3.2 that the sample population resembles the demographic composition
of the teaching population, with respect to gender, in Australia during 2006,
particularly the preservice group. According to the Australian Bureau of
Statistics (2007), 75% of primary school teachers currently employed are
female and this was reflected in the current research where 75% of preservice
teachers and 90% of inservice teachers were female.
Sampling for Study 3
In Study 3, fifty (n=50) preservice teachers (13 male and 37 female) and
17 (n=17) inservice teachers (1 male and 16 female) volunteered to continue
with the research by responding to four hypothetical teaching scenarios that
were attached to the questionnaire from Study 2 in response to the research
question: How confident are teachers in their chosen teaching strategies for
working with students who have ESL? The purpose of Study 3 was to examine
how teacher efficacy influences teaching strategies to accommodate learning
for students who have ESL. Responses to the hypothetical teaching scenarios
were collected at the time the questionnaires were collected for Study 2.
Fifty (n=50) preservice teachers volunteered to complete the teaching
scenarios as an in-class discussion. Preservice teachers in this class who did not
want to participate were given the option of being excused; however, none of
the students chose to leave. Participants formed four discussion groups (4 in
two groups, 5 in two groups) and responded to each of the hypothetical
teaching scenarios as a group. One member of each group acted as scribe,
jotting down the main points of the discussions which were then returned to the
researcher for analysis. Two of these groups were also audio-taped. These tapes
were then transcribed by the researcher for analysis.
Eight (n=8) inservice teachers from state schools completed written
responses to the hypothetical teaching. Their responses were returned with their
completed surveys from Study 2. Nine (n=9) inservice teachers who had been
contacted at a small catholic school for Study 2 completed written responses to
the hypothetical teaching scenarios. Responses from inservice teachers at the
53
catholic school (as part of the questionnaire for Study 2) were collected by the
researcher from the school one week after distribution of the questionnaires.
Seventeen (n=17) inservice teachers completed written responses to the
hypothetical teaching scenarios. In total, 67 (n=67) teachers participated in
Study 3.
Measurement Issues
The current research utilised both qualitative and quantitative
methodologies. Important to consider in research is the reliability and validity
of the measurement instruments and the data for both qualitative and
quantitative research. These issues are discussed below for each of the three
studies of the research.
Qualitative Research
Study 1 and Study 3 were conducted using qualitative methodology. The
following section briefly describes these studies.
Study 1
The purpose of study 1 was to explore the association between the
sources of efficacy beliefs and contextual considerations in relation to teaching
students who have ESL. Various steps were taken to ensure the finding from
the qualitative data were reliable and valid. To prepare for the focus groups
conducted in Study 1, the researcher wrote a set of statements that would be
addressed. A plan of how the information would be obtained, who the targeted
participants for the study would be and resources required to conduct the focus
groups were detailed. Specific focus group questions were then generated.
Focus group questions generated for the research were examined with three
independent experienced focus group researchers. The focus questions used in
Study 1 were:
1. How would you describe ESL students?
2. How confident do you feel about teaching students who have ESL?
3. Where do you believe your confidence to teach these students comes
from?
54
4. How confident are you that you can take students’ cultural
backgrounds into consideration when teaching ESL students?
A pilot focus group was conducted with preservice teachers to
determine whether the focus group questions were easily understood by
participants and whether the questions produced adequate data for answering
Study 1’s principal research questions. The focus groups were audio-taped with
participants’ consent. The data were later transcribed and analysed in relation to
the predetermined codes for the four sources of efficacy information (mastery
experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological arousal)
and the four contextual considerations (cognitive load, language load, learning
load and culture load) for teaching students who have ESL (Table 3.3).
Table 3.3
Coding Structure for Study 1 Variable Categories Mastery Experience actual, past personal experience self-perceptions of success or failure at the task Vicarious Experience behaviour at the task modelled by someone else degree to which individual identifies with model Verbal Persuasion performance feedback – i.e. a pep talk. general talk, viewing videos/other media Physiological Arousal feelings of confidence / lack of confidence Cognitive Load literacy environment at home/school level of first language proficiency Language Load amount of academic talk in the classroom teacher expectations Learning Load classroom activities content of lesson Culture Load cultural knowledge of new environment group identification parental expectations _________________________________________________________________________
Responses were coded in an a priori coding method. A codebook was
complied that contained each unique idea or concept from the responses. In
some instances responses contained multiple concepts and were, therefore,
55
assigned multiple codes. For example, 81% of responses indicated that mastery
experiences were influential in efficacy to teach students who have ESL as well
as 73% indicating that vicarious experiences were influential. Coded responses
were assigned to each thematic category and subcategories. Because of the
small number of participants, coding was hand-done rather than entered on a
statistical tool such as SPSS. Examination of participants’ responses confirmed
that the focus group questions were suitably worded and that they provided
sufficient detail to address the principal questions examined in Study 1. Further
information on the data collection and analysis process is given in Chapter 4.
Study 3
Study 3 also utilised a qualitative methodology. In study 3, four
hypothetical teaching scenarios were developed from the data from Study 1 and
from the literature to explore how teachers’ efficacy in relation to teaching
students who have ESL influence their teaching strategies (the final phase of
the cyclical model). An example of a hypothetical teaching scenario was:
A new student in your Grade 6 class has studied English-as-a-foreign
language in his home country. He can communicate in English at a
fundamental level but is reluctant to do so because there has been some
taunting by his classmates about his ‘funny’ accent. He has befriended
another student in the class from his home country and they tend to keep
mostly to themselves, speaking only their home language when together,
both in class and outdoors. When you try to engage this student in
learning tasks he complains that he doesn’t understand the work, that
it’s too difficult. The new student’s parents are well-educated but do not
speak English well. Nevertheless, they are ambitious for their son to
succeed in school.
The question asked of participants was:
Please describe what you would do in this situation and briefly explain
why you would take the action described.
Analysis of data collected in response to the hypothetical teaching
scenarios were conducted as per the predetermined codes identified in Study 1
56
through the emerging themes and sub-themes provided in participants’
responses. Identified themes derived from responses to the hypothetical
teaching scenarios were compared with themes that emerged in Study 1.
Important to the research were teachers’ accounts of contextual considerations
(cognitive load, language load, learning load and culture load) in association
with their efficacy in choosing particular teaching strategies for working with
students who have ESL. Further details of data collection and analysis for this
study are provided in Chapter 6.
A criticism of qualitative methodology is the subjective nature of data
analysis in that the researcher’s biases may distort the findings (Borg & Gall,
1983). However, it must be noted that all researchers bring their own
backgrounds to the field in the shape of experiences and knowledge. For
example, the present researcher has worked in the field of ESL for over ten
years and having done so has needed to engage in critical reflection of self in
relation to the research in order to minimise bias as much as humanly possible.
A further criticism of qualitative research is the difficulty with
replicability (Burns, 2001). Replicability is concerned with the conundrum that
if someone else did the research, would the results be the same? This question
is a difficult one to answer because one cannot control all the variables that go
into making a final research project. Certainly with qualitative research
different researchers may make different analytical decisions; however, Borg
and Gall (1983) suggest that if the researcher states the research perspective and
can justify analytical decisions the difficulty with replicabilty can be reduced.
There is an implicit acceptance with qualitative research of the natural scheme
of things that can highlight subtle differences in behaviour. Behaviour is
recognised as being dynamic, situational, social and contextual (Burns, 2000;
Johnson & Christensen, 2004; Robson, 1993).
Quantitative Research
Study 2 was conducted using a researcher-generated survey in response
to the research question: What dimensions constitute teacher efficacy for
57
teaching student who have ESL? The following section briefly describes the
methodology for Study 2.
Study 2
It was decided at the outset of the research that a factor analysis would
be conducted in Study 2 to determine the underlying dimensions of the
construct of teacher efficacy in relation to teaching students who have ESL.
Factor analysis is a statistical variable reduction procedure, which extracts a
small number of latent variables from a larger set of observed variables that
accounts for correlations occurring at and/or between scale level responses and
that detects and evaluates unobservable patterns (Santos & Clegg, 1999). SPSS
12.0.1 for Windows was utilised as the statistical tool for a factor analysis of the
data.
Item Development
Items for the questionnaire were developed from data gathered in Study
1 and from the literature. Items were formatted similarly to those traditionally
found on teacher efficacy scales, which use a Likert-type measure with
generally a measure from 1=strongly disagree to 6=strongly agree. For example,
a question from the Gibson and Dembo (1984) Teacher Efficacy Scale reads:
1. When a student does better than usual, many times it is because I exerted a 1 2 3 4 5 6 little more effort. (p.581)
Scales used by Woolfolk and Hoy (1990) and Guskey and Passaro (1994) also
utilised a 6-point Likert-type measure (ranging from 1=not at all to 6=a great
deal) and this format is generally used in most teacher efficacy instruments.
Bandura (2001) has devised a new set of scales of teacher efficacy with
strengths of efficacy beliefs on a 9-point scale; however, the 6-point Likert-type
scale is most usually found in the research and that was the scale measure used
for the current research. The measure Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for
Teaching ESL Learners also used a 6-pint Liker-type measure as is consistent
with most teacher efficacy scales. A sample item from the measure reads as
follows:
58
How much are you able to adjust your lessons to meet the needs of individual 1 2 3 4 5 6 individual ESL students in your class?
The wording of the questions took into consideration concerns of the
Dembo and Gibson (1984) scale, as highlighted by Guskey and Passaro (1994),
in regards to the positive/negative descriptions of items and internal/external
locus of control. All items on the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for
Teaching ESL Learners had a referent to the domain of teaching students who
have ESL to underscore the specific context of this study. The same
questionnaire was utilised for both the preservice teacher participants and the
inservice teacher participants; this was deemed to be appropriate because the
measure of teacher efficacy seeks to address individual operative capabilities at
the present time (Bandura, 2001). Preservice teachers, who have taught in a
classroom, while not as experienced as employed teachers, have personal
information beyond teaching theory through their field experience placements
from which to draw in reflecting upon their capabilities in the specific domain
of teaching students who have ESL; however, it is expected that inservice
teachers, who are more experienced, are better equipped to take into
consideration the complexities of teaching students who have ESL.
Important to scale development are measures of reliability and validity.
Reliability is concerned with the consistency of a variable (Burns, 2001). Test-
retest, a measure of external reliability, (Bryman & Cramer, 2004) is concerned
with stability of item responses over time. A shortcoming to test-retest is the
time between tests (e.g. how much time between testing is enough?). Generally
a 2-week time frame is accepted; however, within such a timeframe there is a
possibility that respondents’ standing in regards to the construct may have
changed due to unforseen circumstances or respondents could rely on memory
from time 1 to time 2 of testing.
When piloting the questionnaire, there was a time lag of three weeks
between the first issuing of the survey to the sample of 60 participants and the
second issuing of the survey. This timeframe was due to the test being delivered
59
at the end of semester for preservice teachers. There was a concern that the
same group of students would not be contactable in the time period elapsing
from one semester to another. While this number of participants is small, the
purpose of the procedure was to test the reliability of items over a short period
of time. Upon review of the results from the pilot test, refinements were made
to the survey instrument wherein 2 items were dropped (i.e. To what extent can
you control whether or not there is inclusion of students who have ESL in state
wide testing in your classroom? and How much can you do to ensure that
students who have ESL are learning the same content as non-ESL student in
your class?) because the wording of the items rendered them redundant in
relation to other items on the measure and/or feedback from participants
indicated that they were confused by the wording of the items (indicated by a
question mark “?” beside the item) or a sufficient number did not respond to the
item. Results indicated a high degree of agreement between the first testing and
the second testing which allowed for factor analysis to be conducted.
Exploratory Factor Analysis
Exploratory factor analysis was conducted through a Principal
Component Analysis (PCA) framework. PCA seeks a linear combination of
variables such that the maximum variance is extracted from the variables. A
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) Measure of Sampling Adequacy and a Bartlett’s
Test of Sphericity were conducted through SPSS 12.0.1 for Windows to
determine if the data were suitable for factor analysis. Sampling adequacy
measured by the KMO predicts if data are likely to factor well based on
correlations or partial correlation measures (Hutchenson & Sofroniou, 1999).
Values vary between 0 and 1, where values closer to 1 are better. A value of 0.6
is suggested as a minimum as useful for factor analysis. In the current research,
an overall value of .93 was obtained, which supports a factor analysis.
Analyses were conducted utilising the SPSS computer program. An
initial PCA was conducted using both orthogonal (VARIMAX) and oblique
(OBLIMIN) rotations. Fabrigar, Wegener, MacCallum and Strahen (1999)
suggested that oblique rotations produce a better estimate of the true factors and
60
a better simple structure than orthogonal rotation. With oblique rotation, the
new axes are free to take any position in the factoral space. The degree of
correlation allowed amongst factors is small because two highly correlated
factors are better interpreted as only one factor (Abdi, 2006). Simplifying the
data makes interpretation easier and more reliable in that it is easier to replicate
with different data samples. Orthogonal rotation maximises the variance of the
squared loading of a factor on all thee variables in a factor matrix and assumes
that the factors are at right angles to each other, that is, they are not correlated
(Fabrigar, Wegener, MacCallum, & Strahan, 1999), making it easy to identify
each variable on a single factor. It is suggested that if there are similar
correlations of variables in the results for the orthogonal and oblique rotations,
the data are suitable for factor analysis. However, while the orthogonal and
oblique solutions were very similar in the current research, the oblique solution
was judged to be more appropriate as the pattern matrices found using oblique
rotation are more interpretable that the orthogonal rotation solution with fewer
variables loading significantly on more than one variable.
A frequent use of factor analysis is found in test construction (Popham
& Sirotnik, 1973). Development of the survey items for the current study
followed guidelines for developing self-efficacy scales (Bandura, 2001; Pajares,
Hartley, & Valiante, 2001) wherein it is recommended to pretest the items and
discard those that are ambiguous, that do not differentiate amongst respondents
and where most people are checking the same response point. Efficacy scales
should have as a minimum face validity in that items on the scale should
measure what they purport to measure which, in the current research, was
teachers’ perceived capabilities to produce given attainments at teaching
students who have ESL. While the four-factor model (Brouwers & Tomic, 2003)
was initially proposed for the research, a three-factor solution and a two-factor
solution were also examined as a way to shed some light on the confusion over
the make-up of the construct of teacher efficacy (Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990;
Guskey & Passaro, 1994; Soodak & Podell, 1996).
61
A criticism of quantitative methodology is that humans are complex
beings who respond to environmental factors in a variety of ways. A person
may react passively to their environment, or actively, and each will respond
with varying perceptions and interpretations. Researchers may make
misassumptions from the data “…that facts are true and the same for all people
all the time” (Burns, 2000). However, a strength of quantitative methodology is
in its precision and control. Research control is gained through sampling and
design and through quantitative and reliable measures using instruments that
utilise such things as closed-ended items, rating scales and behavioural
responses.
Using Qualitative and Quantitative Methodology: Tashakkori and Teddlie
(2003) describe the advantage of a mixed method approach in that it allows the
research to “…simultaneously answer confirmatory and exploratory questions,
and therefore verify and generate theory in the same study” (p. 15). A major
advantage to using both quantitative and qualitative methodology is that the
task of integration of methodology occurs from the beginning of the research
project and continues through to the end. With a mixed methodology, a
synthesis of data collection can occur, which helps to establish internal
reliability. When different results are compared and contrasted, a greater
confidence in the data is obtained over results gathered from one method alone
(Brewer & Hunter, 1989; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003).
In summary, this chapter has presented important sampling and
methodological considerations for the current research. In particular, issues
relating to sampling selection and strategies were described as was a rationale
for the research methods utilised for the three studies. In the following chapter,
the first study of the research is detailed.
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CHAPTER 4 Study 1
Phase one of the modified cyclical model of teacher efficacy was
explored in Study 1 of the research addressing the principle research questions:
(1) How do teachers understand the term, ESL? (2) What sources of efficacy
information guide teachers in relation to teaching students who have ESL? and
(3) What contextual factors are taken into account when teaching student who
are ESL? This chapter presents a brief rationale for conducting focus groups. In
addition, before commencing the focus groups, participants completed a small
survey designed to elicit teachers’ efficacy in relation to teaching ESL students.
Results of this small survey and data analysis of the focus groups will be
described.
Rationale for Conducting Focus Groups
The purpose of collecting qualitative data in Study 1 is two-fold. First,
the study seeks to address the lack of published research concerning teachers’
efficacy to teach students who have ESL. While there is much information on
programs that teachers can use to teach these students (Dare & Polias, 2001;
Gibbons, 1991; Halliwell, 1998) there is a dearth of information about how
confident teachers are in using these resources to effectively teach students who
have ESL. Indeed, the literature suggests that teachers do not feel confident in
their abilities to teach these students.
Focus group discussions were utilised in Study 1 to determine the
sources of teachers’ efficacy information in relation to teaching students who
have ESL. As previously discussed, the four sources of efficacy information are:
mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion and
physiological arousal. Determining sources of efficacy information provides a
valuable insight into teachers’ level of engagement at a teaching task in that the
more informed teachers are about the task the more likely they are to engage in
it in a meaningful way.
63
Secondly, it is important to examine teachers’ perceptions of the term,
ESL. Understanding the term includes having an idea of the dimensions for
learning an ESL student faces in a regular classroom. Therefore, this study
explores whether teachers take into consideration contextual features (cognitive
load, language load, learning load and culture load) associated with their
understanding of who ESL students are. Such understanding will help to
identify where possible gaps in teaching may be occurring in relation to these
students as without an awareness of contextual considerations in relation to the
learning for these students, effective teaching can be hindered. To that end,
focus groups were conducted to determine if teachers attend to the contextual
considerations associated with students who have ESL.
Focus groups facilitate a social construction of meaning where shared
frames of references are likely to be revealed through the social interactions of
group discussions (Gibbs, 1997). With focus groups, participants can reflect on
their own ideas through learning about the thoughts of others. Data from the
present study will serve to establish greater clarity as to teachers’ understanding
of students who have ESL as well as insights into teachers’ perceptions of the
contextual dimensions considered when teaching these students. Schwandt
(2000) suggested that “…we are self-interpreting beings [and] it is language
that constitutes that being” (p.198). Through focus groups participants have the
opportunity to compare and contrast elements of the discussion put forward by
other group members as a way to develop deeper meanings for themselves and
so further the discussion.
Method
Participants
In Study 1, 17 (n=17) preservice teachers (3 male and 14 female) and 9
inservice teachers (1 male and 8 female) participated in the focus groups,
making a total of 26 participants. Preservice teachers were recruited from a
Faculty of Education in a large university in Queensland. Inservice teachers
were recruited from Queensland schools. A total of 8 focus groups were
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conducted. Further details on the selection of the sample were presented in
Chapter 3.
Fifty-three percent (53) % (n=9) of the preservice teachers were in their
second year of study, 23% (n=4) in their third year, 18% (n=3) in fourth year
and one participant was in her fifth year of teacher preparation, part-time. The
majority of inservice teachers had been teaching for more than 21 years (56%)
(n=5), 33% (n=3) had been teaching between 5 and 9 years and one had been
teaching for 19 years. More inservice teachers (56%) (n=5) had some training
to teach students who have ESL compared with the preservice teachers (18%)
(n=3). Fifty-nine percent (59) % (n=10) of the preservice teachers claim to
have taught ESL students during their field experience placement; 89% (n=9) of
inservice teachers claimed to have taught students who have ESL as regular
students in their classes.
Procedure
Ethical approval to conduct the research was granted by the university’s
ethics committee. The researcher liaised with a unit coordinator at the
university where the study was conducted to discuss the research project. A
copy of the research information sheet outlining the program was sent to the
unit coordinator to be included as an attachment to an email sent out to students
with an invitation to participate in the study (see Appendix A). The information
sheet detailed the purpose and nature of the research, the time and venue for the
focus group discussions, the conditions of the focus group and how the
information was going to be used and stored. The information sheet also clearly
stated that participants’ involvement was voluntary and they that could
withdraw from the study at any time.
The focus groups were set out to be conducted for one hour each. At the
commencement of the proceedings, the researcher briefly introduced herself to
the group, reiterated the nature and aims of the study, issues of confidentiality
and how the focus group information was going to be used and stored.
Participants were then asked to complete a small survey, designed to elicit their
information about their confidence in teaching students who have ESL. At the
65
same time a range of demographic and background information were gathered
such as age, gender, training to teach students who have ESL and whether or
not participants had taught students who have ESL. It should be noted that
‘training to teach students who have ESL’ in each of the three studies includes
course work, inservice workshops or other professional development
workshops/seminars. It does not include formal training to become an ESL
teacher.
In addition, five statements were posed in relation to teaching ESL students,
asking participants to respond on a 6-point Likert type scale, ranging from
1=strongly disagree to 6=strongly agree. The five statements were:
1. I feel certain that my teaching strategies would address ESL students’
understanding of concepts. 2. I feel certain that my classroom language speaking/listening/reading/
writing) would address ESL students’ needs. 3. I feel confident that learning outcomes in my class would be met by
ESL students in my class.
4. I feel confident that I would take ESL students’ cultural backgrounds into consideration when preparing lessons.
5. I feel certain that my classroom management would be sufficient for
ESL students in my class.
Results
Due to the small sample size, frequency analysis for the responses to the
five above statements were calculated to get an overall sense of participants’
efficacy on the research topic utilising the computer program SPSS 12.0.1 for
Windows (Table 4.1).
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Table 4.1
Mean and Standard Deviations for Preservice and Inservice Teachers’ Responses to Short Questionnaire – Study 1 ________________________________________________________________ Preservice Inservice _____________ ______________ N Mean SD N Mean SD ________________________________________________________________ Teaching Strategies 17 4.46 1.37 9 5.22 .833 Classroom Language 17 4.76 1.14 9 5.22 .666 Learning Outcomes 17 4.52 1.12 9 5.00 .707 Cultural Background 17 5.52 .62 9 5.77 .440 Classroom Management 17 4.52 .71 9 5.55 .527 ________________________________________________________________
Overall, inservice teachers in Study 1 expressed higher efficacy in
relation to the above questions than did the preservice teachers. For example,
47% of preservice teachers agreed or strongly agreed that their teaching
strategies would address ESL students’ understanding of concepts compared
with 77% of inservice teachers; 58% of preservice teachers agreed or strongly
agreed that their classroom language would address students’ needs compared
with 89% of inservice teachers; 59% of preservice teachers agreed or strongly
agreed that the learning outcomes they set would be met by students compared
with 78% of inservice teachers; 94% preservice teachers agreed or strongly
agreed that they would take students’ cultural backgrounds into consideration
when comparing lessons compared with 100% of inservice teachers; and 52%
of preservice teachers agreed or strongly agreed that their classroom
management strategies would be sufficient compared with 100% of inservice
teachers. None of the inservice teacher participants for this study ranked
themselves as ‘disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’ to any of the five questions
posed, indicating high efficacy in relation to the questions asked.
