MiE. Teacher self-efficacy and classroom management styles in Jordanian schools

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1 MiE Teacher self-efficacy and classroom management styles in Jordanian schools Management in Education 25(4) ª 2011 British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS) Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalspermissions.nav DOI: / mie.sagepub.com Abdullah M. Abu-Tineh Doha-Qatar University, Qatar Samar A. Khasawneh The Hashemite University, Jordan Huda A. Khalaileh University of Jordan, Jordan Abstract Two main purposes guided this study. The first was to identify the degree to which Jordanian teachers practise classroom management styles in their classrooms and their level of teacher self-efficacy. The second purpose was to explore the relationships between classroom management styles and teacher self-efficacy. This study is quantitative in nature and was conducted using a survey design. A variety of statistical techniques were utilised in this research. The Pearson product moment correlation coefficient (r), means and standard deviations were used as the main statistical techniques. Findings of this study revealed that Jordanian teachers practise the instructional classroom management style more than the other management styles: behaviour management and people management. However, people management was rated the style least practised by Jordanian teachers. Further, Jordanian teachers who participated in this study perceived themselves to have a higher level of personal teacher efficacy compared to general teacher efficacy. Finally, personal teacher efficacy has the highest and significant relationship with each of the classroom management styles and classroom management styles overall. However, general teacher efficacy was found to be correlated insignificantly with each of the classroom management styles and classroom management styles overall. Keywords self-efficacy, classroom management styles, instructional management, behaviour management, people management Introduction and theoretical background Teachers are asked to teach a classroom full of students with a wide range of learning abilities, as well as a varied range of learning disabilities. Students come to the classroom from stable, traditional, supportive home environments and from unstable, broken and homeless situations. Some students are ready to learn and others are resistant (Ryan, 2007). Obviously, then, classroom management is one of the most important issues in educational settings (Yilmaz & Cavas, 2008). It has been identified as a major influence on teacher performance, a key source of teachers job-related stress and a prerequisite for student learning (Emmer & Hickman, 1991). Classroom management is a broad umbrella term describing a teacher s efforts to oversee classroom activities such as learning, social interaction and student behavior (Martin et al., 1998). A teacher s approach to classroom management may be classified as interventionist, non-interventionist or interactionalist (Martin & Baldwin, 2004). These approaches show a continuum from high teacher control to low teacher control. Low teacher control represents a non-interventionist model of classroom management. According to this model, interventionists believe that students learn appropriate behaviours primarily when their behaviours are reinforced by teacher-generated rewards and punishments. Consequently, interventionists contend that teachers should exercise a high degree of control over classroom activities. At the other extreme, non-interventionists believe that students have an inner drive that needs to find its expression in the real world. As a result, non-interventionists suggest that students should be allowed to exert significant influence in the classroom and that teachers should be less involved in adjusting student behaviours (Tauber, 1999). In the middle, interactionalists believe that students learn appropriate behaviours as a result of encountering the outside world of people and objects. Therefore interactionalists suggest that students and teachers should share responsibility for classroom management (Wolfgang, 1995). Some teachers are able to use different approaches at different times depending on the needs of their students; however, one approach usually dominates a teacher s actions (Hoang, 2009). One consistent measure of teachers future success in managing the classroom is their belief in their ability to do the job. This belief is an abstract yet powerful concept Corresponding author: Abdullah M. Abu-Tineh, Doha-Qatar University, Doha NA dr-abdullah@qu.edu.qa

2 176 Management in Education 25(4) known as self-efficacy and can affect students achievement. Research shows that self-efficacy beliefs are strong predictors of teacher behaviour (Hoy, 2004). If a teacher believes that he or she is capable of managing his or her classroom and conducting meaningful lessons, he or she will be more likely to do just that (Ritchie, 2006). Self-efficacy, which stands at the core of social cognitive theory, has generated a growing body of literature in education since the publication of Bandura s article Selfefficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavior change in 1977 (Capa, 2005). Bandura s main assertion was the interplay between the behaviour, personal factors and environmental factors. He used the concept of reciprocal determinism to explain that each of the three factors influences and is also influenced by the others. Therefore the personal factors in the cognitive, affective and biological forms should not be ignored when investigating human behaviour (Bursal, 2008). In education, self-efficacy has generally been defined as teachers belief in their ability to organise and execute courses of action necessary to bring about desired results (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). It reflects about what teachers will be able to do in a particular situation, not what they already accomplished, or why they accomplished it in the past (Hoy, 2004). The concept of teachers sense of self-efficacy consists of general teaching self-efficacy and a sense of personal teaching self-efficacy. General teaching self-efficacy refers to a situation with specific expectation that the teacher can help students learn given other assumptions of the extent to which students are capable of learning what the teacher has to teach (Bandura, 1997). Individuals with strong teaching self-efficacy believe they are capable of positively influencing student performance. They choose challenging activities and try harder when confronted with obstacles such as student ability or a student s home environment. They are not easily distracted and take pride in their accomplishments when their work is completed (Ashton & Webb, 1986). They tend to believe that all students can learn if appropriate conditions for learning can be provided (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001). On the other hand, personal teaching self-efficacy refers to teachers personal assessments of their own teaching abilities. Research suggests that teachers classroom management choices and instructional strategies, including the use of time and questioning techniques, are influenced by their own perceptions of their teaching competence (Gibson & Dembo, 1984). Teachers who tend to be preoccupied with their own inadequacies may doubt their ability to motivate certain students. Additionally, teachers with lower personal teaching self-efficacy will allow those students to ignore classroom rules and remain off-task during instruction. They will fail to encourage those students in the same way they encourage other students in the class. Teaching effectiveness drops as teachers worry about their personal competence (Ashton & Webb, 1986). Numerous positive outcomes have been associated with teachers high sense of self-efficacy. Among these are student achievement (Anthony & Kritsonis, 2007), student motivation (Nolen et al., 2007), classroom management behaviour (Giallo & Little, 2003), responsibility for student learning (Darling-Hammond et al., 2002), trust and openness (Goddard et al., 2004) and job satisfaction (Carara et al., 2006). Teachers self-efficacy is also related to classroom organisation, instructional strategies, questioning techniques, levels of persistence at a task, degree of risk-taking and innovation, teacher feedback to students and management of students on-task time (Gibson & Dembo, 1984). High efficacy teachers favoured humanistic management practices which stress student autonomy (Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990). Teachers self-efficacy may contribute to promote students sense of efficacy (Sewell & St-George, 2000; Usher & Pajares, 2006), fostering their involvement in class activities and their efforts in facing difficulties (Ross, 1998). When teachers are highly efficacious, their students are found to have a high level of academic achievement, autonomy and motivation, and a firm belief in their own efficacy (Cheung, 2008). Furthermore, teachers sense of efficacy is considered a significant predictor of productive teaching practices. According to Henson (2001) teachers efficacy has been one of the few variables consistently related to positive teaching behaviour and student outcomes. Compared to teachers with lower self-efficacy beliefs, Goddard et al. (2004) reported that teachers with strong self-efficacy perceptions are highly efficacious in using classroom management skills. Those teachers tend to employ classroom management strategies that are more organised, better planned, student-centred and humanistic and more receptive to student ideas (Anthony & Kritsonis, 2007). In this sense, teachers with limited classroom management skills and low rates of praise often have classrooms with higher rates of aggression, which in turn can maintain behaviour problems (Shernoff & Kratochwill, 2007). By contrast, teachers with a high sense of efficacy are less likely to criticise students following incorrect responses, more likely to persist with students in a failure situation and more likely to divide a class for small group instruction as opposed to instructing the class as a whole. Those teachers are more likely to declare regular education as the appropriate placement for students having a learning problem, a behaviour problem, or both (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). The relationship between teachers classroom management and self-efficacy beliefs may speak to ways in which an individual s expectation for success impact classroom management behaviour. This relationship is likely cyclical, such that classroom management behaviour likely affects one s beliefs on his or her self-efficacy (Henson, 2001). Gibson & Dembo (1984) conducted an observational study to investigate the differences in classroom management between high and low efficacy teachers. They reported that low efficacious teachers easily gave up when students could not answer questions quickly and criticised the students for their failures. Conversely, highly efficacious teachers spent more time on academic activities, tended to guide unsuccessful students and tended to be less critical and more encouraging of their accomplishments.

