Shaping Self-efficacy: Tracking a Group of Early Childhood Education Students for Four Years, from College to Employment in the Field

Abstract

A “sense of self-efficacy” is defined as the process of linking knowledge to action, as the assessment of the ability to execute a behavior leading to a certain outcome. A person’s perception of self-efficacy has behavioral and emotional implications. When people doubt their own abilities, they tend not to persevere, give up rapidly when encountering difficulties, and feel anxiety and negative emotional arousal when they believe they cannot cope. In terms of self-efficacy, the functions of educators, teachers, and pre-school teachers touch on at least three domains: Task, Interpersonal, and Organizational. This article documents supervision of a group of students in the Early Childhood training track including the work of novice pre-school teachers. It demonstrates what the students undergo, from the beginning of their training to employment as pre-school teachers. Based on the findings, the article reaches conclusions regarding the factors associated with student-pre-school teachers’ sense of self efficacy, how each group member learns to form her own sense of self-efficacy, group interactions and achievements, whether self-efficacy is a personality trait or a formative belief, and the nature of the profiles of student-pre-school teachers with a high and low sense of self-efficacy. The article concludes that a person has varying levels of self-efficacy regarding different aspects of both his general and professional life. A person learns by dialogue with his environment and those around him, as well as with himself. Dialogue allows every teacher to further expand and improve his knowledge.