While the sample size was small, there appeared to be a distinct trend to
suggest that inservice teachers expressed higher efficacy beliefs overall about
teaching students who have ESL than did preservice teachers. One reason for
this might be the differing amounts of teaching experience for each group.
Preservice teachers had limited experience at formally teaching while the
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average time teaching for the inservice teacher participants in the study was 10
years. Preservice teachers, while having completed a practicum in schools and
so had limited teaching experience, relied on the knowledge they gain through
their preservice coursework expressed confidence to teach students who have
ESL.
Analysis Procedures for Focus Groups
Focus groups were conducted with participants responding to open-
ended questions designed to gather information in regards to sources of efficacy
information in relation to contextual considerations for teaching students who
have ESL. Probes were used such as “Could you explain that a bit more?” to
clarify responses and/or elicit more information. Focus group interviews were
audio-taped to ensure accuracy in recording participant responses. The
researcher also took written notes during the interview which were transcribed
directly upon completion of the interviews as additional data while the
interview was still fresh in memory. Making notes at the end of the interview
helps to avoid bias that might occur with hindsight created by a time lag
(Morgan, 1988).
Transcribed notes from the audiotapes and written notes taken at the
time of the interviews were margin coded to identify themes, issues and topics
(Bertrand, Brown & Ward, 1992), which were then assembled into categories
through a ‘scissor and sort’ technique (Morgan, 1988). The emerging themes
and sub-themes were colour-coded where the aim was “…to produce concepts
that seem to fit the data” (Strauss, 1987, p. 28). Coding was expected to initiate
the formation of connections between the interactional realm (teachers, ESL
students and others in the environment) and the ESL contextual conditions. The
37 coding categories derived from the focus group interviews are described in
Table 4.2. The most frequent variable mentioned as a source of efficacy
information was mastery experience 67% with a combination of verbal
persuasion/ vicarious experience the next most frequent source of efficacy
information 43%. Overall, cultural load at 65% and language load at 59% were
the most often mentioned contextual consideration participants gave in relation
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to their efficacy to teach students who have ESL. An additional category not
mentioned as part of the cyclical model of teacher efficacy (p.46) was
developed in relation to the overarching question asked of focus group
participants: Who would you describe as an ESL learner? Eight main themes
emerged including: someone who doe not speak English as a first language,
someone whose parents do not speak English and someone from a different
cultural background to Australians.
Table 4.2
Themes from Focus Group Interview Responses Identifying ESL - does not speak English as a first language - parents do not speak English at home - have a different cultural background - are a multilingual speaker - born overseas - are a refugee - have a different nationality to Australian - have difficulty (grammar/syntax) with English
Mastery Experiences Vicarious Experiences - personal contact teaching ESL - university studies about ESL - personal history as ESL student - practicum in schools - relationships (friends – ESL) - attending seminar/workshop - travel to non-English country - reading material/other media - conversations with others Verbal Persuasion Physiological Arousal - consersations with teachers/fellow - feel confident about teaching students/university lecturers - do not feel confident
Axial coding was conducted to build a ‘dense texture of relationships’
(Strauss, 1987) around the categories identified. Axial coding is done to relate
categories to sub-categories. In such an analysis, strategies, consequences or
conditions are identified in relation to each other and to categories and sub-
categories. Encoded data for each of the groupings were then compared with
data from the other groups and sorted into major themes connected with the
research. Identified and emerging themes were recorded in the written analysis.
Quotations from participant interviews were used to illustrate identified themes
and, where appropriate, are included in the results write-up.
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A general limitation of such data collection is that focus group
interviews generally occur outside the setting where social interactions typically
occur (Madriz, 2000). Behavioural information is limited to verbal
communications, body language and self-reports. These limitations may throw
doubt about the authenticity of focus group interactions; however, as Madriz
points out, the limitations of authenticity is also shared with participant
observations. There is never full certainty with participant observations that the
presence of the researcher has or has not altered the behaviour of those
observed.
Qualitative Results
Defining the Term ‘ESL’
The main purpose of Study 1 was to ascertain sources of efficacy
information (mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion,
physiological arousal), as identified as the first stage of the cyclical model of
teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998) in relation to contextual
considerations for teaching students who have ESL (see Meyer, 2000). In order
to ensure that participants understood the purpose of the research and as a way
to establish parameters of the discussion, an initial question was asked of each
participating group. The initial question was: Who would you describe as an
ESL learner?
Preservice Teachers: In response to the initial question for this study,
preservice teachers described students who have ESL as people who did not
have English spoken at home; whose parents spoke a language other than
English at home where the student may or may not speak the home language,
and included Australian Aboriginal students.
For example, students who have ESL were:
“…anyone that doesn’t speak English as their first language...could be
Aboriginal, Asian could be…well that’s about it really, that’s how I
interpret it”
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“…students who their first language is not English would be my main
ones or the students that may speak English but their parents at home
speak other languages”
“…an ESL student would be anyone who comes from a home
background where their parents speak another language. They [the
students] don’t necessarily have to speak it themselves…a lot of times
the parents speak it to the children and so they’re [the students] not
getting that immersion in the English language that an everyday
Australian kid would”
“…someone from a different cultural background and also non-English
speaking”
The above responses were from participants who described themselves
as native English language learners. They identified that both English language
proficiency and an awareness of different cultural backgrounds are major
considerations for identifying students who have ESL. However, these
participants did not go beyond these basic descriptions of students who have
ESL. In contrast, the following responses were from participants who grew up
in homes where English was not the only language spoken:
“…they’ve [ESL] grown up speaking it [another language] and then
having to come to school or society speaking English they’ve had to
then try to like use parts of their own language already to try to get use
to how English works”
“…some students who have ESL…would also be perhaps be
multilingual as well they would have a…national language, a dialect
and then they would also have like let’s say myself…would be maybe
Spanish…a dialect, a national language developed and the core would
be English because…that…would be taught in the…native country
where they were originally born…and both their parents may or may
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not be able to speak…English…one of the parents would speak a
different language of course…and they may or may not speak it
[English] at home”
The above two respondents described in more detail additional elements
that ESL students as barriers to learning, describing the process of using a
native language to learn English and the process of learning English from a
heritage of having learnt several languages, indicating an understanding of the
cognitive load and language load undertaken by students who have ESL. These
participants indicated that because they held mastery experiences in learning
additional languages to their native language they could empathise with
additional load students who have ESL had to cope with in school.
The last of the participants above described her background as ESL;
however, the first participant was not as clear on this matter. This participant
described his sister as once being [ESL] but not himself. Their father was a
migrant from Macedonia while their mother was an English-only speaking
Australian. This participant described that his sister had learnt Macedonian as
her first language but when she started school she stopped speaking
Macedonian and spoke only English. At first he said that she would be
classified as ESL as a child (from the definitions given by participants) but
because she now only speaks English he was left unsure if she was still ESL or
not.
“…my dad’s Macedonian…but I never learned the language at all
partially because he was trying to teach me the alphabet before I learnt
words…but my sister spoke fluent Macedonian before she could speak
English as like a small child but…now she doesn’t know any
Macedonian words so like I suppose yeah definition she would be
classified English-as-a-second language but now she only has English
as her only language so I don’t know how that works”
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This participant claimed to have never learnt Macedonian so did not
consider himself as being ESL; he felt no confusion about his own identity in
this matter only confusion about the status of his sister. The confusion may
have derived from the focus group’s description of [ESL] students. Indeed, they
could not as a group decide on a formal description of non-native English
language learners. This dilemma is consistent with research in this area as there
are a number of different ways to describe these learners (Byrnes, Kiger &
Manning, 1997; Cummins, 1997; Education Queensland, 2002; Langman, 2003;
Lee, 1996; Michell, 1999). Another participant also expressed some confusion
about what it meant to be ESL. His father had migrated to Australia from
Greece and had married an English-only speaking Australian. The participant
and his siblings learnt only English; yet, from the description developed by the
group, where students who have ESL are children of parents who speak English
and a language other than English in the home, he felt that he might also be
described as being [ESL]:
“…but I’ve never equated myself as being a non-English speaking
background even though I think I probably do fall into that category I
think in the broad definition. I’m not too sure and...so I don’t really
class myself as English-as-a-second language because my father never
taught us Greek even though I was around it a lot”
Describing students who have ESL seemed to be challenging for the
preservice teachers in this study. The following remark by a participant
indicated confusion about how to identify students who have ESL by
suggesting that they were:
“…maybe people with bad grammar…back in high school you used to
have …parents who hadn’t had a lot of education. They used to come to
ESL class…like they used to hate it but they’d come in because it’s
[poor grammar] affecting their English and Maths and everything else
that (does) with a lot of
reading”
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What is remarkable about this response it that the participant, and her
family, had migrated to Australia from China. Native English language learners
would have identified this participant as ESL because her English language
syntax and pronunciation in English were difficult to follow at times. The
participant had spent a great deal of her high school years in an ESL unit at
school in which, it seems, semi-literate adult English speaking Australians also
attended to finish their education. For this participant, ESL meant not having a
basic understanding of English grammar regardless of your first or second
language because that was her experience as an ESL student. It appeared that
she had difficulty differentiating between how to describe students who were
ESL and native English language learners who had difficulty with academic
English at the classroom level; however, in this study, this participant’s
particular confusion was an isolated one.
The focus for categorising the target group of students as ESL by the
participants in the focus groups lay with the view that these students were
essentially non-fluent English speakers so labelling them ESL may have created
more confusion than clearly describing who the students really are.
Inservice Teachers: Inservice teachers in this study described ESL
students in the same manner as did the preservice teachers in that English was
not ESL students’ native language and that ESL students may or may not have
been born in Australia.
“…they are in a native English speaking country…whether they are
here just on a summer program; it’s still a second language. Or if they
are refugees that have come here to Australia with their family or their
parents are studying here; it’s still their second language. They need to
get by; they need to speak one or more other language”
“…I can’t really describe them in general…they’re just so different
and…even looking at nationalities, they’ve different personalities within
the nationalities they represent so that’s…a hard question”
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“…we kind of tend to…some extent group students by their
nationality…on the basis that nationalities do definitely have certain
characteristics within the classroom…the general demeanour of the
Japanese students as compared to say Middle Eastern students is quite
different”
All inservice teachers in this study described themselves as native
English speaking Australians. An anomaly presented by the responses of the
inservice teachers was that they identified student characteristics by
nationalities. For example, inservice teachers described that Japanese students
are different to Middle Eastern students in their approach to learning and in
their classroom behaviour, with a preference shown for teaching Asian students.
There is much in the literature that warns against categorising students by
culture and/or ethnicity especially with regards to classroom behaviours
(Limbos & Geva, 2001; Penfield, 1987). Categorising students in this way may
lead to a segregation of students according to their ethnic origins, not an ideal
practice for an inclusive approach to education.
There was not a great deal of difference in the descriptions identifying
students who have ESL between the two groups of participants. The difference
was primarily in respect to the amount of contact each group had had working
with students who have ESL. Preservice teachers had more limited experience
in relation to teaching students and were more inclined to refer to their
university training to support their ideas. Inservice teachers’ recounts were
given in relation to having worked with various groups of students who were
ESL (i.e., considering the different national characteristics of students when
teaching) over the course of their teaching career.
Having participants develop their own descriptions of students who
have ESL at the beginning of the focus groups allowed them to work within
their own understandings of the concepts and through discussion within a group.
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Group discussions allowed participants to have their understanding further
developed in new and challenging ways.
Sources of Efficacy Information
Preservice Teachers: Preservice teachers generally expressed a belief
that either their overall teaching capabilities would serve them well for teaching
these students or they felt confident that they could access appropriate strategies
and resources to do the job.
“…it’s a task that I would have to certainly prepare, you know, I
wouldn’t say I’m trained to just walk in there and work with an ESL
teacher if there is one in the school and but certainly I would see about
what strategies and ESL books and so forth to make sure my class was
inclusive which is of the role to do”
“…I’d be confident like cause I’d be confident in myself. I just like to
think to myself well I’m a good teacher and I’m sure I can find any way
possible to meet the needs of every child in this classroom”
“…I feel fairly confident because I’m confident in my creativity and um
yeah and resourcefulness and networking skills. I think they’re really
what you would need to rely on”
The above three participants described acquiring new skills, gaining
access to books, doing research on teaching ESL students (vicarious
experiences) and contacting/networking with others as support for their
classroom teaching (verbal persuasion/vicarious experiences). They described
their abilities to get the needed support to do the job through vicarious means
rather than describing any previous experiences they already had at the job of
teaching through field experience placements even though each had previously
taught students who have ESL while on their field experience placements. The
majority source of efficacy information for preservice teachers was through
vicarious experiences.
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While vicarious experiences were a valuable source for preservice
teachers as a means to learn new teaching (Hagen et al., 1998) these
participants also had mastery experiences upon which to draw. However,
mastery experiences were described in a more global sense, “…I feel confident
I have the ability to acquire the necessary strategies…”; “…I’d be confident
like cause I’d be confident in myself”; “…I feel fairly confident because I’m
confident in my creativity”, rather than specifically in relation to teaching
students who have ESL.
Preservice teachers who identified themselves as ESL learners referred
to their own mastery experiences as non-native English language learners.
Having been through the experience, they described that they had a particular
insight into the process of teaching/learning with students who have ESL that
native English language learners did not:
“…I can relate my own experience to those…you know in the lectures. I
think I have more understanding than people maybe beside me [who are
not ESL students themselves]”
While describing mastery experiences in that this participant had gone through
the process of being a student who is ESL, the above response also indicate the
role of verbal persuasion through university lectures. This participant expresses
that she understood the lectures better than non-ESL students because of her
personal background.
The confidence of one participant in particular was tempered with the
realities she had experienced in the classroom while on her field experience
placement:
“…I was confident at first because I thought…as an ESL student myself
I should have my personal experience as something to fall back on…
and because I did diversity as one of the modules [at university]… I
guess as a teacher you probably try to find out as much as you can but I
don’t know in practice how much you can actually do or to cater to
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everybody I mean…is it realistic to actually put a lot of ESL…four or
five ESL students with everybody else”
This participant initially thought she could fall back on her own
experiences as an ESL student (mastery experience) to help her work with
students who have ESL. She had completed a module on teaching to diversity
(verbal persuasion/vicarious experiences) but this experience, her own
experience of being an [ESL] student (mastery experience) and her experience
of a field experience placement in a classroom which held [ESL] students
(vicarious/mastery experience) still left her in doubt about teaching students
who have ESL in mainstream classrooms. It may be that she has not yet
integrated similarities of the two situations; reconciling her efficacy beliefs
towards a more positive orientation as a teacher.
The second theme expressed by the participant in the second response:
“is it realistic to actually put a lot of ESL…four or five ESL students with
everybody else” was expressed by other preservice participants:
“I enjoyed teaching them [ESL students] but I yeah you know like um
just can’t get enough time just for one person and then there’s all these
other kids waiting for help as well and probably those kids [ESL]
almost get pushed in a corner. Sometimes it’s easier to teach everyone”
“…if I had a kid…who’s spoken and written English was extremely poor
you wouldn’t know where to start…I honestly would not know where to
start”
The low efficacy expressed by these preservice teachers appeared to
stem in the main part from their lack of experience in the classroom. These
preservice teachers were uncertain how one goes about teaching to diversity in
a mainstream classroom. One suggested that students might get ‘pushed in a
corner’ while a teacher worked with the other students in the class, while
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another preservice teacher simply did not know where to begin teaching
students who have ESL.
The two reasons most often stated in relation to expressing high efficacy
were having the ability to speak more than one language and having travelled to
a non-English speaking country, both a form of mastery experience. These
findings are consistent with the literature (Costa, McPhail, Smith, & Brisk,
2005; Cummins, 1997; Malin, 1990). It seems the more authentic the
experience, the greater impact it has on forming efficacy beliefs.
“…your own personal background gives you better insight and belief
that you can teach these students rather than somebody who’s Anglo-
Australian”
“…some Anglos or some Australian people who have been overseas
or…speak more than one language…I find they are more understanding
than everybody else that just speaks one [language]…if you’ve never
travelled overseas, you have never been in that situation where nobody
understand you, what it means”
Other preservice teachers expressed regret about their limitations in this area:
“…it’s a shame that so many of us…can only speak one language
because being bilingual or multilingual is a real gift and it’s a shame
we can’t model it. That’s what I would like to be able to do but of course
unless I go out and learn one [another language] I don’t know when I’d
have the time but I’d like to be able to do that make it real”
Preservice teacher participants also described a change in efficacy due
to the support offered either vicariously through observing the [ESL] teacher
work as described by the first participant below or through verbal persuasion
(the ESL support teacher explaining things) as is described by the following
participant. Having additional support from the [ESL] teacher appeared to have
helped these preservice teachers understand teaching students.
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“… I [volunteer] two hours every Tuesday morning in the Year 2 class
[with] the ESL students there so I sat in with the ESL teacher last week
to take a Year 2 class just to watch what she did and that was good”
“…I spent a half day... with my first prac with the ESL teacher and went
through what she did and the strategies and actually she explained quite
a lot of the politics and how to get help”
In contrast, one presevice teacher related that she followed the lead of
her supervising teacher who did not seem to make a special effort to teach
students who have ESL in the class and so she, the preservice teacher, did not
make an effort either. She described the ESL students as being quiet, so quiet in
fact that they appeared to have been overlooked:
“…we actually had students that…came from overseas and they were
very quiet. You never were quite sure whether they got it or not… but I
noticed that two or three of them…particularly these ones that come
from overseas – just dead quiet”
Receiving no encouragement from her supervising teacher to consider
the learning needs of these students from overseas that were so quiet in the
class, the preservice teacher did not do so either, an indication of poor vicarious
experiences and/or verbal persuasion. Further in the discussion the participant
completes this recount by stating:
“…Because I was so new at it [teaching], it didn’t occur to me that I
should have paid more attention to what they [ESL students] actually already
knew”
In this situation there was no verbal persuasion or vicarious support in
the particular area of teaching ESL in the classroom although there were ESL
students present. This preservice teacher repeatedly said that she did not give
the issue of teaching ESL students much thought because there was no
indication from her supervising teacher that this was an area to be considered.
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The preservice teacher seemed to have found solace in the fact that her teaching
approach was consistent with those of her fellow practicum teachers:
“…when I was doing my prac there was also two other Year Three
(practicum) students doing their block teaching and I thought they were
brilliant but now come to think of it they did exactly what I did. They
just prepared a lesson plan for the class, what they wanted to teach…I
don’t think it was ever who they were teaching”
Inservice Teachers: Inservice teachers described how they began with
low efficacy but through personal experience at teaching (mastery experience)
felt that they had overcome those former feelings of doubt about their abilities:
“…let me see, my first memories of going into the classroom were of
kind of sheer terror…I remember that…just out of fear I kind of threw
activities at the students and sat back while they did them…and I was
really backing away from the students…and I guess my style now is
more of an interactive style of teaching ESL [students]”
“…when I first started teaching…and encountered some students who
were learning English as their second language I felt insecure, lacked
confidence in knowing whether I was actually helping them or doing
anything for them really I had no background knowledge no theory to
base anything on so I felt very inadequate…now after having done some
study [inservice/workshops]…I feel much more comfortable in helping
them. I realise that modelling and scaffolding are very, very important
things for them”
In the above two responses both participants had positive shifts from
low efficacy to high efficacy due to their experiences teaching students who
have ESL (mastery experiences). The first participant above described that fear
prompted him to take a very hands-off approach to teaching students in the
classroom but over a period of four months he experienced a transition in his
teaching approach which he described as his ‘biggest learning curve as a
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teacher’. This change in teaching style, a more interactive style, appeared to suit
him more. The second participant, a teacher of 30 years, described that she was
‘thrown in the deep end’ without any [ESL] support when she first started
teaching. Since that time she had taken inservice and completed workshops
(verbal persuasion/vicarious experiences) to learn about teaching this group of
students and has worked with various ESL support teachers (vicarious
experience/verbal persuasion) over the years and so felt more confident about
doing the job.
Inservice teachers described how their efficacy beliefs in relation to
teaching ESL students changed when they had gained more experience
(mastery experiences) and thus more confidence in their abilities to do the job.
These remarks demonstrate that efficacy beliefs are fluid in nature not static;
new circumstances will have an impact on the strength and direction of an
individual’s efficacy.
Low efficacy was also expressed by inservice teachers who had ESL
students in their classrooms:
“…I’ve still got more research or work or something before I’d feel
comfortable or confident in teaching ESL [students]”
“…I find that really difficult to cope with in a class of 30 students and
you’ve got two children who just have no idea what you’re saying let
alone cannot do the math equation or even English you know I find that
really difficult and as a classroom teacher… you don’t have good
support structures in place from, you know, the specialised teachers in
the field and I really feel that it’s not a waste of time but it’s just so
difficult to meet those needs apart from meeting the needs of the class
anyway but it’s just you don’t get support”
“And the way you interact with parents are different as well. If you lived
in an area that was predominately one or two languages or cultures, it
would be easy but when they’re different every year, it just makes it
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more difficult. And I really…I know I should do some inservice but I’ve
never ever seen any offered”
Lack of support, resources and information about how to teach ESL
students in mainstream classrooms appeared to be the main concerns of
inservice participants (verbal persuasion/vicarious experiences). Lack of
knowledge about how to do the job may well lead to lower efficacy
(Bandura,1997) but ultimately, participants were confident that they would be
able to equip themselves to effectively teach students, drawing upon vicarious
sources (books, research, networking skills).