3 Abu-Tineh, Khasawneh and Khalaileh 177 In terms of control, Sharon (2003) indicated that the teachers of high self-efficacy scored higher levels in controlling beliefs about classroom management than those teachers who had low self-efficacy levels. Henson (2001) indicated that more efficacious teachers use positive strategies for classroom management. Furthermore, Chambers et al. (2001) conducted a study aimed at investigating the relationship between teacher personality type and personal self-efficacy and teacher beliefs concerning control in classroom management. The result revealed that personal teaching efficacy was a strong predictor of instructional classroom management than personality type. Similarly, Woolfolk & Hoy (1990) argued that prospective teachers beliefs about student control would impact how they facilitated their classroom. They found that teachers with high efficacy were more humanistic in how they viewed students and held a lower student control ideology. In other factors related to classroom management and teachers self-efficacy, Main & Hammond (2008) conducted a study to investigate the pre-service teachers beliefs about effective behaviour management strategies and reported self-efficacy. They found that respondents who reported high levels of self-efficacy in behaviour reported frequent use of effective strategies in classroom management behaviour. Along with the findings of this study, Giallo & Little (2003) reported that teachers who were perceived to have high classroom management self-efficacy were more effectiveindealingwithsevere and unmanageable behaviours of their students than teachers who were perceived as having a lower sense of self-efficacy in behaviour management. Additionally, Tschannen-Moran et al. (1998) reported that a teacher s sense of efficacy predicts their willingness to work with students who are experiencing difficulties rather than referring the students to special education. Among regular education teachers, those with higher teaching efficacy are more likely to declare regular education as the appropriate placement for students having a learning problem, a behaviour problem or both. Purpose of the study and research questions Two main purposes guided this study. The first is to identify the degree to which Jordanian teachers practise classroom management styles in their classrooms and their level of self-efficacy. The second purpose was to explore the relationships between classroom management styles and teacher self-efficacy. For a more narrow focus, this study addressed the following questions: 1. Which classroom management style is mostly practised by Jordanian school teachers in their classrooms? 2. To what degree do Jordanian teachers perceive themselves to have personal self-efficacy and general self-efficacy? 3. Which type of teacher self-efficacy has the highest relationship with classroom management styles? Justification of the study Some argue that to discuss local educational issues and practices internationally with the awareness that cultures differ so greatly from each other is bound to fail. However, we find ourselves agreeing with the belief that information about the educational issues and practices of other countries can serve our own country well by helping it to understand its own culture. Furthermore, educators will be better able to reconsider and re-evaluate what exists in their own society when provided with information from other countries (Cizek, 1999). In this context, this study comes to provide interested educators inside and outside Jordan with valid and reliable information about a relationship between two important variables that make or break teachers: classroom management and teacher self-efficacy. Moreover, with all the growing interest in the effectiveness of teachers in their classrooms in many countries, there is not much discussion on the connection to be made between teacher self-efficacy and their classroom management styles in Jordan. To date there is no evidence or reported study identifying the nature and magnitude of the relationship between teachers self-efficacy and their classroom management styles in the Jordanian school context. Methodology This study is quantitative in nature and was conducted using a survey design. The survey was cross-sectional because the data were collected at one point in time. A variety of statistical techniques were utilised in this research. The Pearson product moment correlation coefficient r, means and standard deviations were used as the main statistical techniques. Participants Data in this study were collected from a total number of 566 public school teachers out of 1,000 selected via stratified random sampling techniques from basic and high schools in Jordan, resulting in a response rate of 57 per cent. Suitable procedures were followed to ensure an equal representation of teachers from basic/high schools and from each district.. Among the participants, 319 of them were basic school teachers and 247 of them were high school teachers. Further, the sample included 287 female teachers and 279 male teachers. Instrument The survey instrument used in this study compromised two sections: (1) the Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES) (Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990), and (2) the Attitudes and Beliefs on Classroom Control (ABCC) Inventory (Martin et al., 1998). The Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale The TSES instrument (Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990) was designed to measure two dimensions of teacher efficacy:

