Exploring Hong Kong primary and secondary schools teachers' teaching efficacy

1. Exploring Hong Kong primary and
secondary school teachers’ teaching
efficacy
Sally Wai-Yan WAN & Ross Chi-Wui NG
Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Email: sallywywan@cuhk.edu.hk
Paper presented at the 2019 AERA Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada, April 9, 2019

2. Outline
Background of the study
Literature review
Method
Findings & discussion
Conclusion
Implications

3. Background
● Confucian heritage cultures → “3T” practices: teacher-centred,
textbook-centred and test-centred (Adamson & Morris, 1998)
● Teacher resistance / struggles towards curriculum change
● Teacher burnout / retention

4. Background
● Teaching efficacy studies in HK ...
○ focus on primary/ secondary/
prospective teachers in certain
areas
○ “lower” teaching efficacy

5. Literature review
Teaching efficacy: What?
● Teacher efficacy: “teachers’ confidence in their ability to promote students’
learning” (Hoy, 2000)
● Personal teaching efficacy (PTE)
○ Teacher’s own feeling of confidence about personal teaching abilities to bring about achievement in
students (Tracz & Gibson, 1986)
● General teaching efficacy (GTE)
○ A general belief about the power of teaching to reach difficult children (Hoy, 2000)
○ ‘the teachers’ belief that students can succeed or learn’ (Tracz & Gibson, 1986)
● Gibson & Dembo (1984): Teacher Self-efficacy (TSE) measure
○ measure both personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy
○ teaching efficacy as an integral component of teacher self-efficacy

6. Literature review
Teaching efficacy: Why?
● Support educational reforms through building comprehensive knowledge
on teachers’ self-efficacy for coping with the “reform syndrome”
(Wheatley, 2002; Cheng, 2009)
○ Foster professional development (e.g. Fritz, Miller-Heyl, Kreutzer, &
MacPhee, 1995)
○ Check ‘readiness to teach’ (e.g. Housego, 1992)
○ Commitment to teach (e.g. Coladarci, 1992)
○ … etc.

7. Objectives
1. To examine teachers’ teaching efficacy
2. To explore if there is any relationship between teaching
efficacy and school characteristics (i.e. school history, school
size, teaching staff size)
3. To explore if there is any relationship between teaching
efficacy and teacher demographic characteristics (i.e., gender,
year of teaching experience, academic qualification, job
ranking)

8. Research questions
1. What are primary and secondary teachers’ teaching efficacy in
Hong Kong? Are there any differences in their teaching efficacy?
2. Is there any relationship between teachers’ teaching efficacy
and teacher characteristics (i.e. gender, academic qualifications,
year of teaching experience and job ranking)?
3. Is there any relationship between teachers’ teaching efficacy
and school characteristics (i.e. years of school establishment,
staff size and school size)?

9. Methods
● Quantitative study using Gibson & Dembo (1984): Teacher Self-efficacy (TSE)
measure
○ measure both personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy
○ teaching efficacy as an integral component of teacher self-efficacy
● Schools: 12 primary + 19 secondary
○ 340 primary teachers
○ 520 secondary teachers
● Data analysis
○ Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
○ Reliability analysis
○ Mean, S.D.
○ Correlation analysis
○ One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test

10. Teaching efficacy
Two components:‘Personal Teaching Efficacy’ and ‘General Teaching Efficacy’
→ items almost the same as those of the factor analysis by Gibson and Dembo (1984)
BUT
B15 “The influences of a student’s home experiences can be overcome by good teaching.”
→ “Personal Teaching Efficacy” vs “General Teaching Efficacy” (Gibson & Dembo, 1984)
Findings
● Teachers in Hong Kong tend to consider overcoming influences of students’ home
experiences as their own ability instead of challenges brought by external factors.
● Holding that family and schooling are sources of moral and intellectual education
respectively, teachers in Hong Kong may conceive overcoming students’ home
experiences in the course of intellectual learning as their own responsibilities (Cheng,
2004)

12. Teaching efficacy and school & teacher characteristics
● Personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy
correlated negatively but weakly (r=-0.14)
● Overall teaching efficacy and personal teaching efficacy were
negatively and weakly associated with all three types of
teacher training (Gifted Edu, SEN, catering to learner diversity)
● Personal teaching efficacy and staff size correlated negatively
but moderately (r=- 0.55)
● General teaching efficacy correlated positively yet weakly with
years of teaching experience (r=0.08) as well as job ranking
(r=0.13)
● *Year of exp correlated negatively and moderately with school
size (r=-4.32) and staff size (r=-4.26)
Findings
Staff size
21-30
31-40
41-50
51-60
61-70

15. Teaching efficacy: Comparison between
primary and secondary teachers
● Significant differences: Primary and secondary teachers
○ Overall self-efficacy
○ Personal teaching efficacy
Findings and discussion
→ consistent with other studies (e.g. Chao et al., 2017)

17. Teaching efficacy: Comparison between
primary and secondary teachers
This difference may be related to …
○ Primary settings:
■ Primary teachers facing higher work demand and requirements to interact
with a large number of students
■ Teach more than three subjects across different grades (Yin, Huang, & Lee,
2017)
○ Higher societal expectations:
■ Primary teachers are expected to provide quality education for younger
children when compared to secondary teachers (Chao et al., 2018)
■ General teaching efficacy: Less likely to be influenced by societal
expectations (Davis & Moore, 1981)
Findings and discussion

18. Teaching efficacy: Comparison between
primary and secondary teachers
● Teaching efficacy of teachers in distinct schools vary substantially probably
owing to disparate culture and working environment in individual schools
(Hughes, 2012)
Findings

19. Teaching efficacy: School characteristics
matter?
ANOVA tests
● Years of school establishment → Significant Differences!
○ F(7, 20)=2.701, p=0.04
● Younger schools (i.e. with 11-20 years of establishment)
(M=3.50) < older schools (i.e. with more than 90 years of
establishment) (M=3.65)
Findings

20. Teaching efficacy: School characteristics
matter?
● Number of staff → Significant Differences!
○ Number of staff → negatively correlated with scores in
PTE [F(4, 23)=2.791 (whereas p=0.05) ]
Findings
This may be related to ...
● Lack of professional learning communities in Hong Kong
● Disempowerment of new teachers with insufficient pedagogical content
knowledge (Lee, 2000)
● Teachers’ inertia (schools as complex, chaotic organizations) (Gultig, Ndhlovu, &
Betram, 1999; Hawkins & James, 2018)
No. of staff
Year of establshment

21. Teaching efficacy: Teacher characteristics
matter?
● Teachers’ job ranking & teacher training related to
catering learner diversity → Significant Differences!
○ Higher ranking
○ Teachers received training related to
catering to learner diversity
● Years of teaching experience weakly but
significantly associated with GTE
Findings
Higher PTE
Consistent with other local
studies by Cheung (2006)

22. Conclusion
● Identification level of teaching efficacy
● Comparison between primary and secondary teachers
● Confirmation and variation of teaching efficacy according to context-specific
situations

23. Implications
Implications for teacher education and school development
● Identification of level of teaching efficacy
● Development of teachers’ confidence to reach difficult students
● Establishment of infrastructures for building personal teaching
effiacy
● Articulation of school/ teacher development plan taking school
history into account

24. Implications
Implications for research
● How school characteristics (e.g. school size, no. of staff) affects
teaching efficacy
● Relationships between teachers’ teaching efficacy and their
actual classroom practice
● Inter-relationships between teachers’ teaching efficacy,
epistemological beliefs and teacher agency in the era of
educational reform (Chan, 2008)

25. Email: sallywywan@cuhk.edu.hk