Inservice teachers also mentioned being able to speak another language
and travelling overseas (mastery experiences) as reasons for their particular
interests in this area of teaching:
“…we’ve all travelled a little bit and travelled to countries that are of
non-English speaking backgrounds and that I think it just that helps it
opens the mind and you don’t have such a narrow vision of the place
and the world and there are many different sorts of Australians going to
other places in the world and people from other places coming here so
it’s all rather exciting and fascinating and one sort of wants to know
more about it so I have a personal interest in it”
“…I suppose now that I have a grandson who’s going to be speaking
another language…so yeah I suppose I have, you know, the interest is
there from that point of view”
In summary, mastery experiences were cited by both participant groups
the strongest sources of efficacy information (67%). Mastery experiences were
first-hand experiences such as personally working with students, being a non-
native speaker of a second language or travelling to a non-English speaking
country and experiencing life as a non-native speaker. Verbal
persuasion/vicarious experiences were described as taking training courses,
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inservice and workshops to learn more about other cultures and strategies to
teach students who have ESL. Inservice teachers mentioned that they would
talk to their colleagues or an ESL support teacher about their teaching strategies
and activities as confidence boosters. Vicarious experiences were given less
often as a source of efficacy information and were often mentioned in relation
to verbal persuasion (43%). Preservice teachers mentioned that the teaching
behaviour being modelled by their supervising was not always positive in
meeting the needs of students who have ESL. A positive model was found by
those students who volunteered to observe a trained ESL teacher at work.
Physiological arousal was indicated by teachers through either their positive or
negative perceptions of teaching students. For example, in the above comments
one inservice teacher described that teaching in this area “…it’s all rather
exciting and fascinating”, and that she had a “personal interest in learning
about new cultures”.
Contextual Considerations
It may be recalled that contextual considerations are: culture load,
language load, cognitive load and learning load (Meyer, 2000). Culture load is
the amount of cultural knowledge required but never explicitly explained in
order for learning to occur. An example of culture load was given by the
inservice teacher who identified student characteristics by nationalities. For
example, inservice teachers described Japanese students as different to Middle
Eastern students in their approach to learning and teachers expected different
behaviours according to the culture of the child. At times, issues relating to
culture load were identified in association with language load. For example,
when parents were described as key players in the educational process by both
preservice and inservice teachers, one preservice teacher described:
“…one of my daughter’s…they had a girl that came from France for a
while. This kid didn’t speak any English at all but the father did so he
came and sat in the class for a bit…I don’t know how he did it with his
job but he did…in that situation…and I wouldn’t mind…if there could
be someone else in the classroom to help out, interpret a bit”
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An inservice teacher’s comments mirrored those of the preservice comment:
“…at the beginning of the year one father said: yes, he [the child]
understands but I’ll come with him for the first few days and he [the
father] translated everything I said into Chinese and he showed the
child exactly what he was doing and…that was so good and now when I
have particular problems I ask parents to come and do their bit. It
really does help a lot because he realised that the child understood
English but in this new situation he may not understand”
These comments indicate the close association of culture load and
language load. Having parents help children adjust to their new environment,
then, was appreciated and welcomed by teachers. Teachers expressed high
efficacy when parents interacted in classroom activities to help their children
settle into their new environment. Parents in these examples took the time to
stay with their children in their classroom, acting as interpreters until their
children gained some knowledge of the classroom routine. In the last example
the child appeared to have been able to understand English but perhaps not at a
level that would allow him to follow what was required of him in the class at
that stage. In both situations, the teachers described their willingness to ease
both the language load and the culture load of students through positive
involvement with parents. Teachers also expressed that they would utilise this
strategy of parent involvement again; they found that it was a positive and
effective way to ease the child into the class routine and a way for teachers to
gain an understanding of the child’s needs in their new culture.
In contrast, one preservice teacher, herself ESL, described that parent
expectations can act as a hindrance, acting as pressure on the child:
“…a lot of parents from Asian background would think that, well, I
want results that I can see and if I don’t get results within three months,
six months, you know, what are you doing here? My kid’s going
backwards…I think the kids are under a lot of pressure”
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This participant described that many of her Chinese friends’ parents
expected their children to been proficient in English at school within a very
short time of their arrival in Australia even though the parents’ English
language proficiency was very poor to non-existent. According to this
participant, parents expected schools to somehow fast-track their child’s
English language development and when results were slow in coming parents
showed strong disapproval. There was a suggestion by this participant that
parental disapproval would result in lowered teacher efficacy because such
criticism may undermine a teachers’ sense of self.
One group of preservice teachers spoke about the impact of racism on
classroom teaching and learning and, consequently, how such behaviour could
have a negative effect on teacher efficacy:
“…so the white people’s kids get this attitude towards Aboriginals and
the Aboriginals get this resentment also towards…the white people and
then that goes into the classroom with the divide and it’s very hard I
think it would be for a teacher to try and resolve years and years of
conflict in just one day or even a term.”
This negative description of culture load was expressed as likely to lead
to low efficacy for a teacher if the teacher perceived that the community’s
culture would have a greater impact on the classroom situation than the impact
a teacher could reasonable expect to have to make an effective and positive
change in attitudes.
Language load: Language load refers to the amount of English a student
is expected to cope with whether academic English or everyday English (Meyer,
2000). Wong Fillmore (1991) found that students who are not competent in
their first language have difficulties gaining proficiency in their second
language and this idea was expressed by one of the participants:
“…if they [children] are not competent in the first language, from my
experience, you can almost assume that they’re going to find it difficult
to gain knowledge of the second language”
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There is no consensus in the literature on when it is best for children to
learn a second language. Schumann (1997) suggested that children’s
neurobiological development plays a role in when they might best learn a new
language. Schumann claimed that children need to have a good grounding in
one language before they begin to learn a new language and the intellectual
capacity for learning a new language does not occur until late childhood/early
adolescence. Nevertheless, children enter schools at all ages from preschool to
high school and have to learn English as a new language to cope academically
and socially.
One participant expressed concern that taking time to address the needs
of students who have ESL may take away time that could be spent teaching the
others:
“…particularly with Year One, the little ones…we speak English but if
they don’t understand we slow down for them then what about the ones
that think it’s boring, that speed you’re going”
This preservice teacher showed concern that catering to the language
needs of students who have ESL would have a somewhat negative effect on the
rest of the students who would get bored waiting for their peers to catch up with
them. However, slowing down the rate of speech is what is advocated teachers
do for student understanding (Fueyo,1997). But learning language is more than
the words spoken, it also involves interpersonal interactions. Rhine (1995)
found that some teachers became impatient teaching students who have ESL.
When going over points of a lesson teachers tended to ask numerous questions
of the students without expecting an answer. Rhine claimed that students
become overloaded with the language (language laod) rather than with the
concepts of the content being taught as, while the questions may be similar,
they varied significantly in wording. For a child who is struggling to learn a
new language their only defence might be to retreat into silence (Igoa, 1995).
Having children retreating into silence might be what happened with the
following preservice teacher:
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“…the ones I experienced were so quiet in fact if you don’t look at them
you wouldn’t even know they’re there. I don’t think they caused that
much problem”
This preservice teacher’s statement appeared to be more focused on the
children’s good (quiet) behaviour rather than on cognitive, language or learning
development. Focusing on the lack of English language proficiency as a lack of
the ability to communicate and learn was a common comment by participants:
“…I do work at Sunday school in our church. We have a lot of African
kids coming. They have problems…they don’t communicate at all
because they can’t speak English. But even the few…children who can
speak English, they pretend they can’t because they want attention”
This preservice teacher is suggesting that because these children do not
speak English they ‘don’t communicate’. It may be recalled that Makin (1992)
found that teachers suggested that children do not have any language if they had
not yet learnt to speak English. Instead of considering the difficulties students
may face as a result of a lack of English language proficiency, the above
preservice teacher seems to indicate that the students’ lack of communication in
English is used as an attention seeking device.
Learning load: According to Meyer (2000), learning load refers to
teachers’ perceived expectations that students who have ESL know how to
learn. In the current study, participants did not identify any separate learning
expectations that would be particular to students who have ESL other than for
these students to learn to speak English. Participants stated that until students
learnt English their participation in classroom activities was limited.
Teaching strategies to help students attain outcomes, such as scaffolding
and interactive teaching described by participants earlier were considered
beneficial to students who have ESL but also to all learners in the class.
Participants did not identify any particular program or teaching/ learning
strategies that they would consider unique to students who have ESL. The
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consensus from the focus group discussions seemed to be that learning for
students who have ESL would fit within the overall learning outcomes
framework for all students in the classroom; this view was put forward by both
preservice and inservice teachers. Participants described that part of their
teaching role was to prepare the learning environment in such a way that each
student would be able to progress at their own pace towards peer-related
learning outcomes. There seemed to be general agreement that children’s
socialisation with classmates was a great benefit in helping them learn more
about the subtle social concepts their new culture through language. Being
accepted by peers was considered an important part of cultural adjustment for
classroom learning.
Cognitive load: refers to teachers’ understanding that students who have
ESL must process information, ideas and concepts from within the framework
of at least two languages (Meyer, 2000). Cognitive load was not strongly
described by participants in this study. Preservice teachers in particular made
little mention of issues related to cognitive load. One participant discussed
earlier that she did what all the preservice teachers did – prepared the lessons
without really thinking of the children they were teaching. One participant
described how if he had a student in Year 7 who could not read English, he
would use a Year 1 reader to build up spelling and grammar skills such as
indicating to the student that ‘C-A-T’ is cat. The provision of this ‘busy’ work
(Gersten, 1996) where students are given work well below their cognitive level,
but something with which they can be kept busy, would not be lost on these
students. Participants did not offer a solution to this potential problem.
Summary of Results
There was some difficulty for both preservice and inservice teachers in
describing students who have ESL. This group of learners was variously
described as some having English language proficiency before arriving in
Australia while others had none, that parents of these students spoke a language
other than English and that the child may or may not speak English well. One
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descriptor that participants in the study appeared to agree upon is that what the
target group of students has in common is that English is not their first language.
Mastery experiences were described as having already taught ESL
students, having an ESL background or travelling to non-native English
language countries. From participants responses this contextual consideration
seemed to be the most frequent source of efficacy information and the most
powerful in that participants with mastery experiences appeared to empathise in
particular with the language load and culture load that act as barriers to
learning for ESL students. Verbal persuasion/vicarious experiences such as
learning about teaching to diversity through university courses or through
inservice seminars and workshops were also mentioned. Participants who
described having mastery and/or vicarious experiences from which to drawn
upon, expressed higher efficacy about teaching students who are non-native
English language learners than participants who had no such experiences.
Participants who described having limited or no mastery experiences (or poor
vicarious experiences) expressed more doubt about their capabilities to teach
students who have ESL.
Culture load and language load were the most frequently mentioned
contextual considerations (Meyers, 2000) for teaching students who have ESL.
Language is a dominating feature of culture (Vygotsky, 1978) so it is not
surprising that these two areas have received such prominence in the study.
Australian schooling is language-rich and children who have difficulty with
language soon begin to fall behind their peers.
To a lesser degree, learning load was mentioned by participants in
relation to teaching students who have ESL. These student needs were
addressed by preservice teachers as being similar to the general needs of
students; that is, there were examples of lesson modifications for these students.
Modifications described included where a Year 7 student might have to be
given a Year 1 reader in order to learn the alphabet. Cognitive load was least
mentioned by participants in the study.
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In summary, the combination of coding between sources of efficacy
information and contextual considerations for teaching students who have ESL
identified the context specific nature of teacher efficacy within the first stage of
the modified cyclical model (Figure 2) utilised for the research. Mastery
experiences in association with culture load and language load appeared to
strongly connected, in that individuals who had mastery experiences in either
being a student who was ESL or through personal connections with other
cultures appeared to have higher efficacy in relation to teaching students who
have ESL. Placing the four sources of efficacy information and the four
contextual considerations within the modified cyclical model serves to reinforce
the concept that there needs to be a context in relation to examining teacher
efficacy.
Data collected in Study 1 were used to help in the development of
survey items for Study 2 and the hypothetical teaching scenarios for Study 3.
The following chapter will describe Study 2 in detail.
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CHAPTER 5 Study 2
This chapter will describe Study 2 of the research, which addresses
question (4) of the research: What teacher efficacy factors are associated with
teaching students who have ESL? Study 2 explores the four factors of teacher
efficacy as delineated in the modified cyclical model utilised for the research.
A survey, Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for Teaching ESL Learners, was
devised to measures four factors of teacher efficacy (Brouwers & Tomic, 2003)
as they relate to teaching students who have ESL in primary school. The aim of
the study was to provide some insight into the factorial structure of teacher
efficacy for this population group of students. This chapter includes the
rationale for exploring the four factors of teacher efficacy, the development of
the questionnaire survey, the procedure utilised for the study and the factor
analyses of the study.
Rationale for Study 2
The purpose of collecting quantitative data in Study 2 of the research
was to explore the construct of teacher efficacy within the context of teaching
students who have ESL. In the current study, a four-factor model of teacher
efficacy in relation to teaching students who have ESL was constructed. The
four-factors examined were: personal efficacy (confidence in one’s teaching
abilities), teaching efficacy (the ability to overcome environmental factors such
as home life), outcome efficacy (activities to reach educational outcomes), and
classroom management efficacy (activities to manage student behaviour) as
described by Brouwers and Tomic (2003).
Brouwers and Tomic suggested that the two-factor measures of teacher
efficacy generally used in research were inadequate as there are more that two
aspects of efficacy in relation to teaching. Generally there is a two factor
formulation of personal efficacy and teaching efficacy (see Gibson & Dembo,
1984; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990). However, Soodak and Podell (1996) found in
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their study that the third factor could be retained, which they called outcome
efficacy. Brouwers and Tomic (2003) found evidence of a fourth factor which
they called classroom management efficacy from research conducted by Emmer
and Hickman (1991). It is these four factors that were explored in the current
study.
Study 1 of the current research confirmed the importance of including
the four contextual considerations when examining teacher efficacy in relation
to teaching students who have ESL. It may be recalled that the four contextual
considerations are language load, learning load, cognitive load and culture
load (see Meyer, 2000) and these perceived barriers to learning for students
who have ESL provide the specific context for the items on the questionnaire.
While there have been many teacher efficacy studies conducted in the past,
there has been no studies that explored the four factors of teacher efficacy in
association with the four contextual considerations for teaching students who
have ESL. Therefore, it was deemed necessary to develop a survey to
investigate teacher efficacy further within this particular context.
Because Study 2 is exploratory in nature, some evidence of the
construct validity and reliability of the instrument is needed and these are
demonstrated using a number of statistical procedures. A factor analysis was
conducted to assess the composition of the scale measurement. The computer
program SPSS 12.0.1 for Windows was utilised as the statistical tool for a factor
analysis of the data. Through factor analysis, major areas of concerns that have
an impact on all responses can be identified and only those variables which
effectively influence the extracted components are retained. Additionally,
Cronbach’s alpha is calculated to estimate the internal consistency of the sub-
scales; clarifying the psychometric soundness of the instrument aids in
identifying the statistical significance of the findings.
Development of the Questionnaire
Items for the questionnaire were developed from data gathered in Study
1 and from the literature. Items were formatted similarly to those traditionally
found on teacher efficacy scales, which use a Likert-type measure. The survey
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items were structured on a 6-point Likert type response scale. Items were
constructed with a referent to the domain of teaching students who have ESL to
underscore the specific context of this study. The same questionnaire was
utilised for both the preservice teacher participants and the inservice teacher
participants.
Initially 32 items were constructed for the survey across the four factors
of teaching efficacy, personal efficacy, classroom management efficacy and
outcome efficacy; however, after a pilot study was conducted, 2 items (i.e., item
24 “How much can you do to ensure that students who have ESL are learning
the same content as non-ESL students in your class” and item 26 “How much
are you able to determine if students who have ESL understand classroom
terminology such as ‘classify’, ‘analyse’, ‘predict’ and ‘create’?), were
dropped because the wording of the items rendered them redundant in relation
to other items on the measure and/or feedback from participants indicated that
they were confused by the wording of the items (indicated by a question mark
“?” beside the item or did not respond to the item).
Item 18 of the survey was designed as a foil question. Sometimes called
a detractor, a foil is used to detect bias in individual items (Veale & Foremen,
1983). Item 18 asks: How much are you able to teach female students who have
ESL better than male students who have ESL? In analysing a foil, the researcher
must examine the proportion of “pull indices”, that is, the extent to which the
foil is attracting or pulling respondents away from the correct answer as a test
of item reliability. For item 18, the correct answer would be 1=not at all as
ideally teachers should not show a bias towards either gender of student when
teaching. The responses for item 18 did not indicate a particular pull and so the
item was removed from the data for analysis. The final survey contained 30
items.
Method
Participants
Preservice Teachers: Permission was given to the researcher to deliver
the questionnaires to preservice teachers by three unit coordinators of subjects
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taken as part of a Bachelor of Education degree. The researcher delivered the
questionnaires to preservice participants during class time with a brief overview
of the research. The researcher explained that participation in the research was
voluntary and that participants could pull out of the research at any time
without penalty. Participants were provided with an introductory letter outlining
the research and a consent script. Two hundred and thirty questionnaires were
delivered to preservice teachers; 211 (n=211) completed preservice
questionnaires were returned suitable for use in the study, a return rate of
approximately 92%.
Inservice Teachers: Inservice teachers were recruited initially via a
snowballing effect, through word of mouth and via email request. Fifty (n=50)
teachers contacted were teaching in various Queensland state schools and were
provided with an introductory letter outlining the research and a consent script.
Twenty-six (n=26) completed questionnaires were returned from this group.
The researcher also contacted the principal of a small, primary catholic school
in Queensland and was granted permission to deliver questionnaires to the
teachers at this school. The researcher had worked at this school as an ESL
teacher on a contractual basis for three years. Twenty (n=20) questionnaires
were left in the teachers’ mail boxes at the school with an introductory letter, a
script describing the research and a consent form. Thirteen (n=13) completed
questionnaires were returned. The questionnaires were collected from the
school by the researcher one week after they were delivered. In total, seventy
(n=70) inservice teachers’ questionnaires were delivered. Thirty (n=30) were
not returned and one (n=1) questionnaire was returned incomplete and so not
used for the study, resulting in 39 inservice teachers’ questionnaires suitable for
use in the research, a return rate of approximately 55%. In total, 250
questionnaires were completed and used in the analysis for this study. Further
information on sampling techniques was given in Chapter 3, Methodological
Considerations.
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Results
Preliminary Data Analysis
Prior to performing a PCA, the suitability of data for factor analysis was
assessed through a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy
and a Bartlett’s. In the current research the KMO value was .96, exceeding the
recommend value of 0.6 and the Bartlett’s Tests of Sphericity reached statistical
significance, supporting the factorability of the correlation matrix. The scree
plot was used to determine the initial number of factors to be explored. The
Scree plots the variables as the X axis and the corresponding eigenvalues as the
Y axis and is used as one rule of thumb to determine the number of factors in a
data set (Netemeyer, Bearden & Sharma, 2003). As one moves further to the
right of the plot, the eigenvalues drop. When the drop ceases and the curve
makes an elbow, all further variables are dropped after the one starting at the
elbow. The eigenvalue measures the amount of variance in all the variables
accounted for by a given factor where values exceeding 1 are retained.
Estimates of the scree plot and eigenvaluse suggest that between 2 and 4 factors
should be retained for analysis.
Initially, a factor analysis was conducted on the data from the two
participant groups separately. When compared, there was no significant
difference in the results between the two groups so the two groups were
combined together. The combined grouping of inservice and preservice teachers
resulted in a participant group of 250 teachers. The four-factor model
(Brouwers & Tomic, 2003) was initially proposed for the research; however, a
three-factor solution and a two-factor solution were also examined as a way to
shed some light on the construct of teacher efficacy (Guskey & Passaro, 1994;
Soodak & Podell, 1996; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990) in relation to teaching students
who have ESL.
In an initial analysis, item 28 (“To what extent can you control whether
or not there is inclusion of students who have ESL in state-wide testing done in
your classroom?”) was removed from the analysis procedure as it was
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considered an outlier. With the foil item and item 28 removed, the factor
analysis was conducted on the remaining twenty-eight (28) items.
Principle Component Analysis
It is recommended that there should be a minimum of three variables
loading per factor (Kline, 1994; Popham & Sirotnik, 1973; Santos & Clegg,
1999). In the current study, the four- factor solution was analysed first, then a
three-factor solution then a two-factor solution. The four-factor solution of the
data revealed the presence of three rather than four components with
eigenvalues exceeding 1, explaining 49.9%, 4.4% and 3.9% of the variance
respectively. An inspection of the scree plot revealed a break after the third
component so further analysis with a three factor solution was conducted.
In a three factor analysis, the factor solution revealed the presence of
three components with eigenvalues exceeding 1, explaining 49.8%, 4.4% and
3.9% of the variance respectively. However, upon inspection of the item
loadings there was no clear delineation of the three factors. The scree plot again
revealed a break after the third component but the break was not clear in that it
was difficult to interpret whether there were three factors or two; therefore, a
two-factor solution was tested.
The two-factor solution (presented in Table 5.1) explained 54.3% of the
total variance. Table 5.1 delineates the two factor structure which was obtained
using principal axis factor analysis followed by oblique (Oblimin) rotations. An
estimate of internal consistency of the two factors was conducted using
Cronbach’s alpha. Cronbach’s alpha for factor 1 (21 items) was .95; Cronbach’s
alpha for factor 2 (7 items) was .82. Values for the coefficient alpha of the two
retained factors suggest that the scale scores are reasonably reliable for
inservice and preservice teachers.
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Table 5.1 95% Confidence Intervals of Mean and Standard Deviations of Change for Personal Efficacy and Teaching Efficacy ________________________________________________________________ N Mean SD ________________________________________________________________ PersonalEfficacy Preservice Teachers 210 84.45 18.62 Inservice Teachers 39 84.76 18.62 TeachingEfficacy Preservice Teachers 211 27.76 6.02 Inservice Teachers 39 26.46 4.98 ________________________________________________________________
The means and standard deviations were relatively similar for preservice
teachers and inservice teachers with scores for personal efficacy and teaching
efficacy moderate. While preservice teachers rated higher levels of teaching
efficacy they were not significantly different from inservice teachers.
Items loading onto Factor 1, accounted for 49.85% of the total variance.
Factor 1 appears to fit within the parameters of what was designated in the
study as personal efficacy (an individual’s belief in their capabilities to do a
task). Items that were written for the factors outcome efficacy and classroom
management efficacy loaded on to factor 1. One explanation for such a strong
result for Factor 1 could be that respondents in Study 1 of the current research
described that they did not differentiate teaching tasks so discretely. Classroom
management and learning outcomes for participants in Study 1 were considered
as part of the development and delivery of lessons and activities. For example,
strategies to best manage student behaviour (e.g., “How much can you do to
influence ESL students to follow the class rules?”) loaded on to personal
efficacy rather than a separate factor of classroom management efficacy.