4 178 Management in Education 25(4) personal teacher efficacy and general teacher efficacy. Personal teacher efficacy measures teachers perceptions of their ability to help difficult or unmotivated students from homes with environments that are not supportive of education to learn effectively. However, general teacher efficacy measures teachers perceptions of their teaching ability to counteract any negative influences in students backgrounds. The teacher self-efficacy scale has 22 items. Teachers were asked to rate each item using a four-point Likert scale ranging from 1 for strongly disagree to 4 strongly agree. A neutral point was not provided to force the teachers to provide a response that reflected their degree of agreement with each item. The validity of this instrument was evaluated using a principal components factor analysis (Gibson & Dembo, 1984; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990). In terms of reliability, Woolfolk & Hoy (1990) used Cronbach s alpha coefficients to determine the internal consistency of the two subscales. Their alpha coefficients were 0.82 for the personal teacher efficacy and 0.74 for the general teacher efficacy. The Attitudes and Beliefs on Classroom Control Inventory The ABCC Inventory was developed to measure aspects of teachers beliefs and predispositions toward classroom management practice. The items were based on actual classroom practices and observations. The instrument measures three dimensions of classroom management styles: instructional management (14 items), people management (8 items) and behaviour management (4 items). Instructional management items were measured with 14 statements that reflect how seatwork is monitored, how daily routines are structured and how materials are allocated. People management items were measured with eight statements that pertain to teacher beliefs about students as people and how teachers develop teacher student relationships. Behaviour management items were measured with four statements that focused on pre-planned strategies that prevent behaviours rather than how teachers react to behaviours. This includes setting rules, implementing reward systems and allowing student input. The teachers rated each of the items using a four-point Likert-type scale that ranges from 1 for describes me not at all to 4 for describes me very well. The validity of this instrument was evaluated using a principal components factor analysis (Martin et al., 1998). In terms of reliability, Cronbach s alpha coefficients were used to determine the internal consistency of the three subscales of the instrument. Coefficient alphas for instructional management (0.82), people management (0.69) and behaviour management (0.69) were above the criterion that was used to determine the reliability of adequate internal consistency (Martin et al., 1998). Arabic versions of the TSES and ABCC instruments were achieved through a standard three-step protocol reported by Blaschko & Burlingame (2002). Furthermore, the Arabic versions of the instruments were then pilot tested with a group of 150 basic and high school teachers to collect feedback about the instruments content and Table 1. Means and standard deviations of the classroom management styles Style Means Standard deviations Instructional management Behaviour management People management Table 2. Means and standard deviations of the two types of teacher self-efficacy Type Means Standard deviations Personal self-efficacy General self-efficacy usage. These teachers were excluded from the main sample of the study. Changes recommended during the pilot test were incorporated into the instruments. These changes occurred in the wording of items. The internal consistency for the instruments was determined using the same group of teachers used in the pilot study. The calculated coefficient alpha reliability for personal teacher efficacy was 0.80 and 0.73 for general teacher efficacy. However, coefficient alphas were for instructional management 0.83, people management 0.68 and behaviour management Results Research Question 1: Which style of classroom management styles is mostly practised by Jordanian school teachers in their classrooms? To answer this question means and standard deviations of classroom management styles were computed. As shown in Table 1, instructional management was rated the style most practised by teachers (M ¼ 3.32, SD ¼ 0.78), followed by behaviour management (M ¼ 3.17, SD ¼ 0.99). However, people management style was rated to be the classroom management style least practised by teachers (M ¼ 3.07, SD ¼ 0.86). In the case of standard deviations, Table 1 clarified that standard deviations around the mean values were quite small, suggesting consistency in the ratings. Research Question 2: To what degree do Jordanian teachers perceive themselves to have personal self-efficacy and general self-efficacy? As can be observed from Table 2, Jordanian teachers perceive themselves to have high levels of personal selfefficacy (M ¼ 3.15/4, SD ¼ 70). However, they believed to have, on average, moderate levels of general selfefficacy (M ¼ 2.83/4, SD ¼ 0.79). Research Question 3: Which type of teacher self-efficacy has the highest relationship with classroom management styles? The Pearson product moment correlation coefficient r was utilised to answer this question. Table 3 shows that

5 Abu-Tineh, Khasawneh and Khalaileh 179 Table 3. Correlations between teacher self-efficacy and classroom management styles Instructional management Behaviour management People management Classroom management overall Personal self-efficacy r ¼ General self-efficacy r ¼ p ¼ r ¼ r ¼ p ¼ r ¼ r ¼ p ¼ r ¼ r ¼ p ¼ personal teacher efficacy was correlated moderately (r ¼ 0.423), positively and significantly (p ¼ 000) with the instructional management style. Further, there was a moderate (r ¼ 0.360), positive and insignificant relationship (p ¼ 000) between personal teacher efficacy and behaviour management. Also, there was a moderate (r ¼ 0.350), positive and significant relationship (p ¼ 000) between personal teacher efficacy and people management. Finally, a moderate (r ¼ 0.472), positive and significant relationship (p ¼ 000) was discovered between personal teacher efficacy and classroom management styles overall. However, there was a low, positive and insignificant relationship between general teacher efficacy and each of the classroom management styles. The correlation with instructional management was r ¼ 0.130, p ¼ 096, with behaviour management r ¼ 0.094, p ¼ 230) and with people management (r ¼ 0.140, p ¼ 072).Further,therewasa low (r ¼ 0.152), positive and insignificant relationship (p ¼ 050) between general teacher efficacy and classroom management styles overall. In conclusion, personal selfefficacy has the highest significant relationship with each of the classroom management styles and classroom management styles overall. Discussion, conclusions and implications Findings of this study revealed that Jordanian teachers practise the instructional classroom management style more than the other management styles: behaviour management and people management. However, the people management style was rated the style least practised by Jordanian teachers. This result is expected in the Jordanian school context. It is immediately obvious to