TITLE:  Teacher Attitudes and Practices That Affect Teacher Efficacy to Promote Student Learning for Low Achieving Students: A Review of the Literature

ABSTRACT:  

In education, efficacy should be a culture that is embedded in the school environment. There are several areas of efficacy that must coexist in educational settings in order to work towards student achievement and closing the achievement gap. These areas of efficacy include teacher efficacy, collective efficacy, and academic efficacy.  Teacher efficacy is defined as a “teachers’ confidence in their ability to promote students’ learning” (Goddard, Hoy & Hoy 2000, p. 480), while collective efficacy is defined as “the perception of teachers in a school that the efforts of the faculty as a whole will have a positive effect on students,” with the faculty in general agreeing that “teachers in the school can get through to the most difficult students.” (Goddard, Hoy & Hoy, 2000, p. 482). Academic efficacy on the other hand, can be defined as “a person’s confidence in their ability to organize, execute, and regulate performance in order to solve a problem or accomplish a task at a designated level of skill” in academia (Goddard, Hoy & Hoy 2000, p. 483). The focus of this research is to highlight teacher efficacy and how it can contribute to positively affecting student learning as well as towards closing the achievement gap for all students.

THESIS DEFENDED AND APPROVED:  SPRING 2019