Learning outcomes were also a part of lesson planning, and were described as
being measured throughout a unit of work rather than solely as an end product.
As one teacher in Study 1 described it, “It’s all just a part of the job. It comes
with being a teacher”. Teachers in the research did not describe variables in
relation to classroom management efficacy and outcome efficacy as separate
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components in developing and delivering lessons and activities. Results in the
Study 2 appear to support these views in that these variables were grouped as
sub-categories of a single factor: Factor 1, which for the current research is
described as personal efficacy.
Items that loaded on Factor 2 accounted for 4.4% of the variance. An
inspection of the screeplot revealed a clear break after the second component.
Factor 2 from the analysis appears to fit within the parameters of what was
designated in the instrument as teaching efficacy (the degree of control a
teacher has over environmental factors outside the classroom). For example,
items that loaded on this factor included: (How much can you do to assist
families to help their (ESL) children do well in school?” and “How much can
you do to get parents/caregivers of ESL students to become involved in their
children’s school activities?”) These items reflect environmental factors and so
were retained as teaching efficacy. It was decided then there were two
components for the construct of teacher efficacy for the current study, not four
as initially thought. There were 21 items loading onto the first factor, personal
efficacy with 7 items loading onto the second factor, teaching efficacy.
The pattern matrix of the oblique factors for the two factor solution of
teacher efficacy is presented in Table 5.2.
Table 5.2
Pattern Matrix for Oblique Factors of the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for Teaching ESL Learners Scale Factors and Items Factors I II 1. Personal Efficacy 13. How much can you do to ensure that students who have ESL participate in group .87 -.19 Learning activities in your class? 2. How much can you do to influence children who are ESL to follow class rules? .85 -.21 5. How much can you assist students who have ESL to communicate effectively with .82 -.04 Non-ESL students in your class? 21. To what extent can you make your expectations clear about acceptable behaviour in class to students who have ESL? .80 -.06 3. How much can you do to provide a variety of assessment measures in your class for ESL students? .79 -.06 1. How much can you do to adjust your lessons to meet the needs of individual ESL students? .79 .00 22. How much can you assist the development of cognitive strategies (e.g. rehearsing, organising, reflecting) with students who have ESL? .76 .08 24. How much are you able to assist students who have ESL to develop metacognitive strategies (e.g. planning, monitoring, self-regulation)? .73 .08 30. To what extent can you ensure that students who have ESL understand the pragmatics
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(e.g. when, where and how to communicate) in your classroom? .73 .03 9. How well can you establish routines for students who have ESL to keep activities running smoothly in your class? .72 .01 16. How much can you do to promote learning in your class for students who have ESL when there is a lack of support from the home? .68 .05 27. How much can you do to help students who have ESL to believe that they can do well in school? .68 .06 12. How much can you do to improve learning for an ESL student who is failing in .67 .16 your class? 17. How much can you do to motivate ESL students when they show low interest in .66 .11 school? 23. How much are you able to teach proper grammar to students who have ESL? .64 .13 20. How much can you do to help students who have ESL to develop problem .61 .27 solving skills? 4. How much can you do to assist families to help their children who are ESL to do well in school? .54 .20 14. How well can you provide appropriate challenges for very capable students .53 .09 who have ESL? 11. How much are you able to scaffold learning for students who have ESL? .49 .30 25. How much can you do to promote learning in English with students who have ESL when they are still largely reliant on their home language for communication? .48 .30 10. How much can you do to provide effective feedback to students who have ESL? .44 .39 2. Teaching Efficacy 19. How much can you do to help parents/caregivers of students who have ESL to become involved in their children’s school activities? -.01 .795 26. To what extent can you control racist behaviour and language in your classroom? -.07 .772 15. To what extent in your lessons can you refer to the culture of students who have .27 .466 ESL? 6. How much can you do to minimise potential cultural conflicts (e.g. food, dress, gender issues) between home and school in your classroom? .16 .457 29. To what extent can you help students who have ESL to monitor their own .392 .445 comprehension? 7. To what extent can you draw on ESL students’ prior knowledge in their home language to assist with learning in your class? .331 .428 8. To what extent can you take ESL students’ religious/ethnic beliefs and customs into consideration when preparing classroom activities? .248 .408 _____________________________________________________________________________________ Personal Efficacy: eigenvalue = 13.95, total variance explained = 49.82%; Teaching Efficacy: eigenvalue = 1.24, total variance explained = 4.43%
A one-way analysis of variance was conducted to evaluate the
relationship between scores for personal efficacy and teaching efficacy for
preservice teachers and inservice teachers. The ANOVA was significant for
personal efficacy, F(1,247) = .01, p >.05 and teaching efficacy F(1,248) = 1.62,
p > .05. There was a score range of 21-126 for personal efficacy and a score
range of 7-42 for teaching efficacy.
Teacher efficacy research generally supports a two-factor model
(Gibson & Dembo, 1984; Guskey & Passaro, 1994; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990).
The two factors are: personal efficacy and teaching efficacy. Generally in the
research, personal efficacy is deemed to be the strongest factor and findings in
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the current study support this. The factor of teacher efficacy is also generally
reported in the research, but as a weaker factor; findings in the current study
support this as well.
Item 29: “How much can you do to assist students who have ESL to
monitor their own comprehension in your classroom?” loaded on both the
factor of personal efficacy and on the factor of teaching efficacy. On first
inspection, this item would appear to be misplaced as a variable of teaching
efficacy which is related to overcoming environmental factors. However, upon
further consideration, teachers’ responses may be the result of a confounding of
the item’s wording. Some teachers may have perceived the item to refer to their
personal capabilities to assist students in this area while others may have
perceived the item to refer to teachers helping students monitoring their
comprehension through two languages/cultures as they develop English
language proficiency, which is more in line with teaching efficacy. Further
investigation of this item needs to be done to evaluate its place in the current
questionnaire.
Summary
The aim of Study 2 was to explore the measure of teacher efficacy. The
four factors under examination for this study were: personal efficacy, teaching
efficacy, outcome efficacy and classroom management efficacy (Brouwers &
Tomic, 2003) as they relate to teaching students who have ESL. The current
study was the first to analyse the four-factor model of teacher efficacy in
relation to teaching students who have ESL. However, results from the study
did not support this model. Rather, results indicated a two-factor model:
personal efficacy and teaching efficacy. These results are consistent with those
reported in the literature that there are two factors for teacher efficacy (Gibson
& Dembo, 1984; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990).
Limitations
As this study was a first attempt at exploring a scale that measures
teacher efficacy in relation to teaching students who have ESL, the findings
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should be viewed with caution. The items retained in this study’s questionnaire
need to be further analysed in relation to testing teacher efficacy within the
context of this study. It may be that the wording of some items confounded the
results. As was indicated above, participants in Study 1 did not always
differentiate between the various aspects of teacher efficacy. Instead their
responses indicated little differentiation within their concept that “teaching is
teaching”, wherein it was difficult for them to clearly separate one aspect from
another (for example, outcome efficacy from personal efficacy).
Despite the limitations, there was sufficient evidence of reliability and
validity of the two factors of teacher efficacy from this study: personal efficacy
and teaching efficacy. These two factors were used as the basis of analysis for
Study 3 . Study 3 examined the effects of teacher efficacy on teaching strategies
for working with students who have ESL, which is the next phase of the
cyclical model of teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). The
associations of the two factors from the current study and strategies teachers
consider using in their teaching practice is describe in the next chapter.
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CHAPTER 6 Study 3
Study 3 addresses the research question: How do teachers’ efficacy
beliefs influence their teaching strategies for teaching students who have ESL?
(the “Performance” part of the modified cyclical model of teacher efficacy
utilised for the current research). Participants were asked to respond to four
hypothetical teaching scenarios in relation to teaching students who have ESL
(the scenarios are presented and analysed within the body of this chapter). Data
from Study 1 suggested that mastery experiences and verbal
persuasion/vicarious experiences were the more prevalent sources of teacher
efficacy and that culture load and language load were most often cited by
teachers as areas of contextual consideration for teaching students who have
ESL. Data from Study 2 revealed two factors of teacher efficacy (personal
efficacy and teaching efficacy) only not four as suggested by the literature
(Brouwers & Tomic, 2003). This chapter will describe the analysis of the four
hypothetical teaching scenarios in relation to the findings from Studies 1 and 2.
Rationale for Utilising Hypothetical Teaching Scenarios
The purpose for collecting data in Study 3 was to explore the final phase
of the modified cyclical model of teacher efficacy (from the original by
Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998) utilising the data results from Study 1 and Study
2 of the current research. Because efficacy is measured as self-perceptions of
one’s capabilities in successfully completing a potential future teaching task
(Bandura 1997, 2001), hypothetical teaching scenarios were considered
appropriate for data gathering. Participants in the study, while varying in the
level of experience at teaching, had each spent some time in a classroom as a
teacher. Therefore, the situation was one not completely unknown to them; the
teaching scenarios were constructed in part from teaching situations described
in Study 1 of the research.
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Method
Participants
Participants from Study 2 volunteered to continue with the research for
Study 3; however, not all participants from Study 2 continued with the research.
Fifty (n=50) preservice teachers and 17 (n=17) inservice teachers participated
in the Study 3, making a total of 67 (n=67) participants. Those who volunteered
to continue with the research did so with the condition that consent to
participate was maintained from the previous study.
Inservice Teachers: Eight (n=8) inservice teachers from state schools
completed written responses to the hypothetical teaching. Their responses were
returned with their completed surveys from Study 2: Teachers’ Sense of
Efficacy Scale for Teaching ESL Learners. Nine (n=9) inservice teachers who
had been contacted at a small catholic school for Study 2 completed written
responses to the hypothetical teaching scenarios. Responses from inservice
teachers at the catholic school (as part of the questionnaire for Study 2) were
collected by the researcher from the school one week after distribution of the
questionnaires. In total, seventeen (n=17) inservice teachers completed written
responses to the hypothetical teaching scenarios.
Preservice Teachers: Thirty-two (n=32) preservice teachers volunteered
to continue with the research by continuing with the questionnaire from Study 1.
Their responses to the hypothetical teaching scenarios were collected at the
time the questionnaires were collected for Study 2. Eighteen (n=18) preservice
teachers volunteered to complete the teaching scenarios as in-class discussions.
Those in this class who did not want to participate were given the option of
being excused; however, none of the students chose to leave. Participants
formed four discussion groups (4 in two groups, 5 in two groups) and
responded to each of the hypothetical teaching scenarios as a group. One
member of each group acted as scribe, jotting down the main points of the
discussions. In total, 50 (n=50) preservice teachers participated in Study 3.
Data indicated that more inservice teachers (82.4%) had taught students
who have ESL than had preservice teachers (28%). Preservice teachers in Study
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3 were younger (approximately 78% under age 33) than inservice teachers, as
might be expected of a random group of university students. The majority of
inservice teachers in the study ranged from ages 25 – 42 (76.5%). There was
only one male participant in the inservice teacher group (5.9%) but 13 or (26%)
male participants in the preservice group.
The amount of training to teach students who have ESL was relatively
the same for both groups with preservice teachers at 22% trained and inservice
at 23.5%. Training for teaching students who have ESL included workshops
and/or seminar and courses taken at university. Twenty-eight (n=28) % of the
preservice teachers claimed to have taught students who have ESL; 82% of
inservice teachers claimed to have taught students who have ESL.
Data Analysis
Analysis of the hypothetical teaching scenarios was conducted as per
the coding procedures for Study 1. The first stage involved identifying themes
and sub-themes by using theory and past research to look for variables. Axial
coding was then done to identify categories and sub-categories. The variables
for the research included the four factors of teacher efficacy (from Brouwers &
Tomic, 2003) and the four barriers to teaching students who have ESL (Meyer,
2000). For example, the major theme of culture load was divided into sub-
themes of parental influence Encoded data for each of the two participant
groups were then compared and sorted into major themes and categories.
Identified themes that emerged in Study 3 were compared with results from
Studies 1 and 2. This constant comparing and contrasting of data is consistent
with strategies used for a mixed-method approach to research.
Coding of data began initially with these categories; however, Study 1
revealed that mastery experiences and verbal persuasion/vicarious experiences
were the main sources of teacher efficacy and that culture load and language
load were most often cited by teachers as areas of contextual consideration for
teaching students who have ESL. Data from Study 2 revealed two factors of
Teaching Efficacy (personal efficacy and teaching efficacy), not four as
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suggested by the literature (Brouwers & Tomic, 2003). Therefore, particular
attention was paid to these factors for analysis of the data in Study 3.
Participants in the current study were presented with four hypothetical
teaching scenarios. For each of the scenarios participants were asked to “Please
describe what you would do in this situation” and “briefly explain why you
would take the action described.” The hypothetical teaching scenarios were
attached to the end of the questionnaire delivered in Study 2 as Part B of the
questionnaire.
Analysis of Data from the Preliminary Question for Study 3
Before responding to the four hypothetical teaching scenarios in Part B
of the questionnaire, participants were asked to respond to a preliminary
question: How confident do you feel about teaching students who are non-
native English language learners? to ascertain their self-evaluated level of
efficacy.
Preservice Teachers: 65% of preservice teachers claimed that they felt
confident about teaching students who have ESL, while 35% did not feel
confident. Reasons stated for feeling confident stemmed most prominently from
mastery experiences:
“Most of my responses are based on personal experience as I taught my
daughter to read and write English in three months”
“I have always felt confident teaching ESL children in my practicum
classes and in my employment as a childcare assistant”
“I have grown up with and am friends with ESL students”
“I feel confident as I experienced prac at Z. State School where this was
quite common. I feel I did very well.”
“…with my experience in teaching overseas, I have a high level of
confidence in this area”
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These preservice teachers described mastery experiences as personal life
experiences (own home life, friendships), previous teaching episodes and travel
experiences. These findings are consistent with those identifying sources of
teacher efficacy in relation to mastery experience related in Study 1.
Mastery experiences such as adapting knowledge of teaching in general
to the area of teaching students who have ESL were also described as sources
of teacher efficacy:
“…by incorporating art and media into class. Art is a visual teaching
and all students’ cultures can play a big part in class…”
“Being a music specialist is great as music is a universal language.
Many ESL students relate and excel at music and this allows growth in
development and comprehension of much curriculum material, as well
as personal and language development”
“I feel that because of my Early Childhood training I will be able to find
ways to build connections with ESL children”
These teachers are describing confidence in their own capabilities to
teach students who have ESL and so are exhibiting high personal efficacy. In
contrast, the lack of mastery experiences was cited by preservice teachers as the
main reason for their lack of confidence and so, these preservice teachers
exhibited low personal efficacy:
“I’ve never taught ESL so I have not much idea. It’s a bit scary”
“My prac experience was at GT State School [where] the majority of
students are white Australian so I have had no experience whatever with
ESL students”
However, preservice teachers with limited or no mastery experience
teaching students who have ESL stated that they hoped their current university
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studies (verbal persuasion/ vicarious experiences) would help them become
more confident about teaching students who have ESL:
“I’m currently completing a language and literacy subject with a major
focus on teaching ESL. After doing this, hopefully, I will become more
confident”
I have knowledge thanks to subjects at uni but haven’t put any of that
into practice, which makes me unsure of how my strategies will actually
work. I feel I am at an advantage to my peers as they have done very
little study on ESL students”
These responses show a potential for the development of higher
personal efficacy in relation to teaching students who have ESL. While these
preservice teachers have not had an opportunity to test what they have learned
in their studies, they expressed feeling confident that they are equipped with the
proper knowledge to use when such a teaching situation arises.
Preservice teachers also mentioned external influences on their ability to
work with students who have ESL, such as home life. The first two of the
following responses indicate that presevice teachers felt confident that they
could work with families in supporting students (high teaching efficacy) while
the third and fourth responses indicated potential difficulties respondents felt
they may have in working with family members to support students (low
teaching efficacy):
“It’s easy to help ESL students and encourage them but the student and
their family also need to be supportive and believe that they can do
anything”
“I’d like to think I would adapt the curriculum and my teaching
strategies to help [ESL] students. I’d also like (and think it’s important)
to work with the family”
“I think if it’s just me I can do/make a difference, help, but outside
influences make it harder i.e., home, outside school hours”
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These responses indicated high personal efficacy but less efficacy in
relation to working with students’ families (teaching efficacy). For example, in
the above responses, there was concern that outside influences such as the home
would make teaching students who have ESL harder. The final participant
expressed high personal efficacy to teach these students but low teaching
efficacy in that external factors would make the job harder. Mastery experiences
of having already taught students who have ESL and verbal persuasion/
vicarious experiences in relation to learning effective teaching strategies as part
of their university course work contributed to preservice teachers expressing
high personal efficacy in relation to teaching the group of students targeted for
this study; in contrast, not having mastery experiences and/or verbal
persuasion/vicarious experiences in this area of teaching resulted in preservice
teachers expressing low personal efficacy.
Contextual considerations were mentioned in a broad sense by
preservice teachers in the study. These participants mentioned familiarity with
aspects of culture that needed to be considered when working with students
who have ESL both through mastery experiences (their field experience
placements, personal friendships) and verbal persuasion/vicarious experiences
(university studies). Those who had positive experiences and/or indicated that
they would be confident in their abilities to address cultural considerations in
their teaching expressed high teaching efficacy whereas those respondents who
did not feel confident in this area expressed low teaching efficacy. These
participants generally had little or no contact with students or cultures that were
not mainstream Australian and so expressed that they did not feel confident that
they would know what to do to work with students who have ESL.
Inservice teachers: Seventy-three percent (73%) of inservice teachers
claimed that they felt confident in their abilities to teach students who have ESL
while 27% stated that they did not feel confident. Unlike preservice teachers,
inservice teachers qualified their efficacy by indicating the need for support
when teaching students who have ESL:
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“I am not confident alone but with the support of a wonderful ESL
support teacher, I feel more confident”
“A little confident. I need help from qualified people”
“I feel fairly confident when supported”
The mention of the need for support by inservice teachers indicated that
teaching students who have ESL was not easy, that inservice teachers felt that
to do the job adequately they would need support from trained and qualified
teachers. As with the preservice teachers, inservice teachers indicated that their
general abilities (personal efficacy) as teachers would help them in teaching
students who have ESL:
“I have not taught many students who have ESL but feel that I have
some abilities as a teacher to manage the learning situation somewhat
effectively”
“Like teaching any child who needs extra attention for any reason, it is
up to the individual teacher as to how much extra effort they are willing
to put in to accommodate that child”
Inservice teachers suggested that because they were confident in their
abilities to teach in general (high personal efficacy), they would have the
capabilities to teach students who have ESL, provided they received some
support to do the job. Indicating a need for support and help to teach students
who have ESL may well indicate low teaching efficacy. These participants did
not mention contextual considerations specifically in relation to teaching
students who have ESL. The data did not indicate what in particular these
participants felt they needed help at doing when working with students who
have ESL, although they did mention that the support should come from
specialist teachers such as ESL teachers and/or Learning Support teachers.
Only two inservice teachers mentioned environmental factors that
would have an effect on their teaching through a reflective statement:
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“…if the teacher hasn’t any understanding of the child’s primary
language, how does this influence the situation? If the parents aren’t
helpful, this could further affect the situation of school and
socialisation”
In this response there is an integration of language load (child’s primary
language), culture load (parents-school-socialisation) and the effects these have
on teaching efficacy (control over environmental factors). The above participant
expressed low teaching efficacy in that the child’s language and home life may
impact on her ability to teach students who have ESL. The following comment
described the effects of government funding as an indicator of teaching efficacy:
“Any experience is worthwhile and a learning experience. The
continued support of the government to find more aid time for one-on-
one teaching would be appreciated. Currently preschool and prep
children do not have access to funding for support. This needs to
change”
This participant described the effects of environmental conditions (lack
of government funding) as having a negative impact on her ability to teach
students who have ESL (eg. this lack of funding needs to change). The
perceived negative impact on her capabilities to teach can be described as low
teaching efficacy, but this teacher also expressed high personal efficacy in
believing that any experience in the classroom would be a learning one for
students. Describing both low teaching efficacy and high personal efficacy in
relation to a particular teaching situation is not unheard of (see Woolfolk &
Hoy, 1990), and serves to demonstrate that teacher efficacy is a multifaceted
construct (Bandura, 1986, 2001). Nevertheless, expressing high personal
efficacy does not ensure that the child’s specific needs at learning are being met.
As was found in Study 1, mastery experiences and verbal
persuasion/vicarious experiences were the most prevalent sources of efficacy
information for both preservice and inservice teachers in relation to their
confidence in teaching students who have ESL. As with Study 2, personal
efficacy was stronger for these two groups of participants than was teaching
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efficacy. Contextual considerations were described in relation to confidence
levels for preservice teacher more so than for inservice teachers in that more
preservice teachers mentioned their awareness of such things as language load
and culture load and the need to attend to them when teaching students who
have ESL than did inservice teachers.
Hypothetical Teaching Scenarios
Participants were asked to respond to four hypothetical teaching scenarios
developed from the literature and from focus group discussions held in Study 1.
Participants were asked to describe what they would do in each teaching
scenario and briefly explain why they would take the action described. The first
teaching scenario read as follows:
1) A new student in your Grade 6 class has studied English-as-a-foreign
language in his home country. He can communicate in English at a
fundamental level but is reluctant to do so because there has been some
taunting by his non-ESL classmates about his ‘funny’ accent. He has
befriended another student in the class from his home country and they tend to
keep mostly to themselves, speaking only their home language when together,
both in class and outdoors. When you try to engage this student in learning
tasks he complains that he doesn’t understand the work, that it’s too difficult.
The new student’s parents are well-educated but do not speak English well.
Nevertheless, they are ambitious for their son to succeed in school.
Preservice Teachers: The main theme to emerge from preservice teachers’
responses to this hypothetical teaching scenario was the need to create a
supportive environment for the student described above. Strategies suggested to
create this environment included adapting lessons, scaffolding learning, peer
tutoring and giving the student more time in class to complete activities,
supporting the child’s English and creating a community environment in the
class by encouraging friendships with other students. These strategies are a
demonstration of preservice teachers’ high personal efficacy in relation to
teaching students who have ESL. For example:
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“Give the student easier learning tasks as he finds the language too
difficult, gradually making the learning tasks harder so that confidence
can be built”
“…structure social support for the child – buddy or friend. Make it a
class task to get inclusion. Encourage conversational language,
immersion and scaffold learning”
“…having set times when they [the two students] can speak in their own
language […] maybe when they’re discussing like the instructions…”
These comments indicated that the preservice teachers felt confident in
their overall teaching capabilities to effectively manage the teaching situation.
