Elsevier

Educational Research Review

Volume 12, June 2014, Pages 59-76
Educational Research Review

Review
Teachers’ self-efficacy, personality, and teaching effectiveness: A meta-analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2014.06.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examine how teachers’ self-efficacy and personality are related to effectiveness.

  • Self-efficacy was strongly associated with observed teaching performance.

  • Personality was modestly related with observed teaching performance.

Abstract

Considerable research has been conducted based on the assumption that teachers’ psychological characteristics are associated with teaching effectiveness. However, the evidence for this assumption is limited: most research on the topic has been limited to investigations of the links between teachers’ self-reported characteristics and other within-teacher, self-reported outcomes. The purpose of this study was to systematically analyze the research exploring two psychological characteristics (self-efficacy and personality) and measures of teaching effectiveness (evaluated teaching performance and student achievement). Analysis of 43 studies representing 9216 participants reveals a significant but small effect size of r¯=.10 between overall psychological characteristics and teaching effectiveness. The strongest effect found was for self-efficacy on evaluated teaching performance (r¯=.28). Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Introduction

Convincing evidence reveals that in any education system, teacher effectiveness is a critical factor driving variation in student achievement, and is more influential than class size, classroom composition, SES, or previous student achievement (e.g., Darling-Hammond and Youngs, 2002, Hindman and Stronge, 2009, Staiger and Rockoff, 2010). We define teacher effectiveness as the aggregated effects of a complex set of in-classroom teacher behaviours on student learning (Seidel & Shavelson, 2007), typically operationalized as measured student achievement or evaluations of observed teaching performance. Teacher effects on student learning are additive and cumulative over grade levels, with the result that a sequence of ineffective teachers is difficult for a student to overcome, even with exposure to subsequent effective teachers (Wright, Horn, & Sanders, 1997). Understanding the factors contributing to teacher effectiveness is a global research and policy priority with the potential to influence teacher selection processes, enhance training and professional development of pre-service and practicing teachers, and improve educational outcomes.

Attempts to build an understanding of teacher characteristics that lead to teaching effectiveness have produced equivocal results. Teacher characteristics such as educational background (college preparation programs), content of undergraduate and graduate degree programs, and teacher credentialing test scores may be related to teaching outcomes, but the relationships may only apply for teachers in specific content areas (Wayne & Youngs, 2003). Possessing a graduate degree is not related to teaching effectiveness as measured by student outcomes (Hanushek & Rivkin, 2006). Teachers’ collegiate GPA was a stronger predictor of teaching evaluation scores (Fisher’s z = .25, with the effect size z approximating r at lower values) than were teaching credential test scores (Fisher’s z = .17), or scores from basic skills tests (Fisher’s z = .09; D’Agostino and Powers, 2009). Teachers’ verbal ability—posited as an important predictor of teaching effectiveness—shows only a weak relationship with teaching outcomes (median r = .03; Aloe & Becker, 2009). Compiling a wide variety of non-classroom teacher factors (gender, race, teaching experience, university attended, advanced degrees, certification, current tenure) explains less than 8% of teaching effectiveness (Aaronson, Barrow, & Sander, 2007). Clearly, additional information is needed to explain why some teachers are more effective than others.

Teachers’ psychological characteristics have long been hypothesized to contribute to teaching effectiveness (e.g., Barr, 1952). Two overarching psychological frameworks—personality and motivation—have been linked with job performance inside and outside of education domains. Personality is considered to be an enduring, relatively stable trait or set of traits, with a possible neuropsychological basis (e.g., Judge, Klinger, Simon, & Yang, 2008). Barr’s (1952) review of teacher characteristics and teaching quality noted a general consensus that teachers’ personality was connected with teaching success, but found little evidence of a predictive relationship between teachers’ attitudes, personality traits, and teaching success. Although the investigation of personality as a predictor of job performance waned in the mid 20th-century, the establishment of new personality frameworks such as the Big Five (e.g., McCrae & Costa, 1987) and Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (e.g., Rojewski & Holder, 1990) has seen a resurgence of research investigating personality and job performance (Murphy & Dzieweczynski, 2005). Research centering on the role of personality traits in business settings shows promise (e.g., Judge et al., 2008); however, in education, the evidence for links between personality traits and teaching has been modest, with research hampered by weak conceptual frameworks linking personality traits and teaching effectiveness.

