Bandura suggests that one source of motivation is thoughts and predictions about possible outcomes of behavior (Woolfolk, 1998). These predictions formed through past experiences and observing others affect self-efficacy. Bandura defines self-efficacy as individuals’ judgments as to how good they are at performing the actions required to cope with potential situations.  In other words, self-efficacy is linked with not how competent individuals are at their skills, but with their belief in their set of skills (Woolfolk,1998). According to Bandura, self-efficacy belief is affected by four basic sources; 1) Direct experiences: past successes or failures in a specific area, 2) Indirect experiences: studying other people who have similar successes or failures, 3) Social persuasion: being encouraged by others and 4) Emotional status: it is when a person is able to control his/her level of fear, anxiety and stress while studying his/her self-efficacy (Woolfolk, 1998; A?kar and Umay, 2001). These four items are considered the strongest items playing a role in the development of sense of efficacy of a person. Information derived from the above-mentioned sources does not directly affect self-efficacy; on the contrary they are subject to an evaluation process. This evaluation is a mediating process in personal and situational factors such as the person’s perceived skills, difficulty of the action, spent effort, amount of the external help, number and patterns of success and failures (Aç?kgöz, 1998, Woolfolk, 1998).  

According to Woolfolk, self-efficacy perception affects not only the expectations about success or failure but also the creation of the motivation required to set a target. If a person has a high self-efficacy motivation, he will have less fear of failure; set a high target for himself and act decisively in achieving these targets. He struggles with challenges he faces. In case of a failure, he does not get shaken up that much in the sense of self-efficacy and tend to keep on with his efforts. If the person has a poor self-efficacy perception, he tends to set easy targets for himself, avoids challenges, can easily give up when faced with a problem and stay away from working together with others.

According to Schunk, the sense of efficacy at the beginning of an action is usually is under the impact of general skills and past experiences. Later on, as he does the job, the feedbacks he receives play a more determining role on the self-efficacy. As students see they are making a progress, they will be motivated and the more their skills develop, the more self-efficacy develops, too. According to Bandura, the sense of self-efficacy is affected by people’s own success. While success increases self-efficacy, it also decreases failure. If a strong sense of self-efficacy is developed, it does not easily get affected from failure (Aç?kgöz, 1998).

Teachers’ self-efficacy

Teachers undoubtedly play a big role in developing the perception of students’ self-efficacy. Moreover, the teachers’ self-efficacy perception is one of the important fields of studies (Bandura, 1997; Gibson and Dembo, 1984; Hoy and Woolfolk, 1993; Corkett, 2011; Bümen, 2013, Saracalo?lu, 2010; Ekici, 2009; Babado?an and Korkut, 2010; Yenice, 2009; Saraço?lu and Yenice, 2009; Azar, 2010; Gökda?, 1997). Addressing the question of what teacher self-efficacy perception is, it is the belief of teachers that they can reach even the difficult learners to help them learn (Woolfolk, 1993). Ashton defines this as a set of belief of teachers in their capacity to affect the performance of students (B?kmaz, 2004). It is indicated that teachers with a high sense of efficacy spend more time and effort to help the difficult students at school by ignoring their learning problems, believe in themselves and their students, watch their students more closely, give more counseling and guidance during the class, use a more efficient strategy, benefit from group and cooperation studies, make sure students participate, show more enthusiasm (Aç?kgöz, 1998; Santrock, 2004; Woolfolk, 1998). Also, as the feedbacks of these types of teachers for their students are more positive, the sense of students’ self-efficacy will be affected positively. As for teachers with poor sense of efficacy, they do not rely on themselves in managing their class, get upset with the mistakes of the students, do not believe that students are capable of developing their skills, often apply restrictive and punitive discipline models, believe that students with poor set of skills will fail to learn. Unfortunately, they think that if they had had a second chance in life, they would not have chosen to become teachers (Santrock, 2004).