The question posed to them in relation to the teaching scenarios was to describe
what they would do in the situation and explain why they would take that action.
While respondents were able to describe what they would do few indicated why
they would take the chosen action. One example above describes a reason for
the chosen action (give easier learning tasks as the student finds the language
difficult). Such a response suggests a depth of understanding this respondent
had about the actions she would take that other responses did not have. It may
be that, on the whole, participants missed this part of the question or were
pressed for time and ignored it or they simply did not know why they would use
one strategy over another. If the latter is the case, it may be that preservice
teachers are taught to think about the strategies they might use but are not
encouraged to reflect on why they would chose one course of action over
another for one particular student or group of students.
Preservice teachers mentioned incorporating some aspects of the student’s
home culture (culture load) into lessons and were more forthcoming about
describing why they would take certain actions; for example, to develop an
awareness of and appreciation for diversity and that there was no place for
intolerance or bullying in the class. Preservice teachers mentioned activities
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such as role plays where all students tried to speak in a language new to them
and projects on different cultures including that of the new student:
“Do a multicultural project – incorporate the culture of the ESL students –
also Australian culture. Bring self-worth / cultural awareness into class.
Discuss with the class present examples of different languages and explain
that each produces different accents”
The strategies mentioned for creating a supportive and inclusive
environment demonstrate preservice teachers’ high personal efficacy in this
area of teaching, although personal efficacy in this instance should be viewed
with the knowledge that participants were strong in their suggestions on
activities they could use to assist students who have ESL within the classroom
but were weak in explaining why they would do what they would do. Making
connections with students’ home cultures and home/families indicated teaching
efficacy; however, preservice teachers expressed less confidence in this area
asking such questions as “how do you get through to the parents?” if the parents
do not speak good English. A common solution to meeting the contextual
considerations in this situation was to obtain the assistance of a translator.
However, there was little mention of involving the parents/families of students
in relation to this teaching scenario. These findings presented the anomaly that
the expressed high personal efficacy of preservice teachers was not
accompanied by a depth of consideration in relation to the teaching situation
whereas expressed low teaching efficacy was considered in some depth. That is,
high confidence in their general teaching abilities did not cause these
participants to question their strategies, whereas doubt about their capabilities
in relation to contextual considerations in relation to the specific teaching task
did cause them to question their teaching strategies.
Inservice Teachers: Contacting the family or community members to
have them involved in the teaching situation and/or provide support for both the
child and the teacher (teaching efficacy) was not mentioned at all by inservice
teachers in relation to this teaching scenario. This result could mean that
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inservice teachers did not think that the situation was sufficiently important to
warrant contacting parents – that teachers felt they could deal with it on their
own (high personal efficacy) or that they did not believe that making contact
with families would be helpful in the situation (low teaching efficacy) – or a
combination of both. As with preservice teachers, inservice teachers described
many strategies and activities they would use in the classroom to make it a
supportive and inclusive environment for a new student who was a non-native
English language learner, focusing on language development (language load)
and incorporating the student’s culture (culture load) into lessons.
“…give the child opportunities to use English in a non-confrontational
environment”
“…involve the child’s culture in class – include language, cooking etc.
– lots of encouragement to join in –rewards”
“get children to do a project on different countries including the
country the ESL student is from – let the ESL child become ‘the expert’”
Awareness of the student’s language load and incorporating aspects of
the student’s culture into lessons indicated the expression of teaching efficacy
by inservice teachers. So while these participants did not mention the need to
involve families and/or community members, they were able to identify ways to
address specific needs of students who have ESL in their classrooms.
Strategies mentioned by inservice teachers were described as creating an
inclusive classroom. For example, strategies included teaching the whole class
about teasing and taunting by doing lessons on tolerance as well as having the
student mentioned in the scenario work in a small group and/or paired activities
to encourage the development of socialisation skills and as ways to help the
child adjust to his new environment. On the whole, inservice teachers provided
reasons why they would take the actions described:
“…work on students’ attitudes about tolerance, understanding etc. –
this should help the ESL student feel more comfortable about
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participating if it’s a non-threatening environment. Make sure ESL
students [are] always involved in group with others to socialise more”
These results indicated that inservice teachers expressed high personal
efficacy in relation to teaching students who have ESL; their responses
indicated a greater depth of understanding of why certain actions would need to
be taken, which may be due to the fact of their current experiences as classroom
teachers. Working with children at the time would give these participants more
opportunity to reflect upon their actions and witness the outcomes of their
actions. Even if they had no students who have ESL in their class at the time,
they were able to draw upon their experiences to address the teaching scenario
put to them. Teaching efficacy was expressed by inservice teachers but not at as
high a level as their personal efficacy as they did not consider the role of
family/community cultural and background influences on the student’s ability
to learn and become fully integrated into the classroom.
The second hypothetical teaching scenario read as follows:
2) A Grade 2 student in your class, who is a non-native English language learner,
is withdrawn and cries a lot. She says that she wants to go back ‘home’
because she misses her grandparents. There is little interaction between this
child and the non-ESL students in your class. Some of the girls tried to
befriend her for the first few days after her arrival but gave that away because,
they claim, the new student cries too much.
Preservice Teachers: Making connections between home and school was
strongly suggested by preservice teachers as a way to handle this situation:
“Involve student’s parents”, “liaise with parents”, “talk to parents to find out
more” (high teaching efficacy). Preservice teachers stated that they would
contact parents to determine if the child cries all the time at home and what
recommendations parents had to help this child settle in the class. One
suggestion was that parents be invited into the classroom to teach the other
children about their culture (culture load) to build a community of acceptance:
“Possibly allow the parents and child to present a day of their national
country to develop an interest in where she is from in the other students.
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If the other students are interested then they will ask questions and draw
the child out and get her to remember the good things in her country”
Preservice teachers indicated strong support for the idea of including
parents/families in the decision making process of how to help this child (high
teaching efficacy). Other strategies included creating a safe and secure
environment for the child and involving the child in fun-filled, group activities
to take her mind off her sadness, have a unit of lessons about families and the
importance of grandparents and other family members (high personal efficacy):
“…I’d be inclined to get all the children to bring in photos of their
families and create like a picture board so that they call all look at it”
Preservice teachers also indicated that they would encourage the other
students to be patient with the child and ‘buddy’ her with a small group of girls
to encourage the development of friendships and to assist in the development of
positive social skills for all the students in the class. The responses to this
teaching scenario indicated a higher personal efficacy from preservice teaching
than that expressed in the first teaching scenario in that preservice teachers
provided ample reasons why chosen strategies would be taken.
Inservice Teachers: Only one inservice teacher indicated that parents be
involved in this teaching situation: “talk with parents about objects/routines etc
that will help her [the new student] feel comfortable” (teaching efficacy). This
inservice teacher also indicated a need to include aspects of the child’s culture
into lessons (books, music, videos, objects from her culture) (culture load) and
the use of words of the child’s culture (language load) as “…young students
love words – include words of her culture in class”. As with the previous
teaching scenario, the data did not indicate reasons why the majority of
inservice teachers did not consider approaching the family or community
members in regards to addressing the issue presented in this teaching scenario;
however, these teachers did describe strategies they would use in relation to this
scenario.
Inservice teachers described strategies such as they would pair the child up
with “a special friend”, have the child form a friendship with an older child who
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speaks the same language to help ease the child’s transition into the class
(language load / learning load), create a safe and secure environment and
include things that interest the child into class lessons:
“Try to find out what the ESL student is interested in or enjoys doing and
include the subject or activity in the class programme as much as
possible…set up a playtime buddy roster so that the children play with a
group of different children from our class each 2 days”
These strategies indicated both personal efficacy and teaching efficacy;
teachers felt confident in their chosen strategies and that some of the strategies
chosen, specifically addressed cultural considerations of the child in the
scenario. Language load was particularly mentioned by inservice teachers as an
area that needed addressing. Research indicates that conversational language
development generally precedes academic language development (see
Cummins, 1991; Gersten, 1996) so it may be that teachers’ mastery experiences
in working with students who have ESL had led them to believe that providing
the child with opportunities to develop their oral skills would be the best way to
help the child settle down into the everyday routine of the classroom.
The third hypothetical teaching scenario read as follows:
3) You have a new student placed in your Grade 4 class whose family has been
granted refugee status. The boy’s prior schooling was interrupted due to
political unrest in his home country. After arriving here and completing a
year’s tuition of intensive English language learning, your new student’s
English proficiency has not reached Grade 4 level and his low level of English
language skills is hampering his ability to keep up with the work done by the
non-ESL students. No English is spoken at the home of your new student. In
class he spends most of his time watching the other children then appears to
imitate what they do.
Preservice Teachers: Responding to this teaching scenario appeared to
challenge the preservice teachers in the study who stated that they would need
outside assistance to meet the needs of this student:
“In this situation I would find myself a little out of my depth. In
acknowledging so, I would ask that the student be given remedial
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teaching. Perhaps for half-an-hour a day will allow him the time to
connect all the dots”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’d also want to contact people who give
English tuition to see what they’d do”
“I’d say he’d need a lot of trauma help like being a refugee and […] I
don’t know where you’d get that from. I’m just assuming that you’d
have to check that out”
“You’d have to get in contact with I don’t know […] even a debriefing
time once a week with the guidance officer with him or something but if
you could just go through the issues that he has so they’re not so much
popping up in class”
The contextual considerations involved with teaching a student who was
a refugee appeared to cause low personal efficacy and low teaching efficacy for
these preservice teachers. These participants initially appeared to be somewhat
overwhelmed by the idea of teaching a student who has come to Australia as a
refugee; however, they then did describe possible strategies they would use.
This feeling of disequilibrium about one’s capabilities in a teaching situation
and subsequent thoughts on how to resolve the situation could be exhibiting
what Wheatley (2002) described as positive doubt in that these teachers were
uncertain about what exactly they would do but that uncertainty lead them to
adjust their thinking to come up with alternative ideas to help the student settle
into his new environment. Strategies preservice teachers suggested using were
visual cues to reduce the language load for the child, seat the child near a more
advanced learner so that he is imitating the correct way to do things, provide
extra one-on-one tuition and modifying the curriculum so that he is doing
similar work as the rest of the class but at a lower level of competence. One
preservice teacher suggested that the student could create his own picture
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dictionary as a way to connect words with objects in the environment.
Additionally preservice teachers suggested involving parents, asking if they had
any ideas on what should be done for their child as well as providing a secure
and supportive environment. So, while it first appears that these preservice
teachers experienced low personal efficacy and low teaching efficacy, they
turned things around for themselves by creating their own solutions. Offering
viable solutions indicates high rather than low efficacy (Bandura, 1997).
Inservice Teachers: Inservice teachers did not suggest involving parents
or others outside the classroom to help in working with this student although
one respondent replied “Ask for help!” but did not indicate who or where to ask
for the help. These results would indicate low teaching efficacy in that inservice
teachers did not consider or ignored environmental influences that could either
further hinder or help in this teaching situation. There was no data from the
study to suggest that inservice teachers considered that the student’s
background as a political refugee might have an impact on his ability to learn in
the classroom.
Inservice teachers suggested strategies that they would use in the
classroom such as differentiating the curriculum to meet the student’s current
learning level (learning load), work with the child on individual goals to
increase his English comprehension (language load), seat him with a peer who
is patient and enjoys helping others, provide extra teacher-time for working
with the student and start a ‘homework club’, encouraging all children who
need help to stay so that the target student in this scenario does not feel that he
is being singled out. These strategies indicated that the inservice teachers in this
study experienced high personal efficacy in relation to this teaching scenario.
They described how to help a student settle in a new school environment but
these strategies may not necessarily address the specific needs of the student in
this particular teaching scenario. The fact that inservice teachers did not
mention accessing outside help (teaching efficacy) may indicate that, like the
preservice teachers in the study, they did not know where to locate such help, or
they may have simply felt no need for outside help. Instead they indicated that
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they would use strategies they already knew and these would be sufficient to
help the student, suggesting high personal efficacy. Wheatley (2002) described
that teachers can adopt a “too-certain efficacy” in their capabilities to their
detriment of the teaching situation. A too-certain efficacy may have teachers
adopt a more procedural approach to problems wherein teachers opt for feeling
comfortable about their teaching strategies, resisting disequilibrium about their
teaching capabilities and the need to adopt new strategies.
The fourth hypothetical teaching scenario read as follows:
4) You have an Indigenous student in your class who speaks and comprehends
Australian Standard English but is below grade level in written and reading
levels of English. Her best friend is also an Indigenous student, although this
student’s school work is at a level on par with her peer group. The first student
mentioned above appears to be bored with lessons and continually distracts
her friend so that they are both off-task frequently through the day.
Preservice Teachers: Understanding Indigenous culture (culture load) and
adopting strategies to meet the needs of Indigenous students was mentioned by
preservice teachers as important considerations for this teaching scenario. There
was some suggestion that teachers needed to employ different strategies when
working with Indigenous students:
“I’m doing Indigenous Education at the moment and we’re told you
don’t teach them [Indigenous students] like everybody else in the
classroom. You have to treat them differently because they come from
different cultures”
“Indigenous students don’t like to be singled out. Have elders
associated with the school who might talk to the class on general issues
about culture”
These results indicated that preservice teachers had high personal
efficacy and high teaching efficacy in relation to teaching Indigenous students.
They expressed a willingness to adapt curriculum to meet the needs of these
students and a willingness to contact Indigenous community members to learn
culturally appropriate teaching methods for working with these students.
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Strategies mentioned for teaching Indigenous students by preservice teachers
included making the lesson more relevant and authentic to increase the
student’s motivation to learn and to look a one’s self and the teaching approach
taken to consider whether there needed to be adjustments made in the teaching
approach. Also mentioned was utilising oral story telling (culturally appropriate
for some Indigenous students) which could lead to recording and transcription
of the stories to encourage more participation in class (language and learning
load). The behaviour management strategy of separating the two students for
some parts of the day was also mentioned (personal efficacy).
Generally, there was a mix of positive personal efficacy and positive
teaching efficacy for preservice teachers in this study. There appeared to be
more awareness of issues to address with Indigenous students (as compared
with students who are refugees). Preservice teachers drew upon their current
studies and knowledge of teaching Indigenous students in Australia when
responding to this teaching scenario, expressing both high personal efficacy and
high teaching efficacy.
Inservice Teachers: In contrast to the preserive teachers in this study,
the inservice teachers did not mention students’ culture as a consideration in
addressing in this teaching scenario. This finding is consistent with results from
inservice teachers in the other three teaching scenarios above in that they gave
scant attention to the environmental issues (teaching efficacy) of the students
described other than those that had a direct impact on learning in the classroom
– such a lack of English language proficiency. It is not clear from these results
why inservice teachers did not give students’ other cultural considerations
higher priority in their responses. It may be that they were working with the
premise that all teaching is teaching (Clair, 1995); that is, all children regardless
of their backgrounds are treated the same and so no special consideration is
given to students’ culture. Alternatively, the reason may be what Wheatley
(2002) described as a ‘pretend teacher efficacy’ where teachers hide their
uncertainty about their capabilities in situations where they perceive that they
are expected to be capable. The inservice teachers in this study continually
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stated that they felt efficacious ‘with support’. ESL support is generally given
outside the classroom as a withdrawal program, not as a within class everyday
program. It may be that these inservice teachers felt that it was the ESL
teacher’s responsibility to deal with students’ cultural considerations not theirs;
that their responsibility was to create an inclusive environment by treating
everyone the same.
Inservice teachers, like the preservice teachers above, mentioned that
they would separate the two students to avoid them both becoming off-task,
provide differentiated learning activities to alleviate their boredom, give
individual help if possible and read instructions together as a class so the
students will know what to do and will not be singled out. These strategies
expressed a high personal efficacy in relation to the teaching scenario. As with
the previous three hypothetical teaching scenarios, inservice teachers were
found to have high personal efficacy.
Summary
In relation to contextual considerations, language load (classroom
language and the fluidity of communication) and culture load (differences and
similarities of culture) were most often mentioned by participants in the study.
Learning load (teachers’ perceptions of how students who have ESL learn) and
cognitive load (students who have ESL must process information in at least two
languages) were also mentioned but to a lesser degree. Contextual
considerations were discussed in relation to both personal efficacy and teaching
efficacy. For example, participants mentioned strategies they felt confident they
would use to help students overcome language difficulties (give easier tasks,
encourage conversational language –indicating high personal efficacy) and
include aspects of students’ culture into lessons (do a multicultural project –
indicating high teaching efficacy). While the strategies described were good in
that they may well assist in helping students who have ESL settle into the
classroom, inservice teachers in particular made little mention of how they
would connect classroom teaching with students’ home or community lives as
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part of their inclusive practices (low teaching efficacy); participants gave few
reasons at to why they would take the actions they described although that was
a question asked for each of the teaching scenarios.
Gersten (1999) suggested that while teachers have a need to feel that
they are competent at their jobs, they may feel a cultural distance between
themselves and students who have ESL and so retreat into ‘safe’ teaching
practices which involve little risk-taking for themselves and their students. It is
unclear if participants in this study were describing ‘safe’ teaching practices in
their responses but few gave any explanation of why they would take the
actions they described in relation to the target students of this study. There is
much in the literature that suggests that teachers must become familiar with
students’ cultural background in order to provide students with effective
learning (see Carrasquillo & Rodriguez, 1995; Tileston, 2004). Inservice
teachers in Study 3 did not mention an awareness of students’ culture or interest
in learning more about their cultural backgrounds beyond what was described
in the teaching scenarios; therefore, this limited amount of information may be
one reason why their responses did not include an awareness of the impact of
students’ culture on their involvement in school activities or how these teachers
could draw upon environmental support to help the students in the teaching
scenarios. In particular, inservice teachers did not mention the impact of
cultural background for Indigenous students; however, preservice teachers did
mention the importance of learning about and attending to Indigenous cultures
and that they were learning about such issues in their university studies.
Participants responded most completely to the second teaching scenario
in which a Grade 2 student is withdrawn and cries a lot at school. Both
preservice and inservice teachers described strategies on how to help this child
feel safe, secure and included as a class member. The third teaching scenario,
which described the arrival of a student granted refugee status, appeared to be
the most challenging for participants. Preservice teachers acknowledged the
student’s background and the impact this background may have on the student,
and that they were not sure how to deal with such an issue but mentioned
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avenues they might try (get remedial teaching, English tuition and checking out
where to get help for someone who has suffered trauma). In contrast, only one
inservice teacher made mention of the student’s background in considering
what to do to work with this child and did so by suggesting that she would need
help but did not indicate what kind of help. A student’s family who has had to
flee their country because of political unrest may well suffer from trauma; the
preservice teachers in this study indicating such an awareness demonstrated
more sensitivity to the individual needs of the student than did the inservice
teachers. The preservice teachers who expressed uncertainty about what to do
but then suggested possible solutions are demonstrating what Wheatley (2002)
described as positive doubt. Positive doubt can cause teachers to question the
situation rather than retreat from it. There is not enough data here to thoroughly
examine inservice teachers’ lack of response to this case study. Were they too
overwhelmed by the thought of teaching such a student that they chose to
ignore the student’s background situation altogether? Did they consider it
inconsequential to classroom activities? More study is needed in this area to
determine how teachers think about teaching students who are not only
culturally different from them but who have also experienced traumatic
circumstances before coming to Australia.
One theme for both preservice and inservice teachers was that they
would do what they could to provide students with a safe and secure
environment. In doing so, these participants may be exhibiting implicit
awareness of the difficulties these students experience in coming to such an
alien environment to what they have always known. However, to be truly
effective in helping these students, teachers must have a greater awareness of
the exact nature of the difficulties that may affect a child’s learning. With a
greater awareness, teachers can choose the most appropriate strategies for the
given situation.
To conclude, mastery experiences and verbal persuasion/vicarious
experiences were the most prevalent sources of efficacy information used in
response to teachers being asked how confident they felt about teaching
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students who have ESL. This finding supports those of Study 1 of the current
research. Personal efficacy was identified as most frequently displayed by
participants in Study 2 and these findings concur with that of Studies 1 and 2.
Culture load and language load were the contextual considerations most often
mentioned by participants although, as in Study 1, learning load and cognitive
load were also mentioned to a lesser extent in Study 3. For example,
participants mentioned that they would reduce the learning load for the student,
and adapt lessons.
Chapter 7 will present a discussion of the results of the three studies in
relation to the cyclical model of teacher efficacy followed by an examination of
the strengths and significance of the study with recommendations for future
teacher preparation for working with students who have ESL.
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CHAPTER 7 Discussion
The aim of the current research was to explore the construct of teacher
efficacy within the context of teaching primary school students who have ESL.
This chapter will describe the results of the three studies of the research within
the modified cyclical model of teacher efficacy utilised for the research. A brief
recount of the model will be given, followed by a description of the connections
between the various stages of the model and a summary of the results of the
three studies for the current research. Recommendations for future teacher
preparation are given, followed by a review of the limitations of the research.
The chapter concludes with recommendations for future research in the area of
teaching students who have ESL in mainstream classrooms.
Introduction
Through the utilisation of a modified cyclical model, teacher efficacy
for teaching students who have ESL was tracked from the source of efficacy
beliefs through to the effects of efficacy beliefs on teaching strategies (Figure 3). Figure 3: Modified cyclical model of teacher efficacy
Sources of Efficacy Information
Verbal Persuasion
Vicarious Experience Physiological Arousal Mastery Experience
New Sources of Efficacy Information
Four-Factor Model of Teacher Efficacy Analysis of Teaching Task Assessment of Personal Teaching Competence (Personal Efficacy) Assessment / Attaining Learning Outcomes (Outcome Efficacy) Assessment / Attaining Classroom Management (Classroom Management Efficacy) Assessment / Overcoming Environment Factors (Teaching Efficacy)
Performance
Cognitive
Processing
Consequences of Teacher Efficacy
Goals, effort, persistence
Etc.
