“I’m not an English teacher”: Understanding the Relationship Among STEM Teacher Self-efficacy, Pedagogy, and Culture in the Classroom

Abstract

Albert Bandura's (1977) concept of self-efficacy, or one's belief in his/her ability to organize and execute a desired action, has been adopted by the educational community to examine some of the ways in which teachers understand and interact with their classroom environments (Bolshakova, 2011; Hamre et. al., 2008; Marcos, 2008; Nie 2013). The current study seeks to understand the ways in which STEM teacher self-efficacy in argument writing is generated and how it influences teachers pedagogical orientations. Additionally, this line of inquiry lead to a preliminary examination of the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and student identity.