The self-efficacy perception of teachers reaching a desirable level is inarguably related with teacher training institutions. Training teachers is one of the important subjects of education and has a multifaceted and vital role in learning-teaching process (Aç?kgöz, 1998). Knobluch and Hoy (2008) suggest that a teacher goes through one of the most effective experiences in the development of his belief in efficacy during the pre-service teacher process. Studying literature related with the topic, it is found that a number of researches have been done on the self-efficacy perceptions of pre-service teachers (Gibson and Dembo, 1984; Soodak and Podel, 1993; Wheatley, 2005; Tschannen-Mora and Hoy, 2001; Clift and Bradly, 2005; Lancaster and Bain, 2010). These studies usually focused on self-efficacy perception of teachers in the areas of student success, class manage-ment and time management strategies, etc. It is noted that, in Turkey, the number of studies on self-efficacy perception of pre-service teachers has increased in recent years (Atay, 2007; Çak?ro?lu, 2008; Özdemir, 2008; Çak?ro?lu and Bone, 2005; Tekkaya, Çak?ro?lu and Özkan, 2004; I??ksal and Çak?ro?lu, 2005; Ekici, 2005; Kutluca and Ekici, 2010; Uzun, Özk?l?ç and ?entürk, 2010; Y?lmaz et al., 2006). In general, the purpose of these studies is to evaluate self-efficacy perceptions of pre-service teachers in different branches from the perspective of different variables (gender, age, alma mater, etc).

The formation classes which pre-service teachers have to take throughout their own education are believed to contribute to their positive self-efficacy perception. One of formation classes for teachers is the special teaching methods class in the third year. In this class, the pre-service teacher plans a class related with his area and chooses the methods that are suitable with his class  and presents it to his classmates. As it is a first time experience for a lot of pre-service teachers, they find the opportunity to speak in front of an audience, make sure the topic they have prepared gets heard, apply the method which is fit for the class and the topic, receive and answer criticism, and improve themselves after seeing what is missing after lecturing. Therefore, they get to experience the information they have learnt in other formation classes through this applied class. The research is needed to be done for the fact that the experiences which pre-service teachers gain during the formation classes could contribute to teachers’ self-efficacy perception. In spite of the fact that there is no research to study the effects of special teaching methods class on the teacher self-efficacy perception of primary school social studies pre-service teachers, which is not only the subject matter of this study, but also the formation lessons, there is a similar study conducted by Ekici (2008). In his research, Ekici studies the effect of class management lesson which is one of the formation lessons at the teacher self-efficacy perception of pre-service teachers.

Looking at the research results, it has been suggested that the class management lesson has an important effect on improving the level of self-efficacy perception of pre-service teachers. On the other hand, the study results point out to the fact that the level of self-efficacy perception of pre-service teachers does not have any statistically significant difference in terms of gender, general academic success status and their alma mater high school. In the light of the researches, this research is believed to contribute to the literature.

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the change in the level of self-efficacy perception of Primary School Social Studies pre-service teachers who take the special teaching methods class. In accordance with this purpose, it has been studied: a) what is the impact of special teaching methods class on pre-service teachers’ level of teacher self-efficacy perception? b) Is there a significant difference in the level of teacher self-efficacy perception of pre-service teachers before and after they take the special teaching class? 

Research model

In this research, single group pretest-posttest model from pre-experimental pattern was applied. According to Karasar (1994), in single group pretest-posttest model, independent variable is applied to a randomly-selected group and there are both pre-experimental (pretest) and post-experimental (posttest) assessments. The symbolic look of this model is as follows:

G1      O11      X        O12

(Karasar, 1994) In this study, in order to evaluate the change in the level of self-efficacy perception of pre-service teachers through the special teaching methods, teacher self-efficacy scale was applied to 89 students at the beginning of the period as a pretest. The pre-service teachers attended special teaching methods class 4 h a week, 56 h in total during a period of 14 weeks. Teacher self-efficacy scale, which was applied to pre-service teachers as a pretest before starting the class, was applied as a posttest again at the end of a 14-week class. It was determined whether there was a difference or not between both assessments.

The study group

The study group of the research consisted of 89 students who were third graders of Primary School Social Studies Department at Buca Education Faculty, Dokuz Eylül University in spring semester in 2012-2013 Academic Year. However, 59 students were left in the research after eliminating those who failed to take either pretest or posttest, did not give complete answers or failed to write a nickname.

32 (%54.2) of the study group are female and 27 (%45.8) of them were male pre-service teachers. These students were those who took special teaching methods class in a period of 14 weeks between February and June.  