Teacher Efficacy
Contextual Considerations
Cognitive Load Language Load Learning Load Culture Load
(Original from: Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy & Hoy, 1998)
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According to Tschannen-Moran et al. (1998), teacher efficacy can be
tracked from the source of efficacy information through to the development of
new efficacy beliefs as a result of a commitment to teaching performance.
Three components of the cyclical model were explored in the current research;
the modified model included a context for study (in this research described as
contextual considerations for teaching students who have ESL), the exploration
of four factors of teacher efficacy (personal efficacy, teaching efficacy,
classroom management efficacy and outcome efficacy) and, finally, explored
teaching performance (as teaching strategies).
Exploring the Modified Cyclical Model
Study 1 of the research examined four sources of efficacy beliefs in
association with four contextual considerations in relation to teaching students
who have ESL and referred to the research questions: How do teacher
understand the term, ESL; What sources of efficacy information guide teachers
in relation to teaching students who have ESL; and What contextual
considerations are taken into account when teaching students who have ESL?.
Sources of efficacy information included verbal persuasion, vicarious
experience, physiological arousal and mastery experience (as described by
Bandura, 1986, 1997). It was proposed that in the modified model these sources
of efficacy beliefs are filtered through the teaching context, which for this
research was described as ESL contextual considerations (as derived from
Meyer, 2000). These contextual considerations were cognitive load, language
load, learning load and culture load. In brief, results indicate that mastery
experiences in association with language load and culture load are the most
prominent sources of teacher efficacy for both preservice teachers and inservice
teachers. These results will be discussed further below.
Study 2 explored a four-factor model of teacher efficacy: teaching
efficacy, personal efficacy, outcome efficacy and classroom management
efficacy (from Brouwers & Tomic, 2003). Study 2 addressed the research
question: What efficacy factors are associated with teaching students who have
ESL? After a factor analysis was completed, it was found in this research that
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there were two factors: personal efficacy and teaching efficacy in relation to
teaching students who have ESL, not four as was hypothesised.
In Study 3, consequences of efficacy beliefs, demonstrated as teaching
strategies were explored in response to the research question: How do teachers’
efficacy beliefs influence their teaching strategies for teaching students who
have ESL? In this phase of the model, teachers commit to a course of action
which exhibit as teaching performance which, in turn, leads to new efficacy
beliefs – thus completing the cycle. In the current research, developing and
using teaching strategies that addressed students’ language load and culture
load were most often mentioned in relation to the efficacy factors of personal
efficacy and teaching efficacy. Results indicated that teachers felt high personal
efficacy in their chosen teaching strategies (that is, they felt confident in their
capabilities to teach in a general sense) but expressed lower teaching efficacy
(confidence in their capabilities to overcome environmental factors) in relation
to teaching students who have ESL. In other words, teachers expressed that
when they taught a student who was ESL as just another student in the class,
they were confident in their abilities to do so; however, when pressed to
consider contextual considerations in relation to the same students, teachers
were less confident in their capabilities, indeed, they could describe what
strategies they would use for teaching these students but were less able to
describe why they would chose these strategies. It would appear, then, that
there is a connection between teachers’ efficacy beliefs (in the current research)
and their chosen teaching strategies in that it could be suggested that teachers
who are confident about the strategies they choose to use would have an
understanding of why one particular strategy would be preferred over another.
More research into this area is needed to explore further the links between
efficacy beliefs and teachers’ commitment to a particular course of action.
A common research question for all three studies asked participants
how confident they were in their capabilities to teach students who have ESL.
Overall, it would appear that both preservice and inservice teachers have high
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levels of personal efficacy and moderate levels of teaching efficacy in relation
to teaching students who have ESL.
While the cyclical model of teacher efficacy has not been used before in
exploring teacher efficacy in relation to teaching students who have ESL, the
current research indicates that the model is useful for tracking efficacy beliefs
from their source through to the implementation of teaching strategies. Mastery
experiences in association with language load and culture load were the most
described sources of efficacy information for both Studies 1 and 3, which
suggests a consistency throughout the cycle. The two factors of personal
efficacy and teaching efficacy were also consistently revealed throughout all
three studies. As the current research was exploratory, more research utilising
the cyclical model is needed to add to our understanding of the flow of efficacy
beliefs from sources of efficacy information to performance of teaching tasks.
For example, is the flow of efficacy similar in relation to a different group of
students as was found in relation to teaching students who have ESL in the
current research? The next section will describe the overall results of the three
studies for the research.
Discussion of the Results
In the current research, personal efficacy includes teaching instruction
and/or activities to manage student behaviour and activities to reach
instructional outcomes; teaching efficacy refers to teachers’ beliefs regarding
the influence of environmental factors beyond their control on student learning.
In the literature personal efficacy and teaching efficacy have been identified as
strong factors of efficacy beliefs (Allinder, 1995; Gibson & Dembo, 1984;
Pajares, 1992; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990). Allinder (1995) found that different
gains in student achievement were related to differing degrees of personal and
teaching efficacy and that high efficacy beliefs resulted in positive influences
on student learning.
In the current study, high and/or low personal efficacy and teaching
efficacy appeared to have a direct relation to mastery experiences and verbal
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persuasion/vicarious experiences in relation to teaching students who have ESL.
For example, one preservice teacher stated: “I think if it’s just me I can do/make
a difference, help, but outside influences make it harder i.e. home, outside
school hours”. This comment is fairly consistent with many in the current
research in that participants felt efficacious in their general abilities as a teacher
(personal efficacy) but not in their abilities to work with parents/caregivers
and/or overcome environmental influences outside the classroom (teaching
efficacy). Woolfolk and Hoy (1990) described this dichotomy of efficacy
beliefs where teachers may feel high efficacy in one aspect of a teaching
context but low efficacy in another aspect of the teaching context as is indicated
in the current research. Overall, teachers in the research felt higher personal
efficacy than they did teaching efficacy for working with students who have
ESL and this was evident from the beginning of the research where participants
described the sources of their efficacy beliefs.
Sources of Efficacy Beliefs: The main source of efficacy beliefs revealed
by both preservice teachers and inservice teachers in the research was mastery
experiences. Mastery experiences describe an individual’s own past
performance on a particular task. In Study 1, mastery experiences for preservice
teachers included such things as having taught students who have ESL during
their field experience placements, being an ESL learner, having friends who
were ESL and travelling to non-English speaking countries. Mastery
experiences were also linked to preservice teacher’s beliefs in their general
capabilities to teach rather than specific capabilities to teach students who have
ESL. Preservice teachers suggested that because they had confidence in their
general abilities as a teacher (high personal efficacy) they would be able to
transfer these competencies to teach to a specific area of learning needs such as
those presented by students who have ESL. Preservice teachers who claimed
not to have taught students who have ESL (no mastery experiences) described
their lack of confidence (low personal efficacy) to do the job. Low efficacy was
identified in statements such as: “…we’re definitely not prepared for it
[teaching students who have ESL]”.
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Some of the preservice teachers considered teaching ESL learners
within in their general teaching abilities as just part of the overall job of
teaching: “…they’re another kid in the class and I don’t see it as a problem.”
Others stated that they had taught in a classroom in which there were students
who are ESL but gave these students no particular consideration different to
that given to the other students in the class. These preservice teachers believed
that they had been effective teachers in the class; however, when some
participated in a discussion interview with other participants in this study, they
realised that they had not taught to the individual needs of the students in the
class: “…when I first went out teaching I was not made aware of how hard we
as the teacher should really think about who we are teaching more than what
we are teaching”. It seemed that while preservice teachers had some
knowledge about teaching ESL students through their university course work,
they did not then apply the theory to a practical situation. While describing the
impact of a negative mastery experience, the change in perception about
teaching students who have ESL expressed by this preservice teacher is an
indication of the power of verbal persuasion in that before the focus group
discussion, this participant had not really thought about her students but was
more concentrated on teaching the content. Through the focus group discussion,
the participant was able to reflect upon her behaviour in the class with students
who were ESL and this made her realise that she could do better. This incident
demonstrates that there is value for teacher trainers to conduct such discussions
in lectures and tutorials to alert preservice teachers that teaching the content of
the lesson is only part of what is needed to teach students who have ESL.
However, Neuharth-Pritchett, Reiff and Pearson (2001) found that relatively
few preservice teachers made connections between university coursework and
practicum experiences. Findings in the current study concur with those of
Neuharth-Pritchett et al. in that some preservice teachers did not make the
connections between what they had been taught about addressing the individual
needs of their students in their university studies and what they enacted with
these students on their practicum:
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“…like I said, I actually didn’t even think of the ESL students…it didn’t
occur to me that I should have paid more attention to what they actually knew
already.”
As with the preservice teachers, mastery experiences were most often
cited by inservice teachers as a source of efficacy beliefs. Mastery experiences
were described as classroom teaching, being able to speak a language other than
English and travelling to countries where English was not the first language.
Inservice teachers described how they began their careers with low efficacy in
relation to teaching students who have ESL but with experience gained more
confidence in working with these students. This result concurs with that found
with the preservice teachers in the current study in that teacher efficacy changed
over time and in relation to specific contexts. Woolfolk and Hoy (1990)
suggested that new circumstances will have an impact on the strength and
direction of an individual’s efficacy with positive experiences resulting in
higher efficacy and this seemed to be the case with participants in the current
research. For example, one preservice teacher stated: “…with my experience in
teaching overseas, I have a high level of confidence in this area. Songs were
useful when teaching English in Kenya.” This preservice teacher is describing
high personal efficacy in relation to his experiences teaching in Kenya. He felt
that the success he had in that situation will carry over into future teaching
situations with non-native English language learners in Australia. The situation
the preservice teacher described is an example of a mastery experience. He had
experienced success in one teaching situation and felt he could continue being
successful in other teaching situations. This incident also describes a high level
of teaching efficacy in that the community was supportive of their children
learning English. This participant did not describe teaching students who have
ESL in Australian schools but felt that he would be able to achieve high levels
of success from his teaching experiences overseas.
Educators have come to appreciate the value of authentic experiences
for teachers to gain an understanding of what it means to be an ESL learner and
are developing new ways to provide such experiences. An example of one
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program that offers positive mastery experiences for teachers is “Verano en
Mexico”, a travel abroad program sponsored by the University of Arizona
(Fletcher, 2006). Verano en Mexico is a bilingual foreign study program
offered to teachers of Latino students in the United States, including students
with special needs. The four-week program is offered to ESL, bilingual, regular
and special educators at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and consists
of academic work, cultural activities and experiences working with children,
their families and teachers in Mexico. Students in this immersion program can
earn up to six credits towards their university degree studying such units as
‘Cultural and linguistic diversity in exceptional learners’ and ‘Observation and
participation in regular and special education programs’. While the university
courses are offered in English, students in the program spend much of their
time embedded in the Mexican language and culture living with families,
visiting a school and participating in the everyday cultural activities of the
region. Participants of the program (the majority monolingual English speakers)
described that they were able to better appreciate the contextual considerations
that confront a student learning in an unfamiliar language and culture in an
unfamiliar setting (Fletcher, 2006). Fletcher claimed that travel abroad
programs prepare teachers to better meet students’ need through their developed
sense of empathy and understanding.
A service learning program (Carrington & Saggers, 2006) is another
mode of delivery to enable preservice teachers to gain mastery experiences in
working with non-native English learners. The program goals as set up by
Carrington and Saggers were to connect “…theory with experience and thought
with action”, to raise awareness of social justice issues and to provide “…a
richer context for student learning”. Community agencies included having
preservice teachers working with culturally and linguistically diverse students,
including refugee children, through the Anglicare Refugee and Migrant Service
(ARMS). Having achieved its initial goals, the service learning program has
expanded as both students and community service agencies have realised the
gains for all stakeholders.
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Verbal persuasion/Vicarious experience: Apart from mastery
experiences, the next most cited sources of efficacy beliefs were verbal
persuasion/vicarious experiences. Verbal persuasion was described as speaking
with ESL teachers about how to teach students who have ESL and speaking
with colleagues. Participants indicated that such talks were significant in
helping them gain better understanding of how to teach these students.
Vicarious experience refers to efficacy information gained from observing a
particular task being performed (e.g., direct personal observation, watching a
video demonstrating behaviour, learning through lectures/ workshops/case
studies). Hagen, Gutkin, Wilson and Oats (1998) found that efficacy
perceptions can be increased through verbal persuasion/vicarious experiences
such as videotapes of teaching scenarios that explicitly demonstrate specific
teaching behaviours.
In the current study, preservice teachers indicated that they had gained
verbal persusion/vicarious experiences through university lectures and courses
and by ‘shadowing’ ESL teachers in schools. Preservice teachers also described
that they followed the lead of their host teachers in schools. One preservice
teacher described that she did not observe her host teacher working differently
with the students who have ESL and that the students were very quiet in the
class. Following the lead of her host teacher, this preservice teacher did not
change her teaching to accommodate non-native English language learners, nor
did it occur to her to consider why these students were so quiet. So, in this
instance, the verbal persuasion/vicarious experience was negative in promoting
awareness of how to effectively teach students who have ESL. The data did not
reveal how long these children had been learning English but their quiet
demeanours may have indicated that they did not understand English well
enough to follow the lesson or participate in class activities, or it may have been
an indication of the cultural influences on the students in that in many countries
it is expected that children will remain quiet in the process of learning (Igoa,
1995; Li, 2002). This preservice teacher appeared to have lost a valuable
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training session on appropriate strategies to use with these students because of
the modelling of the host teacher.
Neuharth-Pritchett et al. (2001) claimed that preservice teachers were
given a lack of quality models to follow in field experience placements. In their
study Neuharth-Pritchett et al. found that only 16% of students surveyed
demonstrated a strong understanding of multicultural education. In the current
study, 47% of preservice teachers indicated that they felt their teaching
strategies would meet the learning needs of students who have ESL; 94% of
preservice teachers indicated that they would take students’ cultural background
into consideration when preparing lessons having studied about such things at
university. However, the preservice teacher described above felt that at the time
she had been an effective teacher in the class. The situation may be that
preservice teachers have high personal efficacy in their teaching strategies but if
they have not been trained in how to adapt these strategies to particular
student’s needs then their strategies may well not meet those needs. Preservice
teachers may able to appreciate the theory of teaching to a diverse group of
students from their university course work, but in reality they may not be able
to enact the theory in a classroom situation without support from host teachers.
If host teachers have little knowledge about addressing the needs of students
who have ESL, they cannot pass this information on to the preservice teachers
in their care.
Inservice teachers stated that they had engaged in verbal
persuasion/vicarious experiences through inservice workshops and seminars
and/or through taking a course at university. In the current study, 77% of
inservice teachers indicated that they felt their teaching strategies would meet
the learning needs of students who have ESL; however; only 52% of inservice
teachers indicated that they would take students’ cultural background into
consideration when preparing lessons. Rhine (1995) found that even after an
inservice workshop, training teachers to assess ESL students, teachers
continued to lack confidence in their abilities to evaluate student learning and
that teachers did not know how to interact comfortably with students who had
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difficulties with English language proficiency. Cabello and Burstein (1995)
suggested that short courses are not enough to transform thinking and
behaviours in relation to teaching; change occurs with experience over time.
Teachers need time not only to reconceptualise their teaching behaviours but
also how to physically change their behaviours. Results gained through a one-
off short course can easily be forgotten if there is no immediate follow-up and
continuing program to assist with the transition to adopting new teaching
approaches.
It should be noted that inservice teachers in the current study repeatedly
indicated that they would like more information and training in relation to
teaching students who have ESL. Only 24% of inservice teachers claimed to
have had any training to teach these students whereas 83% claimed that they
had already taught students who have ESL. It would seem from these results
that much more help is needed for teachers to prepare them to provide the most
effective teaching possible for students who are non-native English language
learners.
Physiological arousal for both preservice and inservice teachers was
expressed by some as feeling positive about their abilities to teach in general
and so being able to extend those capabilities to teaching students who have
ESL. Others expressed that they did not feel confident about teaching these
students and felt worried about the prospect of teaching these students. “I am a
little daunted and scared as balancing the curriculum workload with giving
ESL student enough attention will be extremely challenging”.
Sources of efficacy beliefs were connected to contextual considerations in the
current research as teacher efficacy is acknowledged as being context specific
(Bandura, 1986, 1997; Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy & Hoy, 1998).
Contextual considerations for Study 1 were cognitive load, language load,
learning load and culture load.
Cognitive load (understanding that students are processing information
in at least two languages) was not described often by inservice teachers in the
research. Cognitive development requires students to connect new concepts
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learnt in school to their previous knowledge (Baca & Cervantes, 1989;
Cummins, 1991). More than one preservice teacher in the study suggested that
reading material be adjusted for students; for example, using a Year 1 reader for
a Year 7 student struggling to learn in English. Such an approach to teaching/
learning would be cognitively undemanding for a Year 7 student and might be
more of a solution to make teaching easier for the teacher but may do little to
cognitively challenge the student. Research suggested that many teachers are
not trained to teach non-native English language learners (Carrasquillo &
Rodriguez, 1995; Connor & Boskin, 2001). It is suggested that with training in
the various aspects of second language acquisition teachers would be better able
to meet the cognitive load of students.
Participants in the current research described whole-class strategies and
activities they would use when teaching students who have ESL but did not
discuss particular ways to help develop students’ cognitive understanding.
Cognitive load in second language acquisition involves the process of students
using their first language to gain access to their new language and, for a time,
having to translate information from their new language back into their first
language to make sense of the concepts and ideas presented to them. Students
will need to use their first language in order to understand their new language
until they have become familiar enough and practiced enough with the new
language to the point where they do not need their first language to understand
things. This cognitive load is complex and demanding on students and occurs
over a period of time; students cannot simply arrive in a classroom with little or
no English and be expected to understand the language within a matter of
weeks. The teacher’s role should be to provide strategies and lessons that
specifically aid students’ cognitive development. However, in the current study
there was scant mention of addressing students’ needs in this area. Teachers in
the study did, though, ask for assistance in the form of teaching resources.
Penfield (1987) found that teachers were uncertain about how to
integrate lesson content with English language development for these students
with most teachers in her study indicating that they would prefer the ESL
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teacher prepare materials for them. Inservice teachers in the current research
suggested that what they needed were prepared resources for immediate use:
“Just give us the resources and we’ll take it from there”. The danger in this
kind of approach to teaching is that students who have ESL represent a range of
diverse cultures, prior knowledge and abilities, so asking ESL teachers to
prepare all the resources for teaching these students is impractical. As van Gilst
and Gura (2006) pointed out, ESL teachers (or Advisory Visiting Teachers)
have limited time to work one-on-one with students and limited time to prepare
lessons to meet individual needs of these students. As indicated earlier in this
thesis, the onus is on the classroom teacher to address the individual needs of
their students. In asking for ready-made resources to use, inservice teachers are,
in fact, expressing low personal efficacy to teach students who have ESL.
When asked specifically about strategies to assist students who have ESL,
inservice teachers stated that they needed help from ESL teachers or Learning
Support teachers.
Learning load (what teachers ask students to do in set learning tasks)
was given scant mention by participants in the study in that there was no
mention of learning expectations for students who have ESL that would be
different to those for native English language learners, nor was there mention of
any separate learning programming apart from learning English on top of the
regular classroom work required of all students in the class. The data revealed
that teachers expected that separate, specific learning for students who have
ESL would be done with the ESL teacher at the school. Teachers expressed that
they either did not feel confident to meet the specific learning needs of these
students and so needed help in this area or else they did not address the issue at
all. In the latter instance, this approach to teaching reflects Clair’s (1995) notion
that many teachers do not understand how to teach students who have ESL and
so do not deviate from regular teaching practices to accommodate for these
students’ learning needs.
Preservice teachers in the current study mentioned that students who
have ESL were generally quiet in class and so drew little attention from the
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teacher. Being quiet in the classroom may be a feature of culture as well as a
feature of a student settling into a new environment. For example, Ruan (2003)
suggested that in traditional Chinese homes children are not encouraged to
engage in conversations with adults unless invited. In contrast, children in
Australian schools are continually expected to engage in conversation with
adults and, in many instances, initiate conversations with adults. When teachers
are not sensitive to cultural differences, children who are not talkative can be
overlooked.
On the other hand, not all students were quiet and compliant. Disruptive
behaviour proved to be a challenge for preservice teachers. For example, one
participant mentioned a child who was disruptive. It is not clear from the data
why the child was disruptive; the preservice teacher did not inquire about the
child’s behaviour or background, nor did she adjust her teaching to address the
particular needs of this student. She described how she felt frustrated by this
child’s behaviour and stated that she expected him to behave properly and learn
along with the other students in the class. There are many possible reasons why
this child was disruptive. The child may have been new to the class and so felt
frustrated, angry or fearful because he did not know what was expected of him.
He may not have understood the behaviour of those around him and felt sad and
lonely. He may have been experiencing a cultural loss of the home he once had.
The preservice teacher did not state a reason why they child might have been
disruptive but instead focused on her own feelings of frustration. This
preservice teacher may be doing what Connor and Boskin (2001) described as
judging a student by their behaviour rather than working with the child to
understand the reasons for the behaviour. In the current study these feelings of
frustration for the preservice teacher (low personal efficacy) may remain with
her as a new source of efficacy information that will play a part in determining
how she will react in future similar situations.
There was a suggestion by participants in the study that learning
occurred best for students who have ESL through socialising with native
English language peers. The effects of socialisation for learning is advocated as
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important in helping students adjust to their new environment (Major &
Cledon-Pattichis, 2001; Peragay & Boyle, 2000). Participants in the current
research described the need to create a safe and secure environment and have
activities that would assist the development of students’ socialisation skills and
English language skills so that students could participate more widely in the
class. Curtain and Dahlberg (2004) advocated creating a low-anxiety
environment to help ease the transition for these students into their new
schooling life. Creating a safe and secure environment for students who have
ESL helps them to feel included rather than excluded and consequently, helps
as a confidence builder (Kirovo-Petrova, 2000; Watts-Taffe & Truscott, 2000).
Participants in the current study suggested employing activities such as a
buddy-system to pair-up students and other inclusive practices to help the
student feel safe and comfortable as part of the class. These strategies indicated
a high level of personal efficacy in that participants felt confident that they
could provide the needed environment and activities to help students
Culture load: (teachers’ understanding of the differences and
similarities of culture through language and how much new culture a student
must comprehend to participate in learning activities) was one of the most often
mentioned of the contextual considerations by participants in the current study.