anyone entering public schools in Jordan that Jordanian teachers are more likely to rely overly on the use of teacher directed instruction such as lecturing or text-based instruction and characterised by authoritative teacher-centred roles. As described by Martin et al. (1998), they are monitoring seatwork, structuring daily routines and allocating materials. They believe that the behaviour of children must be controlled because, they assume, children are unable to adequately monitor and control themselves (Edwards, 2003). Dispensing rewards and punishments are the tools these teachers use to get otherwise unmoving and unmotivated students moving and motivated. They are seen in the forefront wielding the power, while their students are seen in the background, wielding little, if any, power (Tauber, 1999). Turning to the opposite style, the people management style was found to be the style least practised by Jordanian teachers. This result can be justified given the narrow knowledge of and experience in this management style in Jordanian schools. Jordanian teachers in public schools are less likely to allow students to create their own daily routines, to select their own seats, to judge the quality of their ownworkor/andtouseanymaterialstheywishduringthe learning process (Martin et al., 1998). They rarely conduct class discussion, the role-playing of appropriate behaviour, point systems, journals or one-on-one dialogue. Teachers, also, are less likely to be viewed as facilitators or have faith that students possess an internal motivation to learn (Tauber, 1999). In conclusion then, more attention should be given to the people management style in Jordanian schools, taking into consideration that this style has been recognised by students to be the preferred style and by educators to reflect a referent power of teachers (Edwards, 2003). Therefore it can be suggested that more workshops and training courses on people management style should be conducted for teachers in Jordanian schools. Further, investigation of the results indicate that Jordanian teachers who participated in this study perceived themselves to have a higher level of personal teacher efficacy compared to general teacher efficacy. In other words, participants perceived themselves to be more efficacious in helping difficult or unmotivated students to learn effectively than helping them to counteract any negative influences in their background. Although Jordanian teachers perceive themselves to have high levels of personal teacher efficacy and moderate levels of general teacher efficacy, the findings of this study revealed that there is room for improvement in teacher efficacy, especially in general efficacy. It is recommended that more preparation for work with special needs students, difficult students, unmotivated students and in particular students who are suffering from the negative effect of their family background is provided during the pre-service preparation programmes at colleges of education and in-service programmes at the Ministry of Education. This can be implemented through a repetitive process of refinement and improvement of the content of these programmes to include additional course requirements, already existing methods and instructional classes, student teaching assignments and/or workshops. This in part is because the acquisition of effective means of performance raises a teacher s beliefs of self-efficacy. As teachers gain the ability to predict and manage situations that could be problematic, they develop a sense of efficacy that helps them master new challenges (Bandura, 1997). In terms of the relationships between teacher self-efficacy and classroom management styles, the results clarified that

6 180 Management in Education 25(4) personal teacher efficacy has the highest significant relationship with each of the classroom management styles and with classroom management styles overall. Although a direct causal relationship may not be drawn from this result, the positive and significant relationships between instructional management and each of the management styles and management styles overall suggest that the higher the teachers perceive their personal teacher efficacy to be the more they succeed in practising management styles in general and the instructional style in particular. Moreover, the relationship between instructional management style and personal teacher efficacy was identified to be the highest among other management styles. This result is consistent with Jackson s (2005) conclusion that the relationship between instructional management style and personal teaching efficacy was significant. To justify this result, it is useful to remember that the correlation between instructional management style and personal teacher efficacy is likely cyclical, such that instructional management style likely affects a teacher s belief in his or her personal efficacy and vice versa. Therefore, because Jordanian teachers practise the instructional management style more than other management styles and perceive themselves to have more personal teacher efficacy than general teacher efficacy, the highest relation between these two variables is to be expected. Another trend of the results in the case of the relationship between general teacher efficacy and classroom management styles revealed that this relationship was, in general, insignificant but positive. The positive relationship means that they have believed in the power of education to make a positive change in an individual s life. However, the lack of significance in this relationship is an indicator of its modest nature and the need to enhance it. To summarise these relationships, the more the teachers have personal teacher efficacy the more they practise classroom management styles and vice versa. However, the less the teachers have general teacher efficacy the less they practise classroom management styles and vice versa. Therefore personal teacher efficacy needs to be supported and general teacher efficacy needs to be strengthened and enhanced. Thus, as stated before, workshops, training programmes and improvement of the content of the pre-service and in-service preparation programmes to support the personal efficacy of teachers and to consider behaviour management style, people management style and general teacher efficacy are urgently needed. References Anthony, T. & Kritsonis, W. 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