The Role of Elementary Teacher Experience On Classroom Management Self-Efficacy: A Causal Comparative Study

This quantitative causal-comparative study sought to determine if there was a difference in self-efficacy with classroom management between different levels of experience among teachers: pre-service, novice, mid-career, and late-career. Classroom management is an aspect of education that many teachers have famously struggled with, resulting in an increasing number of teachers leaving the field. Strong classroom management self-efficacy among teachers results in higher confidence levels for managing disruptions and unwanted behavior within the classroom. For this study, 166 participants were drawn from a convenience sample of elementary, public, and charter school teachers and pre-service teacher candidates from universities within the state of Utah. The Efficacy in Classroom Management subscale of the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale was used to assess the strength of self-efficacy for teachers with different experience levels. An ANOVA tested if a difference in classroom management self-efficacy could be attributed to teachers with different classroom experience levels. The results of this study showed a statistically significant difference between the self-efficacy scores of novice teachers and late-career teachers. The data did not reveal a statistically significant difference between the self-efficacy scores of pre-service and mid-career teachers. This suggests that teaching experience may have some impact on self-efficacy, but other factors likely play a more significant role in determining skill in classroom management. Recommendations for future research are made, including doing a longitudinal study, different methods of data collection, or including other variables such as teacher motivation, burnout, and job satisfaction