Determining practicing and prospective teachers’ self-efficacy in TPACK in the science domain Petra Fisser, Joke Voogt, Bart Ormel, Chantal Velthuis & Jo Tondeur, University of Twente, The Netherlands, Edith Stein University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands, University of Ghent, Belgium Teachers’ beliefs, practices and attitudes are important for understanding and improving educational processes, because they are closely linked to teachers’ challenges in their daily professional life. Self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977) seems to play a major role in this. In this study we look at teachers' self-efficacy towards the domain of science education and towards technology integration in this domain. Since most students who enter pre-service elementary school training in the Netherlands graduated from secondary school without science-related courses, many lack any foundational science knowledge. This contributes to their (absence of) confidence to teach science, and it also delimits their science-teaching related PCK. In a recent study Fisser, Ormel and Velthuis (submitted) measured teachers' beliefs, attitudes and self-efficacy in relation to science education in primary education, based on a Dutch version of the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (STEBI) (Riggs & Enochs, 1990). The results for the pre-service teachers showed that the more pre-service teachers have the opportunity to experience actual teaching in the science domain, the higher the sense of self-efficacy is. Combining science education with technology integration offers even more challenges for teachers. Measuring teachers’ self-efficacy towards technology integration will be done by using a Dutch version of the TPACK survey (Schmidt et al., 2009). This survey will be complimented with the STEBI survey and, because the TPACK survey does not take into account teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards technology, questions related to the attitude of teachers towards using technology in education will be added. The combined TPACK-STEBI survey will be distributed to Dutch pre-service primary education students and the results will be presented at the SITE symposium.

1. Prospective teachers’ self-efficacy
of TPACK in the science domain
Petra Fisser, Joke Voogt, Bart Ormel,
Chantal Velthuis & Jo Tondeur
University of Twente
Department of Curriculum Design and Educational Innovation
SITE Conference, Nashville, 10 March 2011

2. In this presentation..
 Teachers and their beliefs
 Self-efficacy
 Use of technology in education
 Science education
 Measuring self-efficacy
 TPACK
 STEBI
 First results

3. Teachers and their beliefs
Teachers’ beliefs, practices and attitudes are important
for understanding and improving educational processes,
because they are closely linked to teachers’
challenges in their daily professional life

relation with
self-efficacy?

4. Self-efficacy
 Self-efficacy: one’s perceived ability to perform an action that will
lead successfully toward a specific goal (Bandura, 1977)
 Teachers’ sense of self-efficacy is a powerful predictor of their
behavior in the classroom and student outcomes
 Teachers with a high sense of self-efficacy will set higher goals, be
less afraid of failure, and find new strategies when old ones fail
 If the sense of self-efficacy is low, teachers will avoid the task or
give up easily (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001)
 If teachers feel more confident to teach a specific domain, they teach
the subject in a different way than less confident teachers

5. The context of our study
 The Netherlands
 Pre-service teacher training
 Use of technology in the science domain…
…combining two problems!

6. Problem 1 (Science)
 TIMSS, comparative study in more than 40 different countries on
trends in mathematics and science education
 The results:
 Dutch children don’t belong to the top 10 of best achieving
countries in the domain of science anymore
 Dutch teachers spend 30-45 minutes per week in average for
science education (this is less than all other TIMSS-countries)
 85 percent biology, only 15 percent physics and chemistry
 The children have a low achievement and attitude in those areas

7. Possible reasons for Problem 1 (Science)
 Reading, writing and math are largely emphasized in the Dutch
educational system at the cost of other domains like science
 TIMSS study: physics and chemistry are the subjects in which Dutch
teachers do not feel very confident
 Literature: teachers who do feel confident in their ability to teach
science allocate more time to this subject in their teaching than
teachers without confidence
 Our research: focus on raising teachers’ confidence in science
teaching, framed from the perspective of Bandura’s notion of
self-efficacy

8. Problem 2 (Technology)
 Well…
 There are computers
 There is a good internet connectivity
 There are interactive whiteboards
 There is software
 There are games
 But… well… you know…

9. Possible reasons for Problem 1 (Technology)
 No time
 No money
 No ideas
 No TPACK
 No self-efficacy
 Our research: focus on raising teachers’ confidence in using
technology while teaching, framed from the perspective of
a) TPACK and b) Bandura’s notion of self-efficacy

10. Before you can increase you have to measure
 Two instruments combined into one
 TPACK Survey (Schmidt et al., 2009)
 STEBI (Riggs & Enochs, 1990)

11. TPACK & STEBI
 TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge), measures
 pre-service teachers’ self-assessment of their Technological
Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) and
 related knowledge domains included in the framework
 STEBI (Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument), measures
 Personal Science Teaching Efficacy
(assessment of own teacher competence)
 Science Teaching Outcome Expectancy
(teachers' expectations that teaching can influence student learning)

12. The general data
 TPACK & STEBI were translated in Dutch and distributed among
pre-service primary school teachers (students)
 168 students
 age 16-24
 25% male, 75% female
 distributed over 3 years of study
 Some science-domain-related data
 115 out of 168 never chose to do something with science voluntary
 109 did some biology-related lessons during field training
 42 did some physics/chemistry-related lessons during field training