Stronger links have been provided for the relationship of motivation and teaching effectiveness. Motivation is usually defined as a set of beliefs that influence people’s movement towards attainment of valued goals (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002), and is inferred through choice, effort, and persistence behaviours. Examples of motivation frameworks applied to teaching include self-efficacy (e.g., Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001), engagement (Klassen, Yerdelen, & Durksen, 2013), and achievement goals (Retelsdorf & Günther, 2011). Researchers have recommended investigation of the links between motivation beliefs and job performance. Borman et al. (2003) recommended that motivation variables rather than personality variables be used for personnel selection research. Barrick, Mount, and Judge (2007) conducted a large-scale meta-analysis on the links between personality and job performance, and concluded that future research should be directed at building an understanding of how motivation variables act as predictors of job performance.

A growing body of research has shown links between teachers’ motivation beliefs and measured teaching effectiveness (e.g., Bakker & Bal, 2010), student motivation (Guay, Ratelle, & Chanal, 2008), and student achievement (Caprara, Barbaranelli, Steca, & Malone, 2006). Rimm-Kaufman and Hamre (2010) recommended investigating how teachers’ motivation predicts day-to-day engagement and teaching quality. Rockoff, Jacob, Kane, and Staiger (2008), echoing the findings of vocational psychologists Stajkovic and Luthans (1998), noted that motivation variables are conceptually closer to teaching effectiveness than are personality traits, due to higher specificity and contextualization. However, there has not yet been a systematic analysis of the links between motivation variables and teaching effectiveness, and no conclusions can yet be drawn about whether or not motivation variables are more predictive of teaching effectiveness than personality variables.

Our preliminary search of the literature showed that a majority of teacher motivation studies investigated teachers’ self-efficacy, with a minority focusing on teachers’ beliefs, commitment, engagement, and other job-related constructs.1 In order to sharpen the focus of our meta-analysis, and in light of the high proportion of self-efficacy research in comparison to other motivation-related variables, we decided to concentrate on self-efficacy as a representative motivation variable. Self-efficacy—beliefs in the capability to carry out desired courses of action in the service of valued goals (Bandura, 1997)—has been well represented in educational research, with a growing acknowledgement of its influence on student and teacher behaviours. In social cognitive theory, self-efficacy beliefs form the personal determinants alongside behavioural and environmental determinants that provide the causal structure in triadic reciprocal causation (Bandura, 1997). An individual’s self-efficacy operates as an intra-personal motivation variable that captures the core aspects of human agency, embodied as effort and persistence applied to completion of desired goals. For teachers, self-efficacy increases persistence in working with challenging students, and has been shown to influence teachers’ instructional practices, enthusiasm, commitment, and teaching behaviours (e.g., Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2007). But no motivation factor has invariant effects: self-efficacy is influenced by contextual factors, by the validity of measurement tools, and by the accuracy of self-appraisals (Bandura, 2012).

Whereas self-efficacy is responsive to contextual influences, personality reflects consistent behaviours that are believed to be less influenced by context than self-efficacy. For example, the Big Five personality theory (McCrae & Costa, 1987) consists of five behavioural traits that describe characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Bandura (2012) criticizes the generality of the Big Five theory as not adequately acknowledging the changing contexts and conditional nature of everyday life. The predictive power of contextualized variables, such as self-efficacy, may be greater than generalized personality traits because human behaviour—such as teaching behaviour—is dependent on the social context.

