An Explorative Study of the Impact of Solution-Focused Consultation on Senior High School Teachers’ Self-Efficacy.

[[abstract]]The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of Solution-Focused Consultation on senior high-school teachers’ self-efficacy. Eleven senior high school teachers (6 females and 5 males; aged 27-37) participated in consultations for teaching related issues on weekly bases. Participants received fifty-minute Solution-Focused Consultations sessions once a week, which proceeded one to three sessions separately based on their individual conditions. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were employed in this study. Participants were asked to fill up the Teacher Efficacy Scale before and after the Solution-Focused Consultation session was given. The paired t-test was performed on the pretest and posttest scores of Teacher Efficacy Scale and its three subscales: personal efficacy, general teaching efficacy, and interpersonal classroom efficacy. A semi-structural interviews with participants was conducted and analyzed to explore the possible impacts of the Solution-Focused Consultation on teacher’s self efficacy. The major findings of this study were shown as following. First, there were no difference between pretest and posttest scores of the Teacher Efficacy Scale and its three sub-scales between the first session and the last one. Second, the analyses of interview content showed that the Solution-Focused Consultation indeed increased these senior high school teachers’ self-efficacy. The results also revealed these positive outcomes: (a) Awareness of personal efficacy: consultatees experienced more personal accomplishment, exhibited more positive characteristics and capabilities, showed stronger beliefs in education, and knew more about using external resources after receiving Solution Focused Consultation; (b) Increasing teaching efficacy: consultatees became more active to enhance students’ capabilities, more willing with devotion to teaching innovation and improvement, and more capable of enhancing students’ will to learn; (c) Enhancing the efficacy of classroom management: consultatees had better relationships with their students, communicated more actively with students’ parents, became more effective on promoting classroom regulation management, and could help students timely; (d) Affirmation of the efficacy for changing environment: consultatees became more sensitive to the negative external factors affecting students, and also were more capable of help students to develop appropriate value judgment and moral character to transform the negative environmental influence. The analyses of interview content also showed Solution-Focused Consultation provided the sources of teacher’s self-efficacy for the consultatees with enactive mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological and affective states. Finally, based on the results of this study, some important suggestions were provided for the praxis of Solution-Focused Consultation and future research.