Abstract:

In the postmethod era, the concept of teachers' professional development has featured regularly in the area of second language teaching and received great attention as a result of concerns for factors affecting teacher theorizing power, reflective practice, and principled pragmatism. One such factor which is the focus of this study is teacher efficacy. Using Dellinger, Bobbett, Olivier, and Ellett's (2007) Efficacy Beliefs System-Self Form (TEBS-Self) (consisting of the six sub-scales of communication/clarification, management/climate, accommodating individual differences, motivation of students, managing learning routines, and higher order thinking skills), this large-scale study investigated the relationship between EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers' expectation of their efficacy vis-a-vis EFL learners' evaluation of their teachers' efficacy in light of teachers' variables of gender, years of experience in EFL teaching, relatedness of their education to ELT, as well as learners' variables of gender and proficiency level. As many as 629 EFL learners and 59 EFL teachers were administered the TEBS-Self. Results indicated no significant relation between teachers' evaluation of their efficacy and learners' assessment of their teachers' efficacy regarding the six sub-scales. Nor did the findings show that the three selected teacher characteristics, i.e. gender, experience, and relatedness of education, affected teachers' evaluation of their efficacy. However, the two learner characteristics of gender and proficiency level produced a significant effect on learners' assessment of their teachers' efficacy. The findings imply that teachers should become aware of reflective teaching so that they can develop a good understanding of their own efficacy to decrease the degree of mismatch between their own evaluation of their efficacy and that of their learners.

Keywords:

efficacy, postmethod, teacher education.