Participants mentioned that they would research students’ culture and include
reference to students’ cultures in class activities. Incorporating aspects of
students’ cultures into lessons was advocated by participants, both preservice
teachers and inservice teachers. Participants described activities such as
allowing students to share artefacts from their culture and/or teaching the class
words from their home language. These strategies indicated participants’
awareness of the need to include students’ cultural backgrounds in class
activities to make them feel welcomed and valued and indicated a high level of
personal efficacy in that teachers felt confident in their capabilities to include
such activities in the curriculum. Meaningful class activities can enhance
students’ English language development and social development (Curtain &
Dahlberg, 2004; Gardner, 1983). Meaningful activities provide a context for
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students and help them to learn how to become a valued member of the class.
However, including one-off activities of cultural awareness (e.g. multicultural
week) is not the same as adapting curriculum to the individual needs of students.
An example of adapting curriculum was described by Twyman,
Ketterlin-Geller, McCoy and Tindal (2003) where curriculum and instruction
were intentionally aligned with assessment in an instructional approach called
concept-based instruction. According to Twyman et al., traditional instruction
presupposes that students have the prior knowledge and skills to access new
knowledge. In contrast, concept-based instruction is delivered in three distinct
stages. The first stage focuses on delivering information organised into critical
knowledge forms (facts, concepts, attributes and principles) with follow-up
reflections to reinforce the learning. In the second stage, declarative and
procedural knowledge is delivered using graphical presentations of information,
selective scaffolding of activities and through interactive discussions. In the
third stage, activities to develop critical thinking skills and problem-solving
skills are administered to encourage students to transfer knowledge from one
domain to another. The students in the Twyman et al.’s program were Hispanic
and the chosen topic for learning covered four Meso-American civilisations
(Olmec, Maya, Aztex and Inca), which acknowledged the heritage of the
students but was also broad enough to appeal to native English language
learners as well.
This approach to teaching/learning the content of the lessons differs to
that described by the participants of the current study. Participants in the current
study stated that they would have to do research to find out about students’
cultural backgrounds and then incorporate that information into lessons or class
activities. In the concept-based approach, the students did the research.
Information on the cultural heritage of the Meso-Americans was not given to
students as facts but was discovered by the students through students’
exploration and engagement in the learning. One boy in the experimental group
of Twyman et al’s (2003) study, who had been identified as ‘at risk’ because of
his low level of performance in school, produced work that was described as
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exemplary except in the area where references to the textbook was needed. This
result indicated that developing lessons and activities that encourage students to
take responsibility for their own learning can produce excellent results. Lessons
and activities that are given to students as factual information (e.g. via a
textbook), require a lot of students who have limited English language
proficiency and, who in the end, may not understand the required content of the
lesson. The concept-based approach to teaching may not work for all students,
but it is an example of one approach that adapts curriculum to meet students’
needs.
Another aspect of cultural load described by participants in the current
research was the effect of families and the community on students’ learning
(teaching efficacy). Preservice teachers, in particular, mentioned the effects of
family on children’s adjustment to their new school. One focus group of
preservice teachers discussed the effects of racism on teaching and learning not
only for students who have ESL but for all students, teachers, families and the
community at large. These preservice teachers, however, described that they
felt that their teaching would have little impact to counter racist attitudes if such
an attitude prevailed in the community. In contrast, Huss-Keeler (1997)
demonstrated in her study that a concerted effort from teachers to overcome
such barriers can have a positive effect in the classroom and in the community.
When teachers are willing to initiate behaviour that recognises and accepts
diversity in the classroom and in the community and work towards eliminating
racist attitudes, positive changes can be made. There is much in recent literature
that suggests teachers must be willing to examine their own cultural frames of
reference in order to appreciate what is needed to work most effectively with
students who have ESL (see Kagitcibasi, 1996; Kirova-Petrova, 2000). When
one has taken the time to reflect on oneself culturally in relation to others, there
develops a greater appreciation of the diversity in learning and thinking in the
students one teaches and the community beyond. Measures such as the
Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for Teaching ESL Learners, developed for
the current research, help to identify teachers’ strengths in relation to teaching
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students who have ESL and areas where their teaching approach may need to be
strengthened to provide the most effective learning for these students.
Campey (2002) suggested that there needs to be a strong home-school
connection, that parents are a valuable resource for teachers. In the current
study, inservice teachers, in particular, did not refer to environmental factors
that might impact on students (such as the home life), indicating their low
teaching efficacy. Inservice teachers did not describe students’ home life or
cultures in negative ways; discussion in this area was simply missing from
these participants. There was scant mention of the need for connections to be
made between home and school to help ease the transition for students into
school life and no mention of how parents could participate within the school.
DeCastro-Ambrosetti and Cho (2005) suggested that home-school
communication and understanding is the key to promoting parental involvement;
however, preservice teachers in the DeCastro-Ambrosetti and Cho study,
preservice teachers stated that they felt ill-equipped to make connections with
what they perceived to be culturally and linguistically different families. The
preservice teachers blamed the home for students’ poor academic performance,
believing that parents did not value education and passed these values onto their
children. In contrast, preservice teachers in the current study did not display
such fear about making home-school connections. Preservice teaches in the
current research indicated that they would learn about their students’
backgrounds in order to be more effective teachers and would invite parents and
other community members into the classroom.
There was a marked difference in how preservice and inservice teachers
in the current study spoke about incorporating environmental factors into
teaching practices (teaching efficacy). Preservice teachers mentioned that they
felt confident that they would be able to include parents and community
members in school activities to meet the needs of students who have ESL (high
teaching efficacy) whereas inservice teachers indicated that they needed
learning support teachers to work with these students, not parents and
community members (low teaching efficacy). This data was revealed in the
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focus groups but also in the data from the survey in Study 2 where scores for
preservice teachers’ teaching efficacy was higher than that for inservice
teachers. However, it should be noted that preservice teachers had not yet had
many opportunities to actually invite parents and/or community members into
the classroom so from the data it is not clear how these trainee teachers would
go about including community members in classroom activities.
Preservice teachers in the current study described that they would invite
community members into their classrooms as a valuable resource, but what
would they have these people do? These preservice teachers believed that they
could rely on parents and community members to act as interpreters and teacher
aids to ESL students on a daily basis; however, the realities of teaching may
cause them to think about their ideas in relation to including family and
community members in their teaching activities. As an illustration of this point,
the researcher has worked in a school in which there were a large number of
students who were refugees from the Sudan. All the students at this school learn
Italian as a language other than English (LOTE). Children from the Sudan do
not speak Italian, they speak Arabic. If the school were to connect to the
community they serve, it would seem logical that the students at the school
learnt Arabic instead of Italian. There are no Italian migrant families at the
school. To include parents and/or other community members originating from
the Sudan into school activities they could be invited to participate as tutors in
Arabic (as a LOTE) and/or teach about Sudanese culture, but this does not
happen. No Arabic language learning occurs at the school. Indeed, the school
has a sister-school overseas, not in the Sudan or in Italy, but in South Korea.
However, students at the school do not learn to speak Korean as their LOTE,
they learn Italian. Members of the Korean community are not invited into the
school to teach students Korean or about Korean culture, even when there are
study groups of Korean students at the school. The students at this school learn
Italian. When parents are invited into the school they fulfil such duties as
photocopying and one-on-one remedial reading or maths with students, sitting
outside the classroom. A preservice teacher doing a practicum at this school
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would see parents involved but more or less as an assistant to the teacher as a
rather low-key arrangement. Studies of cultures other than mainstream
Australian culture is delivered as one-off units of learning and generally in
relation to an Australian event such as the Commonwealth Games or the
Olympics as was described by participants in the current study. So perhaps it is
in the teaching of preservice teachers where change needs to occur. What do
university lecturers really want preservice teachers to do in relation to home-
school connections that they are encouraged to initiate as new teachers? If a
university lecturer were a Year 6 teacher at the school described above, what
would they recommend be done to initiate an effective home-school connection?
Language Load: Another contextual consideration mentioned by
participants in the study was language load (teachers’ use of language in the
classroom and fluidity of communication that students who have ESL must
understand in order to learn). Teachers’ use of language in the classroom was
referred to as slowing down for student comprehension. This is a good strategy
as students who have ESL need time to process information from one language
to another. However, in second language acquisition, learners need to learn
grammar, pronunciation, listening skills, metaphors and language as discourse
(the relationship between sentences and text) and how to negotiate the meaning
of English words (Nunan, 1999) and they must do this while also learning the
content being taught to their native English speaking peers. Teachers of
students who have ESL should be aware of the language load as it pertains to
students who have ESL and how these features differ for these students
compared with non-ESL learners. Many of these skills, ESL students can learn
without formal lessons outside of school. However, children who spend their
days in school need a teacher who will provide them with the appropriate
scaffolding to help them acquire their new language. Many of the participants
in the current study mentioned that learning should be scaffolded but did not
provide details of what they meant by scaffolded learning for students who
have ESL. Nunan (1999) would suggest that part of the scaffolding should
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include teaching the skills such as grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation as
well as teaching students the content.
More frequently, participants in the current research described the need
for students to learn English as quickly as possible in order to participate fully
in class activities. In this instance it appeared that the onus is on the child to get
up to speed in learning English in order to become a full member of the class
rather than the teacher adjusting strategies to accommodate student learning.
Cummins’ (1980, 1991) cross-lingual dimension matrix indicated that
participating in class activities is a complex process for students who have
limited English language proficiency. Cummins suggested that it may take up
to 7 years for students to master academic English, although they may acquire
adequate conversational skills within 2 years. The literature suggested that there
are benefits for including students in activities to assist them in learning English
(see Gibbons, 1991; Hammond, 2001; Sale, Sliz, & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2003).
The more immersed the child is in the context of learning, the better their
language development and understanding of what is being taught.
In a recent study, Tangen and Fielding-Barnsley (2006) evaluated the
establishment of a gardening program as part of a primary school’s
implementation of inclusive education. At the school, one-third of the student
population were ESL with half of these students refugees from the Sudan. The
study tracked a Grade 2 teacher at the school to determine what effect an
outdoor, contextualised learning environment would have on student learning
and found that students who were ESL displayed richer language when placed
within this context for their learning than those who did not have an opportunity
to go into the garden for learning. In the indoor Grade 2 classroom, students
struggled to find the right words to describe their activities in relation to the
garden; however, in the garden setting, they were able to utilise contextual
clues to help them talk about their learning, using much richer language.
Additionally, the Grade 2 teacher adapted the curriculum to include the outdoor
environment in his lessons (personal efficacy). What the research in the garden
study indicated was that contextual learning provides many opportunities for
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language development. Ideas and concepts for learning that can be acted on
present a richer learning experience for students. Another strong feature of this
gardening program was the inclusion of parents, other family members and
community members (teaching efficacy). Vegetable crops indigenous to the
Sudan were grown in the gardens under the guidance of the Sudanese women
who also provided cooking classes to parents and other community members.
At the end of the year, a harvest festival was held with dishes prepared from the
garden produce. Reaching out to the community in this way was another
positive addition to students’ learning as lessons learnt in relation to the garden
were not isolated activities but were placed within a larger context of authentic
learning; that is, children were living what they were learning.
Students who have ESL and Students with Learning Disabilities
Although beyond the parameters of the current research, one barrier not
mentioned by Meyer (2000) but discussed by the participants in the current
study was identifying students who had limited English proficiency in relation
to students who had a learning disability/learning difficulty. Equating a student
who has a learning disability with a student who lacks English language
proficiency appeared not to be an isolated incident. For example, one of the
preservice teachers described a situation in which a Vietnamese student was
diagnosed as having autism. The preservice teacher’s perception was that
because there was no funding to assist with the student’s English language
development, the child was assessed as being autistic. It was not possible from
the data provided to determine if this child indeed had autism; however, it
seemed apparent that the child did have limited English language proficiency as
the child had recently arrived from Vietnam, speaking no English. The
preservice teacher who described this situation seemed to be under the
impression from his host teacher that all one needed to do to ‘get through’ to
the child was to rephrase words and continually repeat instructions:
“…they have to rephrase things a lot for him until he gets it in a way
that it is phrased right for him to understand and then he’ll be fine he’ll
go and do it and everything and do it well but it’s just that rephrasing
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and I suppose if that’s all you’ve got to do you might take a couple more
minutes in your day but it’s not a hard task to teach ESL if they’re like
that”
The view of this preservice teacher is grossly simplistic in relation to
teaching students who have ESL and students who have a learning disability
and, indeed, teaching any children. It would be difficult to know how much of
the classroom interaction and lesson content the child actually understood
without a proper diagnosis, but it appeared that there were difficulties for this
child in understanding English.
Garcia and Ortiz (1988) suggested that one reason why students who
have ESL may experience learning disabilities is because they are taught solely
in English as happened with the child described above. Lo Bianco and
Freebody (1997) described this mode of teaching students a ‘sink or swim’
approach. The child is placed in an English speaking classroom and learns
English and the classroom protocol quickly (swims) or struggles with the
process until the point of giving up (sinks). It difficult to speculate on the actual
problem the Vietnamese child described above had from the preservice
teacher’s description, other than limited English language proficiency.
Nevertheless, the preservice teacher’s interpretation of the situation suggested a
lack of understanding about how to effectively teach this student. It could be
that there was much more going on in the classroom with the child that the
preservice teacher did not observe or was made aware, thus, his limited
approach to dealing with a proposed similar situation in the future. For example,
how much did the child understand these repeated instructions in relation to
how much the child mimicked the other children’s classroom behaviour? How
much of the problem was limited English language proficiency and how much
autism? More information is needed before this preservice teachers is able to
make the judgements he has.
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One inservice teacher in the study expressed some confusion about how
to identify ESL students in an English-speaking classroom even though she has
taught ESL students for most of her teaching career:
“…I’ve taught a child who…their parents were able to speak the same
language [other than English] but the little boy he really…Mum really
did interpret a lot of the English too in his so-called mother
tongue…and I think sometimes too the parents do think their child has
got a decent grasp of this other language [English] and therefore they
really are reluctant to probably agree that this child does need support
and help and it really is their second language...and it often requires
further investigation and interview with parents to really find out what it
is they speak at home, what percentage of time they would be using their
native tongue and what percentage this new language in their life”
This participant identified that both the child’s parents spoke a language
other than English as well as English and she accepted that the child himself
spoke English based on the mother’s insistence rather than her own day-to-day
interactions with the child. Accepting that the child could speak English could
be described as a demonstration of low personal efficacy in that it appeared that
this teacher did not trust her own judgment about her capabilities to recognise
that the child’s English language proficiency was wanting. She allowed her
judgment to be swayed by the parent. However, this teacher clearly identified
that there was a particular need this child had that was not being met. She then
decided to investigate whether there was ‘an impairment of development’ and
seems to have taken no further action with English language development until
she came full circle and realised that the child’s problem was a lack of English
language proficiency, not a learning impairment.
Connor and Boskin (2001) found that because teachers lacked
understanding of second language acquisition theory there was a danger that
children are misdiagnosed as having a learning difficulty rather than
recognising that they are at a particular stage of second language development.
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Connor and Boskin found that there was an overrepresentation of students who
have ESL in special education classes starting at kindergarten level of learning
because teachers were not able to identify students’ particular learning needs.
Had the participant in the current study more understanding of second language
acquisition and theory she might have utilised that information for determining
the child’s learning needs in that area before assessing the child for a learning
difficulty. It may be that children have both issues with second language
development and a learning difficulty (Davis, McCray, & Garcia, 2002) and in
some instances students who have ESL are identified as having learning
difficulty needs but there is limited special education available to them. Davis
et al. claimed that multicultural and bilingual special education is not generally
a part of mainstream teacher discussion and consequently identifying student
needs in these connecting areas becomes problematic for educators.
In another instance from the current research, a preservice teacher
described how a teacher (her friend in this case) approached the issue of
working with a student who was of a particular culture (Muslim) and who also
has been diagnosed as having dyslexia.
“…this friend of mine…this was primary school Grade 6 and she [the
friend] had the other teacher and the mother absolutely up in arms
because she had given him [a Muslim boy] a telling off for having this
disgraceful workbook and they came marching in and she [the friend]
didn’t know that he was dyslexic she’d never been told it had never been
an issue and they were like: look he’s dyslexic he’s very upset he’s been
told off cause his workbook’s an absolute mess and you know blah blah
blah and she said: right he’s dyslexic I don’t care if he’s dyslexic this is
week one his workbook is beautiful this is week twelve it’s a disgrace he
was dyslexic back then and he’s still dyslexic now but he can do better
and that’s why he got in trouble and they slunk off and…that’s I guess
where I’d be coming from with ESL students”
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It is not clear that this student was, in fact, ESL. The participant may
have assumed that the student was ESL because he was Muslim. English
language proficiency may not have been this child’s particular learning
difficulty; it would appear, though, that dyslexia was. However, the student’s
workbook might have been messy due to English language difficulties, due to
dyslexia or a combination of both. According the report from this preservice
teacher, the child’s classroom teacher dismissed any reason why the child’s
workbook was not as neatly done in week twelve as it had been done in week
one; this appeared to be the main issue for the teacher. The teacher discounted
both lack of English language proficiency and dyslexia as good enough reasons
for the student to produce messy work and the preservice participant in the
focus group had determined from her recount that she would probably respond
in the same way as her friend if faced with a similar situation as a teacher.
There is no explanation from the data as to the reason why this student’s
work was messy. Fielding-Barnsley (2007) suggested that there could be many
reasons why a student may exhibit difficulties in class. For example, the child
may have attended many schools and so may have missed vital aspects of his
learning. In the current study, the student may have felt conflict between his
home culture and the classroom culture and/or felt discriminated against by the
teacher and was reacting in an emotionally negative way by producing messy
work. It is not clear from the data as to the source, or sources, of the messy
work; what is clear, though, is that the participant describing the scenario did
not delve deeper into reasons for the student’s work, but had decided that she
would behave similarly as the teacher if confronted with a similar situation in
the future. Such an attitude by a teacher may result in a state of foreclosure on
the possibilities of creating a safe and supportive classroom as described by
other participants in the study. While other participants in the current research
had described an awareness of the need to include students’ cultural
backgrounds to make them feel welcomed and valued members of the
classroom, taking such an aggressive stance towards the child, his mother and
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the other teacher as described by this particular preservice teacher would do
little to help this child produce better quality work.
The dismissive attitude toward the parent displayed in the above
participant’s statement mirrors that found in research where teachers preferred
to keep parents out of the classroom, especially parents they perceived to be
from culturally and linguistically different backgrounds (DeCastro-Ambrosetti
& Cho, 2005). Kalyanpur and Harry (2004) claimed that parents in culturally
diverse families were excluded from the process of evaluating their children in
the schooling context because of teachers’ perceptions that these parents
possessed ‘poor parenting skills’. Rather than disenfranchising the valuable
input of parents, Kallyanpur and Harry argued that educators need to provide
avenues for parents’ ‘authentic participation’ in the process of their children’s
education. While the above participant in the current study expressed an
aggressive attitude towards the parent, most preservice teachers in the research
expressed that they would be willing to make connections between their
classroom and students’ homes. Further study needs to be done on exactly how
these preservice teachers would make these connections, and how they would
sustain these connections.
Educators have been reluctant to diagnose ESL learners for learning
disabilities (Geva, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Schuster, 2000; Rhine, 1995). Testing
individual students can be expensive and time consuming (Fielding-Barnsley &
Murray, 2002) and the cultural bias of traditional IQ tests has long been
recognised (Gardner, 1983, 1999; Gunderson & Siegel, 2001). Nevertheless,
there are often similarities drawn when comparing ‘ESL’ teachers and Learning
Support teachers. For example, Markham, Green and Ross (1996) found that
ESL and Learning Support teachers experienced high levels of stress about
preparing students for participation in regular classrooms. Their stress was
compounded when students had limited previous schooling such as in the case
of refugee students. Vaughn, Bos and Schumm (2006) described that minority
groups have disproportionately higher classifications of learning
disabilities/disabilities and emotional/behavioural problems than those of the
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majority population group. The study of students who have ESL and those who
have learning disabilities is not extensive. More research in this area is needed
to shed light on first, identifying these students and secondly, on developing
strategies and programs to help these students learn to the best of their abilities.
Summary of the Research:
The modified cyclical model utilised in the research as a tool to track
teacher efficacy beliefs offers a new approach to examining the construct. In the
current research, high efficacy to teach students who have ESL appears to be
connected to teachers having some previous information about working with
these students through such sources as mastery experiences and/or verbal
persuasion/vicarious experiences. Having high efficacy, however, did not
necessarily mean that teachers chose the most effective teaching strategies for
students’ learning. For example, in Study 1 of the research both preservice and
inservice teachers indicated having high personal efficacy in relation to
teaching students who have ESL; however, in the third study of the research
participants suggested strategies they would use to include students who have
ESL in the class (e.g. implement a multicultural unit). Such activities were
described in relation to the development of students’ cultural and English
language development with little mention of incorporating factors such as home
life, home values and home beliefs as issues that they would consider to adapt
curriculum to be more inclusive of students who have ESL. Including a
multicultural activity may be a good way to have all the children in the class
gain a greater sense of identity but it is not really adapting the curriculum to
meet the individual needs of students who have ESL. Such a strategy is more
like an add-on to existing curriculum. In this respect, participants appeared to
be more focused on encouraging students to adapt to the curriculum already in
place rather than having teachers move out of their comfort zone to adjust the
curriculum for students (see Wheatley, 2000, 2001). Participants described
strategies that incorporated teaching instruction/activities and maintaining the
classroom in a general sense rather than specifically for students who have ESL.
154
Therefore, in this instance, the information described in Study 3 would work
towards reinforcing old beliefs about teaching students who have ESL, which
does not allow for adaptation of curriculum. Indeed, in Study 3 of the research,
participants suggested that they wanted learning support teachers (ESL) to give
them a set of resources to use with the students whereas ESL learning support
teachers are more interested in helping teachers adapt curriculum (van Gilst &
Gura, 2006).