13. Results: TPACK questionnaire
 Reliability all TPACK-items together: Cronbach’s α = 0.91
 Factor analysis: 7 factors
Factor Items in factor Name factor Reliability
Cronbach’s α
1 TK4 TK2 TK5 TK3 TK1 TK6 Technological Knowledge .915
TK7
2 TPK1 TPK2 Science TPACK (?) .824
TCK3 TCK4
3 CK1 CK2 CK3 Pedagogical Science Content Knowledge .798
PCK2 PCK1
4 TPK3 TPK4 TPK5 Reflective Educated use of ICT .667
TPCK3
5 PK1 PK2 PK3 PK4 Pedagogical Student Knowledge .705
6 PK5 PK6 PK7 Pedagogical Organizational Knowledge .548
7 TPCK7 TPCK8 TPACK Leadership .803

14. Results: STEBI questionnaire
 Reliability all STEBI-items together: Cronbach’s α = 0.85
 Factor analysis:
 Personal Science Teaching Efficacy
 Science Teaching Outcome Expectancy
 both with all the original items
 Reliability
 PSTE .91
 STOE .66

15. Results: TPACK and general data
 Gender correlates with
 TPACK Factor 1 (Technological Knowledge)
TPACK Factor 3 (Pedagogical Science Content Knowledge)
TPACK Factor 7 (TPACK Leadership)
 In all cases the men scored higher on the different factors
 Preliminary conclusion 1:
Men are more confident in their Technological Knowledge, their
Pedagogical Science Content Knowledge and they see themselves
more as leaders who help others to develop TPACK

16. Results: TPACK and general data
 Preliminary conclusion 2:
There is a positive correlation between study year and
 TPACK Factor 5 (Pedagogical Student Knowledge):
significant difference between year 1 and 3
 TPACK Factor 6 (Pedagogical Organizational Knowledge):
significant difference between year 1 and 2 and between year 1 and 3
 TPACK Factor 7 (TPACK Leadership):
significant difference between year 1 and 3 and between year 2 and 3
 Expectation:
Students who are more advanced in their studies are more confident in
relation to Pedagogical Student and Organizational Knowledge and they
see themselves more as leaders who help others to develop TPACK.
The third year of the study seems to be very important.

17. Results: STEBI and general data
 Preliminary conclusion 3:
There is a positive relation between Personal Science Teaching Efficacy
and the “profile” during secondary school and the perceived knowledge
about biology, physics, chemistry and technical systems
 Expectation: Students who were already interested (confident?) in
science in secondary education and students who perceive their science
knowledge as sufficient or more will assess their own science teaching
competence higher
 (No significant differences between men/women or between study years)

18. Results: combining TPACK and STEBI
 Correlations of the 2 STEBI factors with the 7 TPACK factors:
 STOE has a significant positive correlation with TPACK 1, 2, 3, 4
 PSTE has a significant positive correlation with TPACK 1, 2, 3, 6, 7
 What does (could) this mean?

19. Results: combining TPACK and STEBI
 STOE measures the outcome expectancy of science education
 PSTE measures science teaching efficacy
 TPACK 1 measures Technological Knowledge
 TPACK 2 measures Science TPACK
 TPACK 3 measures Pedagogical Science Content Knowledge
 Preliminary conclusion 4:
There is a positive relation between outcome expectancy and teaching
efficacy with Technological Knowledge, Science TPACK and
Pedagogical Science Content Knowledge
 Expectation: the more outcome expectancy and teaching efficacy, the
more Technological Knowlegde, Science TPACK and Pedagogical
Science Content Knowlegde (but more (regression) analysis is needed)

20. Results: combining TPACK and STEBI
 Additional results (1)
 STOE measures the outcome expectancy of science education
 STOE has a positive correlation with TPACK 4, Reflective Educated
use of ICT
 Preliminary conclusion 5:
There is a positive relation between STOE and Reflective Educated
use of ICT
 Expectation: if a teacher expects something positive from science
education, he/she will reflectively think about the added value of
technology in his/her education, while referring to what he/she learned
during training

21. Results: combining TPACK and STEBI
 Additional results (2)
 PSTE measures science teaching efficacy
 PSTE has a positive correlation with TPACK 6 and 7,
Pedagogical Organisational Knowledge and TPACK Leadership
 Preliminary conclusion 6:
There is a positive relation between PSTE and Pedagogical
Organisational Knowledge and TPACK Leadership
 Expectation: if a teachers feels confident to teach science, he/she will
have good class management and is able to help/guide/lead his/her
colleagues in using technology in science education

22. Why were we combining TPACK & STEBI?
 TPACK stresses the importance of the interactions between
Technology, Pedagogy and Content, but in the TPACK Survey there is
only a limited number of Science-related items
 The TPACK Survey measures knowledge (and skills?), but ignores the
importance of attitude (self-efficacy). Or… is self-reported
measurement actually measuring self-efficacy?
 Combining knowledge, skills and attitudes is probably the answer..
And this combination contributes to somenone’s self-efficacy
 The higher the self-efficacy, the more likely someone will use
technology in science teaching

23. Future research related to TPACK & STEBI
 More research in the combination of TPACK & STEBI
 We added extra items related to science. Not reported here, but it
seems to give a broader and better view, especially when related to
STEBI  needs more research
 We added extra items about beliefs related to ict in education,
preliminary results seem interesting  needs more research
 Necessary to add items about beliefs related to education in general?

24. Future research related to TPACK & STEBI
 The factor “TPACK leadership” seems very interesting
 We believe that this particular factor will make the difference between
an ict-integrating teacher and a non-ict-integrating teacher
 We will report on this next year!

25. More information?
 Please contact us!
Petra Fisser: p.h.g.fisser@utwente.nl
Joke Voogt: j.m.voogt@utwente.nl
Bart Ormel, b.j.b.ormel@utwente.nl
Chantal Velthuis, velthuis@edith.nl
Jo Tondeur, jo.tondeur@ugent.be
And for the Dutch people  htpp://www.tpack.nl 