Research
APA 2007 paper: Teacher Affective Support and its Impact on Early Adolescents
Gonul Sakiz, The Ohio State University
Stephen J. Pape, The University of Florida
Anita Woolfolk Hoy, The Ohio State University
Paper presented as a poster at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, August 19, 2007, San Francisco, CA
AERA 2007 paper: Predictors of Academic Optimism: Teachers’ Instructional Beliefs and Professional Commitment
Nan Kurz, Anita Woolfolk Hoy, & Wayne K. Hoy
The Ohio State University
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Session: Teachers’ Beliefs and their Development. April 13, 2007. Chicago, Il.
AERA 2004 paper: What Teachers Need to Know about Self-Efficacy?
Anita Woolfolk Hoy
The Ohio State University
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Session 52.070: What preservice teachers should know about recent theory and research in motivation. April 15, 2004. San Diego, CA.
Educational Psychology in Teacher Education
Anita Woolfolk Hoy
The Ohio State University
A revised version of this paper appeared in the Educational Psychologist, 2000, vol. 35, pp. 257-270
Over the years, educational psychology has been a part of teacher preparation, moving from a center piece in many programs, through periods when it was deemed irrelevant by some, to current concerns about its role in the reforming of teacher education and teaching. Today psychological knowledge is used to ground reforms in teaching and schooling, particularly the call for teaching for understanding. Current standards for teacher certifications and licensure and suggestions for reform in teacher education assume that teachers will have a deep and generative understanding of learning, development, motivation, and individual differences. This paper explores several themes that recur in the writing on reforms and teacher standards: the need to place learning at the center of teaching, the call for integrated studies, and the value of collaboration with the public schools. These themes have both positive and negative implications for the role of educational psychology in teacher education.
of the draft version
AERA 2002: The Influence of Resources and Support on Teachers’ Efficacy Beliefs
Megan Tschannen-Moran, College of William and Mary
Anita Woolfolk Hoy, The Ohio State University
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Session 18.82: What is the value of understanding beliefs? An exploration of beliefs related to academic achievement. April 3, 2002. New Orleans, LA.
AERA 2002: Respect, Social Support, and Teacher Efficacy: A Case Study
H. Richard Milner, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University
Anita Woolfolk Hoy, The Ohio State University
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Session 26.65: Knowledge of self in the development of teacher expertise. April 3, 2002. New Orleans, LA.
A Case Study of an African American Teacher’s Self-Efficacy, Stereotype Threat, and Persistence
H. Richard Milner, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University
Anita Woolfolk Hoy, The Ohio State University
The purpose of this qualitative investigation was to understand the sources of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) for an African American teacher in a suburban high school in the United States. As one of only three African American teachers in the school, she encountered many challenges that could have threatened her sense of efficacy and thus caused her to leave the school, yet she persevered. We attempted to identify and interpret the sources of efficacy that encouraged the teacher’s persistence in an unsupportive environment. In addition, we considered how the concept of stereotype threat might help us better understand the teacher’s situation. Findings of the case study have implications for teacher self-efficacy theory and research, as well as teacher persistence.
Key words: teacher self-efficacy, teacher beliefs, social context, stereotype threat, African American teachers, case study
Developing Quantitative Means For Assessing Teacher Efficacy
Megan Tschannen-Moran, The College of William and Mary
Anita Woolfolk Hoy, The Ohio State University
The past two decades have witnessed a variety of attempts of measure teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy & Hoy, 1998). Many of these measures have lacked a clear conceptual base. As the concept of teacher efficacy has been refined, dissatisfaction with existing measures has increased. This paper reports the development and testing of a new measure of teacher efficacy based on the conceptual model presented by Tschannen-Moran et. al. An initial 52-item measure was pilot tested with a sample of both preservice and inservice teachers and refined using factor analysis. Validity and reliability tests demonstrated the usefulness of this new instrument. Future research of teacher efficacy will be facilitated by a measure that reflects current understandings of the construct.
Changes in Teacher Efficacy During the Early Years of Teaching
Anita Woolfolk Hoy, The Ohio State University
Some of the most powerful influences on the development of teacher efficacy are mastery experiences during student teaching and the induction year. Previous research has found that some aspects of efficacy increase during student teaching while other dimensions may decline (Hoy & Woolfolk, 1990). Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy suggests that efficacy may be most malleable early in learning, thus the first years of teaching could be critical to the long-term development of teacher efficacy. Yet few longitudinal studies exist that track efficacy across these early years. This presentation will report the results of an ongoing study of changes in teacher efficacy from entry into a preparation program through the first year of actual teaching. Multiple quantitative assessments of efficacy were used including items developed for the RAND studies, Gibson and Dembo’s Teacher Efficacy Scale, Bandura’s assessment of Instructional Efficacy, and an instrument designed to reflect the specific context and goals of the preparation program studied. Preliminary results indicate increases in efficacy during student teaching. Data also have been gathered after the first year and are being analyzed. One finding is that the factor structure of some of the instruments is not stable across time. We will examine measurement issues and also explore contextual factors that appear to be associated with changes in efficacy during the first year of teaching.
Teaching Educational Psychology to the Implicit Mind
Anita Woolfolk Hoy
P. Karen Murphy
Pamela. J. Gaskill
The Ohio State University
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA, April, 2001.
With the dominance of cognitive perspectives in education and psychology has come an interest in the thinking of teachers. Since the 1980s, research has burgeoned on teachers’ knowledge and beliefs; reviews are plentiful (e.g., Borko & Putnam, 1996; Calderhead, 1996; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Fenstermacher, 1994; Kagan, 1990, 1992; Nespor, 1987; Pajares, 1992; Rentel, 1994; Richardson, 1994, 1996). Researchers have investigated both explicit and implicit beliefs of preservice, novice, and experienced teachers. Although some investigators have sought to identify beliefs (cf., Weinstein, 1988, 1989), others have examined how knowledge and beliefs affect learning to teach (cf., Hollingworth, 1989) or instruction in particular subjects (Richardson, 1994).
This interest in the knowledge and beliefs of teachers is fueled by several sources. In research on effective teaching, dissatisfaction with findings about teacher behaviors led to a concern with teachers’ thinking, planning, and intentions (Clark & Peterson, 1986; Fenstermacher, 1979). Several current perspectives on learning–from information processing to constructivist views–highlight the influence of knowledge on attention, understanding, and memory. What we already know, our knowledge base, “is a scaffold that supports the construction of all future learning” (Alexander, 1996, p. 31). Thus, researchers focused on the knowledge, implicit and explicit, that scaffolds learning to teach. Finally, teacher educators recognized the power of prospective teachers’ entering beliefs in shaping their responses to preparation programs (Pajares, 1992, Richardson, 1996). As noted by Borko and Putnam (1996), “…the knowledge and beliefs that prospective and experienced teachers hold serve as filters through which their learning takes place. It is through these existing conceptions that teachers come to understand recommended new practices” (p. 675).
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the implications for educational psychologists and teacher educators of prospective teachers’ implicit knowledge and beliefs about students, teaching, learning, and learning to teach. We begin by exploring the nature and origin of teachers’ knowledge and beliefs, then consider how prospective teachers’ conceptions affect their own learning in a teacher preparation program and what might be done to enhance learning in light of these influences. Finally, we examine the implications of prospective teachers’ knowledge and beliefs for teaching educational psychology.
An expanded version of this paper appears in B. Torff & R. Sternberg (Eds.). Understanding and teaching the intuitive mind. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.