The modified cyclical model used for the current research, then, enables
educators to track self-perceptions about teaching within a specific context
through to how those perceptions are enacted as teaching strategies. The
literature suggests that teachers need to be specially trained to work with a
culturally diverse student population. Participants in the current research were
clear in their need to have more training to do their jobs effectively. Inservice
teachers, in particular, expressed confidence in teaching students who have ESL
but that confidence was conditionally upon their received support. In Study 1 of
the research, participants indicated higher personal efficacy to teach students
who have ESL than teaching efficacy. These data are borne out in Study 3 of
the research where teachers felt personally confident in their capabilities to
teach students who have ESL (high personal efficacy) but not in attending to
environmental contextual considerations (such as the home life) when teaching
these students (low teaching efficacy). In support of these findings, data from
Study 2 also indicated higher personal efficacy than teaching efficacy in
response to the survey Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for Teaching ESL
Learners (p.181) . Utilising such a model for tracking teacher efficacy is
beneficial, then, in identifying where gaps may be between self-perceptions
about one’s teaching and the actual implementation of teaching strategies.
One reason for such a gap in the current research may be found in the
response to the first of the principle research questions asked: How do teachers
understand the term, ESL? Participants in the current study had difficulty
agreeing on a description of these students. Without a clear concept of who to
include or not include within the term, ESL, teachers in the study, on the whole,
155
appeared to take a stance where ESL students were simply like other students in
the class and that the teaching strategies and curriculum already in place would
serve these students equally as well as any other student in the class. Indeed,
there was some confusion expressed by participants on how to clearly identify
students who have ESL as different to students who have a disability such as
autism and dyslexia.
The Main Findings of the Research
- sources of efficacy information for teaching students who have
ESL included mastery experiences, verbal persuasion/vicarious
experiences and physiological arousal to varying degrees. While
inservice teachers described having mastery experiences
teaching students who have ESL they frequently stated that they
needed help from ESL and learning support teachers on site
thereby indicating the dichotomous nature of teacher efficacy in
that teachers can feel efficacious about teaching in general
(personal efficacy) but feel less certain about teaching
specifically to students who have ESL (teaching efficacy)
because of the cultural and linguistic challenges these students
may pose
- preservice teachers described verbal persuasion/vicarious
experiences (primarily from university studies) a major sources
of efficacy information; however, these participants expressed
concern that theory learnt at university was not always enacted
in practice during their field experience placements
- recounts from participants indicated that culture load and
language load and to some extent learning load, were the most
often cited contextual considerations for teaching students who
have ESL; cognitive load was rarely mentioned as a contextual
consideration
156
- the research did not support a four-factor model of teacher
efficacy; the two factors of teacher efficacy suggested by the
results of the study were personal efficacy and teaching efficacy
- personal efficacy was strongly connected to both mastery
experiences and verbal persuasion/vicarious experiences in
relation to culture load and language load in that participants
felt confident in their general teaching abilities to overcome any
barriers to teaching students who have ESL in the areas of
culture load and language load
- preservice teachers expressed a stronger sense of teaching
efficacy than did inservice teachers in that preservice teachers
mentioned the impact of environmental factors in relation to
teaching ESL learners (such as the role of parents/families and
other external factors); inservice teachers rarely commented on
these factors as influencing their teaching of these students
The findings presented here add to the body of research on teacher efficacy
in the relatively new area of examining contextual considerations in relation to
teaching students who have ESL. There is a growing interest in understanding
how to engage diverse learners in regular classrooms (see Byrnes, Kiger &
Manning, 1997; Carrasquillo & Rodriguez, 1995; Gersten & Baker, 2000) but
relatively little research in the area of teacher efficacy in relation to teaching
ESL learners.
The construct of teacher efficacy is generally described as having two
dimensions: personal efficacy and teaching efficacy and results from the current
research concur with other research. Personal efficacy was strongly represented
by participants in the three studies. Both inservice and preservice teachers
described feeling confident in their generally teaching abilities to the extent that
they could rely on those teaching capabilities to teach students who have ESL.
However, preservice teachers felt the least efficacious about teaching ESL
learners who were refugees. These participants openly described their lack of
knowledge about how to teach such students and described that they would
157
need to learn more and make contact with support groups and agencies.
Inservice teachers, on the other hand, did not refer to contextual considerations
in relation to teaching students who were refugees.
There are inherent problems in the inservice teachers’ approach to
teaching these students. Inservice teachers described that they would teach a
multicultural unit to help the child who was a refugee feel safe and included.
These teachers did not consider the background of the child that lead to refugee
status. People come to countries like Australia as refugees because they fear for
their lives in their home countries due to political and social unrest (Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1999). Children often arrive as
orphans from refugee camps having had to flee their homes with little more
than the clothes on their backs, so having a multicultural unit where children
bring in photos and other artefacts of their family may work more to cause
these children stress than ease them into the classroom routine.
The teaching strategies participants described throughout the research
included few adaptations to curriculum. In this, participants appeared to be
striving to have students achieve traditional goals of schooling (that would lead
to high personal efficacy for teachers) rather than reforming their teaching to
the actual needs of non-native English language learners (teaching efficacy).
Participants described that they needed help to work with students who have
ESL. Brown (2004) found that teachers lacked general knowledge about how to
teach culturally and linguistically diverse students and that there was a need to
provide specific teacher preparation in this area so teachers can learn how to
adapt curriculum and appropriately scaffold learning for these students.
Teachers can feel frustrated if presented with situations that impede
their ability to help students attain prescribed educational outcomes (Wheatley,
2000). Participants in the current study described their concerns at having to
spend time teaching students who have ESL at the expense of the other students
in the class. They wanted ready-made resources to use with these students.
These findings concur with those of Skiba, Simmons, Ritter, Kohler, Henderson
and Wu (2006) who found that frustrated teachers felt that working with
158
students who have ESL a drain on their ability to meet the needs of the other
children in the class. The teachers in Skiba et al.’s study saw the special
education unit as a method for providing additional resources for students who
were struggling. In other words, children were assessed and removed from the
classroom for a period of teaching time, leaving teachers ‘free’ to get on with
the job of teaching without the distraction of teaching students who have ESL.
Contributions to the Study of Teacher Efficacy
The cyclical model of teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998)
in relation to teaching students who are non-native English language learners
had not previously been tested. Additionally, the four-factor model of teacher
efficacy, examined within the cyclical model (modified for the current research)
had not been tested and so in this respect the current research adds to the body
of research on teacher efficacy by utilising a modified model. Results from the
current research, however, indicated that the four-factor model was not
supported.
The researcher-generated survey utilised within the cyclical model must
be seen as a first attempt to understand the construct of teaching efficacy in a
new format. Results from the current research indicated that tracking the flow
of teacher efficacy from the sources of efficacy beliefs through to teaching
practices through utilisation of the cyclical model of teacher efficacy shows
promise for future research. For example, there is a need to test relationships
between variables using Structural Equation Modelling in future studies.
Teaching efficacy, as revealed by the data, indicated that participants
had only a superficial understanding of how environmental factors had an
impact on students’ learning. Examination of the data revealed that participants
in fact felt confident about their teaching practices in general but not confident
in teaching specifically to students who have ESL. It was found that
participants did not know how curriculum could be adapted to accommodate for
these environmental factors (such as the home life). These results show where
gaps in teacher preparation can be improved for future teachers. It is important
to know effective strategies to apply in the classroom but it is equally important
159
to understand why one would apply particular strategies. Participants in the
current study had no difficulty explaining what they would do but were less
clear on why they would use the strategies/activities chosen in working with
students who have ESL.
The research revealed that preservice teachers were more aware (or at
least described their awareness) of issues in relation to the impact of
environmental factors on students who have ESL (teaching efficacy) than did
inservice teachers. This is good news for teacher trainers, as fifteen years ago
Christie et al. (1991) advocated that preservice teachers in Australia be made
more aware of the uniqueness of second language learning for students in
regular classrooms. The current research indicated that teacher preparation
programs have responded to this recommendation and are attempting to raise
preservice teachers’ awareness of issues facing culturally and linguistically
diverse students. Participants described strategies that they would use to create
a safe and secure environment for ESL learners; however, they did not describe
how they would adapt curriculum for these students. These data identified a gap
in preparing preservice teachers for teaching students who have ESL in that
having a kit-bag of strategies is only one aspect of being an effective teacher;
another aspect is understanding why certain strategies would be applied to a
certain situation, data that was not reported strongly in the research.
Recommendations for Future Teacher preparation
Three major areas for future consideration in relation to teacher preparation
for teaching students who have ESL were revealed by the current study:
• Preservice teachers in the research were able to discuss what strategies
they would use to work with students who have ESL but could not
describe why they would use these strategies. It appeared that preservice
teachers did not have a solid theoretical background in second language
acquisition theories from which to draw when presented with a situation
of having to teach non-native English language learners. Without a
theoretical background in second language acquisition preservice
teachers fell back upon general teaching theories. Learning for students
160
who have ESL, however, is different than learning for native English
language learners because students who have ESL are learning through
learning English. While teacher preparation programs have improved,
since the report by Christie et al. (1991), in raising awareness of issues
related to teaching students who have ESL, it is time that awareness of
these issues is converted into appropriate teaching practices that meet
the needs of these students. It is important that a core component of
teacher preparation includes teaching preservice teachers how to adapt
curriculum and adopt strategies that will assist them in effectively
teaching students who have ESL.
• The research revealed that there is a need to assist preservice teachers in
learning about the diverse cultures that comprise their communities
through such programs as service learning that will immerse these
future teachers into the worlds of the students they teach. Gaining
mastery experiences in working with culturally and linguistically
diverse community members will move preservice teachers out of a
monolingual/mono-cultural comfort zone and provide them with new
insights and unique opportunities to view the world through new eyes.
The current research revealed that mastery experiences provided the
richest sources of efficacy information and from such information an
understanding of other cultures develops. With understanding comes a
willingness to work with these students in attaining effective outcomes.
• Preservice teachers in the research identified the importance of
involving parents and/or caregivers in the process of teaching students
who have ESL but lacked specific strategies/activities for doing so.
Preservice training needs to include theory and practical information on
why parents should be included in the process of teaching/learning and
how best to involve parents as a valuable resource in the classroom.
Limitations of the Study
The number of inservice teacher participants in the research was small
compared with the number of preservice teachers which creates difficulties for
161
generalising results. A much larger pool of participants would need to be tested
in order to assess the application of the cyclical model and the theoretical
frameworks of the research in wider contexts.
Data for studies two and three studies were gathered by the same pool of
participants; however, participants in the first study were an independent group.
It is possible that had the same participants been followed throughout the study
as a longitudinal study, results would be different. Further, the diversity of age
and experience of the participant pool may have skewed the results and findings.
Another study addressing these issues would help to strengthen findings.
The survey, Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for Teaching ESL
Learners, developed for this research requires further refinement to better
understand the construct of teacher efficacy in relation to teaching students who
have ESL. Future research needs to ascertain if teachers’ perceptions in relation
to teaching this group of students falls clearly into the two factors of teacher
efficacy and personal efficacy.
Data indicated that teachers could state what particular teaching
strategies they would use under particular teaching situations. However, it is
difficult to know whether, given the constraints of classroom practice, that they
would actually use the strategies mentioned. More research into what teachers
actually do in teaching students who have ESL is needed to identify areas
where students could be further helped and areas that could be addressed in
teacher education programs before students go out on their practicum.
Recommendations for Future Research
Tracking preservice teachers in a longitudinal study through their
training program and into practice in their own classroom would further
understanding of the flow of teacher efficacy beliefs within the cyclical model
of teacher efficacy. Such an undertaking would assist staff in Faculties of
Education in identifying were programming for preservice teachers could be
targeted to deepen preservice teachers’ understanding of the most effective
teaching approaches and strategies to use to teach students who have ESL.
162
With the current numbers of students who have ESL enrolling in
schools, more programming in teacher preparation programs needs to be
provided in relation to teaching non-native English language learners in
inclusive classrooms. Research in this area of teaching is growing and for
Faculties of Education to be considered leaders, they will need to incorporate
this facet of teacher preparation to help new teachers do their jobs effectively.
There appears to be an overrepresentation of non-native English
language learners in special education programs in areas where there is a high
population of students who have ESL. More information needs to be provided
to teachers and teachers in training on the process of second language
acquisition so that students are correctly assessed and teachers can recognise
the difference between a learning disability and lack of English language
proficiency. Such information should help teachers adapt curriculum to meet
the specific needs of their students.
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Appendix A – Consent Script/Participant Letter of Information
Participant Letter of Information – Study 1 (2003)
Dear Participant
My name is Donna Tangen. I am a graduate student in the School of Learning and Professional Studies in the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. I am conducting a research project under the supervision of Dr Kym Irving and Dr Ruth Fielding-Barnsley as part of the requirements towards a PhD degree. This letter is to inform you of my research project: The Relationship Between Teachers’ Efficacy and Teaching Practices for teaching ESL Learners, so that you can make an informed decision regarding your participation. The purpose of the study is to explore primary teachers’ confidence in their abilities about teaching ESL learners. There are three components to this research: (i) preliminary focus groups; (ii) a survey questionnaire on teacher efficacy; and (iii) responses to hypothetical teaching scenarios. This part of the research will be conducted through focus groups. Participation in the focus group will require about one (1) hour of your time. You should be aware that even if you have agreed to participate, you are free to withdraw from the research at any time, for any reason. Data will be gathered via audio-taping and note-taking; however, it will be gathered in such a sway so as to ensure anonymity. There will be no personal identifying details taken at the time of the focus groups. Group data may be published in relation to my thesis; however, any individual responses reported will be done in a way that will protect your identity. The raw data will be kept in a secure location and destroyed two years after it has been analysed. A consent-scrip to participate in the research has been attached. If you have any questions regarding this research, please feel free to contact me at any time at (07) 3855 1162 or contact my supervisors: Dr Kym Irving at (07) 3864 3233 or Dr Ruth Fielding-Barnsley at (07) 3864 9615. Thank you for your time and consideration, Donna Tangen School of Learning and Professional Studies The Queensland University of Technology (2003)
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Participant Letter of Information – Study 2 (2004)
Dear Participant
My name is Donna Tangen. I am a graduate student in the School of Learning and Professional Studies in the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. I am conducting a research project under the supervision of Dr Kym Irving and Dr Ruth Fielding-Barnsley as part of the requirements towards a PhD degree. This letter is to inform you of my research project: The Relationship Between Teachers’ Efficacy and Teaching Practices for teaching ESL Learners, so that you can make an informed decision regarding your participation. The purpose of the study is to explore primary teachers’ confidence in their abilities about teaching ESL learners. There are three components to this research: (i) preliminary focus groups (completed); (ii) a survey questionnaire on teacher efficacy; and (iii) responses to hypothetical teaching scenarios. This part of the research will be conducted through the completion of a survey. Participation to complete the survey will require about one-half (1/2) hour of your time. You should be aware that even if you have agreed to participate, you are free to withdraw from the research at any time, for any reason. Data will be gathered via audio-taping and note-taking; however, it will be gathered in such a sway so as to ensure anonymity. There will be no personal identifying details taken at the time of the focus groups. Group data may be published in relation to my thesis; however, any individual responses reported will be done in a way that will protect your identity. The raw data will be kept in a secure location and destroyed two years after it has been analysed. A consent-scrip to participate in the research has been attached. If you have any questions regarding this research, please feel free to contact me at any time at (07) 3855 1162 or contact my supervisors: Dr Kym Irving at (07) 3864 3233 or Dr Ruth Fielding-Barnsley at (07) 3864 9615. Thank you for your time and consideration, Donna Tangen School of Learning and Professional Studies The Queensland University of Technology (2003)
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Participant Letter of Information – Study 3 (2004)
Dear Participant
My name is Donna Tangen. I am a graduate student in the School of Learning and Professional Studies in the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. I am conducting a research project under the supervision of Dr Kym Irving and Dr Ruth Fielding-Barnsley as part of the requirements towards a PhD degree. This letter is to inform you of my research project: The Relationship Between Teachers’ Efficacy and Teaching Practices for teaching ESL Learners, so that you can make an informed decision regarding your participation. The purpose of the study is to explore primary teachers’ confidence in their abilities about teaching ESL learners. There are three components to this research: (i) preliminary focus groups (completed); (ii) a survey questionnaire on teacher efficacy; and (iii) responses to hypothetical teaching scenarios. This part of the research will be conducted through the completion of responses to hypothetical teaching scenarios. Participation to respond to the teaching scenarios will require about 20 minutes of your time. You should be aware that even if you have agreed to participate, you are free to withdraw from the research at any time, for any reason. Data will be gathered via audio-taping and note-taking; however, it will be gathered in such a sway so as to ensure anonymity. There will be no personal identifying details taken at the time of the focus groups. Group data may be published in relation to my thesis; however, any individual responses reported will be done in a way that will protect your identity. The raw data will be kept in a secure location and destroyed two years after it has been analysed. A consent-scrip to participate in the research has been attached. If you have any questions regarding this research, please feel free to contact me at any time at (07) 3855 1162 or contact my supervisors: Dr Kym Irving at (07) 3864 3233 or Dr Ruth Fielding-Barnsley at (07) 3864 9615. Thank you for your time and consideration, Donna Tangen School of Learning and Professional Studies The Queensland University of Technology (2003)
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Appendix B – The Research Survey – Study 2 (2004)
Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale for Teaching ESL Learners
by
Donna Tangen
QUT, 2006
Please circle the answer that most clearly corresponds with your current situation. Age 18-25 26-33 34-42 43-48 49+ Gender Female Male My first language is English Yes No I have studied/trained to teach ESL students Yes No I have taught ESL students Yes No I have studied languages other than English Yes No (at school, home or in another country) Current course and year of study at university I will be able to speak a language other than English Yes No I have visited or lived in a country that is Yes No predominately non-English speaking? If so, for approximately how long?
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Preservice Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale For teaching ESL Learners
Teacher Beliefs Directions: This questionnaire is designed to gain a better understanding of preservice teachers’ opinions about teaching ESL learners in mainstream classrooms. Please indicate your opinion about each of the statements below. There are no right or wrong answers. Your responses are confidential. N
ot a
t all
Ver
y L
ittle
So
me
Influ
ence
Q
uite
A B
it A
Gre
at D
eal
When you consider teaching students who are English as Second Language (ESL): 1. How much can you do to adjust your lessons to meet the needs of individual ESL students in your class?
2. How much can you do to influence ESL students to follow the class rules?
3. How much can you do to provide a variety of assessment measures in your class for ESL students?
4. How much can you do to assist families to help their children who are ESL to do well in school?
5, How much can you assist students who have ESL to communicate effectively with non-ESL students in your class?
6. How much can you do to minimise potential cultural conflicts (eg. food, dress, gender issues) between home and school in your classroom?
7. To what extent can you draw on ESL students’ porior knowledge in their home language to assist with learning in your class?
8. To what extent can you take ESL students’ religious/ethnic beliefs and customs into consideration when preparing classroom activities?
9. How well can you establish routines for students who have ESL to keep activities running smoothly in your class?
10. How much can you do to provide effective feedback to students who have ESL?
11. How much are you able to scaffold learning for students who have ESL?
12. How much can you do to improve learning for an ESL student who is failing in your classroom?
13. How much can you do to ensure that students who have ESL participate in group learning activities in your class?
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
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14. How well can you provide appropriate challenges for very capable students who have ESL?
15. To what extent in your lessons can you refer to the culture of students who have ESL in your class? 16. How much can you do to promote learning in your class for students who have ESL when there is a lack of support from the home? 17. How much can you do to motivate ESL students when they show low interest in school?
18. How much are you able to teach female ESL students better than male ESL students? 19. How much can you do to get parents/caregivers of students who have ESL to become involved in their children’s school activities?
20. How much can you do to help students who have ESL to develop problem solving skills? 21. To what extent can you make your expectations clear about acceptable behaviour in class to students who have ESL? 22. How much can you assist in the development of cognitive strategies (eg rehearsing, organising, reflecting) with students who have ESL? 23. How much can you do to teach proper grammar to students who have ESL? 24. How much can you assist ESL students to develop metacognitive strategies (eg planning, monitoring, self-regulation)? 25. How much can you do to promote learning in English with students who have ESL when they are still largely reliant on their home language for communication? 26. How much are you able to control racist behaviour and language in your class? 27. How much can you do to help students who have ESL to believe that they can do well in school? 28. How much can you control the inclusion of ESL students in state-wide testing in your classroom? 29. To what extent can you help students who have ESL monitor their own comprehension?
30. To what extent can you ensure that students who have ESL understand the pragmatics (eg when/where/how to communicate) in your classroom?
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
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How confident do you feel about teaching ESL students? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Thank you for taking the time to participate in completing this section of the survey. ESL Hypothetical Teaching Scenarios – Study 3 Below is presented a series of scenarios that involve ESL students in mainstream classrooms. Please write a brief response to each scenario describing what you would do in each situation. Because each classroom/school is unique, there are no right or wrong responses to the scenarios described.
1) A new student in your Grade 6 class has studied English-as-a-foreign language in his home country. He can communicate in English at a fundamental level but is reluctant to do so because there has been some taunting by his non-ESL classmates about this ‘funny’ accent. He has befriended another student in the class from his home country and they tend to keep mostly to themselves, speaking only their home language when together, both in class and outdoors. When you try to engage this student I learning tasks he complains that he doesn’t understand the work, that it’s too difficult. The new student’s parents are well-educated but do not speak English well. Nevertheless, they are ambitious for their son to succeed in school.
Please describe what you would do in this situation, briefly explaining why you would take the action described.
2) A Grade 2 student in your class, who is a non-native English language learner, is withdrawn and cries a lot. She says that she wants to go back ‘home’ because she misses her grandparents. There is little interaction between this child and the non-ESL students in your class. Some of the girls tried to befriend her for the first few days after her arrival but gave that away because, they claim, the new student cries too much.
Please describe what you would do in this situation, briefly explaining why you would take the action described.
3) You have a new student placed in your Grade 4 class whose family has been granted refugee status. The boy’s prior schooling was interrupted due to political unrest in his home country. After arriving here and completing a year’s tuition of intensive English language learning, your new student’s English proficiency has not reached Grade 4 level and his low level of English language skills is hampering his ability to keep up with the work done by then non-ESL students. No English is spoken at the home of your new student. In class he spends most of his time watching the other children then appears to imitate what they do.
Please describe what you would do in this situation, briefly explaining why you would take the action described.
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4) You have an Indigenous student in your class who speaks and comprehends Australian Standard English but is below grade level in written and reading levels of English. Her best friend is also and Indigenous student, although this student’s school work is at a level on par with her peer group. The first student mentioned above appears to be bored with lessons and continually distracts her friend so that they are both off-task frequently through the day.
Please describe what you would do in this situation, briefly explaining why you would take the action described.
Thank you for taking the time to complete this section of the questionnaire. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.
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