Research shows that teachers’ self-efficacy is related to job satisfaction (Klassen & Chiu, 2010) and level of stress (e.g., Klassen & Chiu, 2011), but its association with teaching effectiveness is less well established. A recent review of the teacher self-efficacy literature (Klassen, Tze, Betts, & Gordon, 2011) revealed impressive growth in the quantity of research conducted, but the research was limited in scope and practical impact: over 99% of studies reported within-teacher outcomes (e.g., self-report measures of job satisfaction or engagement) rather than external measures of teaching effectiveness (e.g., student achievement or evaluations of teaching performance). Similarly, research linking recent personality frameworks (e.g., the Big Five) and teaching effectiveness has not been extensively conducted (Rimm-Kaufman and Hamre, 2010). Investigations into the scale of the relationship between teachers’ psychological characteristics—such as self-efficacy and personality—and effectiveness would lead to a better understanding of the pathways to effective teaching and positive student outcomes.

The purpose of our study was to examine the magnitude of the relationship between teachers’ psychological characteristics of self-efficacy and personality, and external measures of teaching effectiveness. Establishing an empirical link between teachers’ psychological characteristics and measures of teaching effectiveness (a) enhances our understanding of the psychological processes that lead to effective teaching, (b) builds our understanding of how two constructs—self-efficacy and personality—may influence teaching behaviours, (c) paves the way for improving the professional development of teachers, and (d) guides the conceptualization of measures designed to identify the most effective teachers. Personality researcher Borman et al. (2003) and self-efficacy theorist Bandura (1997) point out that the relationship between predictor and criterion is facilitated when correspondence between the two is high: self-efficacy measures are conceptually and operationally closer to teaching effectiveness outcomes than personality measures, and thus may show stronger statistical relationships. Thus, based on the higher level of congruence in the self-efficacy-effectiveness pairing, and based on recent research touting the conceptual links between self-efficacy and teaching behaviours (e.g., Rockoff et al., 2008), we hypothesized that self-efficacy would be more strongly related than personality to measured teaching effectiveness.

Our study poses three research questions:

RQ1. What is the strength of the relationship between teachers’ psychological characteristics (self-efficacy and personality) and measured teaching effectiveness (student achievement and evaluated teaching performance)? Results from RQ1 will uncover any systematic association between general psychological characteristics and effective teaching.

RQ2. How is the relationship (RQ1) moderated by type of psychological characteristic (self-efficacy and personality)? Results from RQ2 will provide insight into how particular psychological characteristics differentially influence teaching effectiveness.

RQ3. How is the relationship (in RQ1) moderated by type of measured teaching effectiveness (student achievement and evaluated teaching performance)? Results from RQ3 will provide insight into how pervasive the influence of teachers’ psychological characteristics is not just on teacher, but also on student, outcomes.

Section snippets

Sample of studies

To identify relevant studies, we used multiple search methods. First, we searched published articles and dissertations using online databases: PsycINFO, Web of Science, Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), Google Scholar, Academic Search Complete, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. We searched a broad range of peer-reviewed and non-reviewed studies to reduce the effects of any possible bias favouring significant findings; thus, we searched for and included unpublished

Overview

The 43 studies included in the meta-analysis were published between 1985 and 2013, and included 9216 teacher participants. There were only 12 studies (n = 1,918 teachers) examining the relationship between teachers’ personality and an external evaluation of teaching performance. Of these 12 studies, only one of them reported students’ achievement as an external measure of teaching effectiveness. Appendix A lists sample sizes, domains, measures used, originally reported statistics, effect sizes,

Discussion

Our meta-analysis of 43 studies involving 9216 teachers tested the strength of association between two types of teachers’ psychological characteristics (self-efficacy and personality) and two types of external measures of teaching effectiveness (student achievement and evaluated teaching performance). Measuring teaching effectiveness using external measures presents a rigorous standard for research in educational psychology: the effect sizes found in this study have more practical value than

Conclusions

In 1952 Barr noted that “interest in the measurement and prediction of teaching success has continued to run high” (p. 169). Six decades later, the importance of linking teacher effectiveness with psychological characteristics remains critical, although it can be argued that research in this area has not yet had very much influence on practice. The findings from our study suggest that: (a) teachers’ self-efficacy is strongly associated with evaluated teaching performance, (b) teachers’

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