Measuring Pre-Service Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy: The Effect of Professional, Instructional, and Personal Mentoring

Teaching is a challenging job. Teachers must be equipped with content-related and classroom management skills to be able to effectively facilitate learning and keep students motivated and engaged in their studies. Those who intend to engage in this profession need to undergo academic preparation as well as teaching internship. During their internship, pre-service teachers are mentored by cooperating teachers in the schools they are assigned. Mentoring covers the professional and instructional aspects of the job as well as personal or emotional support extended to pre-service teachers. Such mentoring is intended to enhance the pre-service teachers’ confidence in their ability to handle the multifaceted job of a teacher. This study has investigated the effect of mentoring on the pre-service teachers’ sense of efficacy. The Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) developed by Megan Tschannen-Moran and Anita Woolfolk Hoy (2001) was utilized to measure efficacy. In order to gauge the quality of mentoring provided by cooperating teachers, the researcher has devised a Professional, Instructional, and Personal Mentoring Scale (PIPMS). This test has an excellent internal consistency reliability as evidenced by a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .94. The data gathered using these scales were treated using multiple regression analysis. The study adopted a descriptive-correlational survey research design. A total of 100 undergraduate teacher education students from a state university in the Philippines participated in the study. Results show that professional, instructional, and personal mentoring significantly predict the sense of efficacy of pre-service teachers.