Teachers’ self-efficacy. Demands on pre-service teachers with the school subjects biology and elementary science

Abstract

During their school internship, pre-service science teachers have to plan parts of science lessons or complete units as well as teach and reflect prepared experiment-based lessons. In how far pre-service teachers will engage in such action may depend on their self-efficacy beliefs. Teachers’ self-efficacy is based on teachers’ personal belief in whether they can successfully manage potentially challenging teaching operations in their school subject. As of today, there is little knowledge about the level of self-efficacy beliefs among pre-service teachers at the beginning of their school internship relating to different subjects. Furthermore, practical experiences may influence pre-service science teachers’ sense of self-efficacy; however, findings about previous teaching experience that students bring to their internship are still rare. This cross-sectional study was carried out to investigate the self-efficacy and teaching experiences with experiment-based lessons of 150 pre-service teachers of biology and elementary science, and presents initial results regarding varying levels as well as correlations between these two categories.