Instruments Measuring Physical Educator Self-efficacy Perceptions: a Systematic Review

Teacher self-efficacy perceptions of have been found to strongly influence instructional decisions as well as their orientation towards the educational process (Bandura, 1982). Teacher self-efficacy perceptions have been linked to an assortment of variables in the teaching and learning process such as: student achievement (Ross, 1992; Ashton & Webb, 1986; Parajes, 1996), increase use of various teaching modalities (Allinder, 1994, Guskey, 1988), persist longer with students who are struggling (Gibson & Dembo, 1984), are less critical of student errors (Gibson & Dembo, 1984; Ashton & Webb, 1986), greater classroom-based decision making (Hoy & Woolfolk, 1993; Ward, 2005), and an overall greater enthusiasm towards teaching (Allinder, 1994; Hall, Burley, Villeme, & Brockmeier, 1992). Although a great deal of research has been conducted on teacher self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), unfortunately few researchers have specifically examined self-efficacy perceptions among physical education teachers (Humphries, Hebert, Daigle, & Martin, 2012; Martin & Kulinna, 2003). The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review on the current self-efficacy instruments specific to physical education teacher perceptions. This review will focus on how researchers define and measure their construct, procedures used during sampling and testing, as well as reliability and validity methods employed. Electronic databases were searched from October to December 2015 to identify published studies that met the following inclusion criteria: (1) the instrument was specific to the content area of physical education, (2) the instrument targeted self-efficacy perceptions of pre-service or in-service teachers (excluded instruments specific to student self-efficacy), (3) the study reported methods and results for evaluating reliability and validity from its original source (no replication of previously published instrument), (4) the instrument was tested in its final version on practicing teachers. A total of 113 studies were found, but only 9 papers qualified for review. Of the 9 instruments, data showed that teacher self-efficacy evaluation in physical education a new trend, with no evidence of any instruments developed specific to physical education teachers prior to 1997. Selected instruments measured general teacher efficacy (n = 1), self-efficacy towards inclusion (n = 2), teaching physical education (n= 1), teaching physically active classes (n= 1), teaching obese students in PE (n= 1), and teaching motor skills (n= 1). Other major trends among the instruments coded was that (a) there is a an consensus to the number of scale points a scale item should have (between 5-11), (b) that peer review is imperative during scale development, and (c) the use of exploratory factor analysis (validity), and Cronbach’s alpha (reliability) are the primary sources of psychometric data. Though measuring self-efficacy perceptions of physical educators is prevalent in the literature, very few instruments developed meet task- and situational- specificity (Bandura, 2006). Knowing that teacher self-efficacy perceptions are a directly associated with numerous teaching behaviors, more instruments designed specific to self-efficacy of physical education instruction are needed to help get a better understanding of teacher motivation and instructional decisions