Data collection tool

To collect research data, a 5 item Likert type was used. “Teacher Self-efficacy Scale” prepared by Aç?kgöz and Gökda? was developed to establish the self-efficacy of teachers. The scale was applied again on 652 pre-service teachers to get proofs regarding factorial structure validity in 2012-2013 Academic Year by the researcher. At the end of the analyses, it was established that the scale consisted of 29 items and 3 subscales. Cronbach Alpha and two semi reliability coefficient of the subscale in which these factors were formed are provided in Table 1. 

The highest score pre-service teachers could get from this scale is 145.00 (29x5), and the lowest is 5.00 (5x1). The general average of this scale was X=87.00, average of teaching efficacy sub-scale which was one of the sub-scale was X=51.00; scale average of teacher’s impact was X=15.00; and the scale average of student’s impact was X=21.00. The same assessment tool was applied again as a posttest to pre-service teachers who attended 14 week special teaching class.  

Lecturing

The research was carried out with students who attended the special teaching methods class over a period of 14 weeks in total between February and June in spring semester of 2012-2013 Academic Year. Teachers’ self-efficacy scale was applied as a pretest to students at the beginning of the semester. During the first seven weeks, the researcher had talked about social studies teaching program, vision and structure of the program, efficient learning approaches, teaching strategies, class planning, class introduction activities, several methods and techniques used in Social Studies class in an applied manner. During the remaining weeks, the students formed small groups and selected a unit from Social Studies lesson listed by the researcher, presenting a lecture they planned in a time span of 15 to 20 min to their classmates. Within this time, researcher guided the students during the planning phase. At the end of lecture presentation of each group, in-class observation scale was distributed to students who watched the class and had been asked to evaluate their classmate who presented the lecture. Later on, a discussion atmosphere was created in which the researcher was also included so that they could verbally criticize their classmate. At the end of the semester teacher self-efficacy scale was applied again as a post test.

This part will feature the findings. The distribution of self-efficacy points of pre-service teachers are provided in Table 2.

According to Table 2, arithmetic average of pretest scores of pre-service teachers based on the self-efficacy scale is X=105.48, and arithmetic average of the posttest was calculated to be X=105.60. It is also possible to say that pre-service teachers scored higher than the scale average (X=87.00) in pretest and posttest. It is found that the arithmetic average (pretest X=64.97 and posttest X=63.84) which pre-service teachers scored on teaching efficacy sub-scale was higher than this scale’s average (X=51.00). Moreover, the arithmetic average (pretest X=13.03 and posttest X=12.86) scored on the teacher impact sub-scale was found lower than this scale’s average (X=15.00). Finally, arithmetic average (pretest X=21.12 and posttest X=22.75) of student impact sub-scale was found higher than this scale’s average (X=21.00).

It is stated that there was an increase in the general average of teacher self-efficacy scale and student’s impact sub-scale; however, there was a decrease in the arithmetic average of teaching efficacy and teacher’s impact sub-scale.

To see whether   the  differences  between  the  scale averages were significant or not, t-test, which is provided in Table 3, was applied.

Studying Table 2 and the pretest and posttest scores of pre-service teachers concerning the level of teacher self-efficacy perception, there was no significant difference in the general score average of the scale and teaching efficacy and teacher’s impact from the subscales. On the contrary, there was a significant difference in the level of student’s impact (t(58)=-3.2. P<0.05).

Looking at the general self-efficacy perception of pre-service teachers, it is stated that both pretest and posttest averages are higher than the scale average. This result runs parallel to the study conducted by Ekici (2008). Also, in the field literature it is possible to encounter research findings which suggest that self-efficacy perception of pre-service teachers are positive (O?uz, 2012; Güven and Ersoy, 2007). However, it is observed that there is a decrease in score averages in sub-scales of teaching efficacy and teacher’s impact of teacher self-efficacy scale. Even though this result is not enough to make a significant difference, it has some similarities with studies conducted by Woolfolk et al. (2005), ?ahin and Atay (2010). In both researches, it is emphasized that practicing in a real class atmosphere in the early years of teaching and failing in these early experiences may compromise the self-efficacy percep-tion. Bümen (2013) claims that by observing pre- service teachers, peers or colleagues, comparing themselves with persons they observe that their teaching efficacy perception may change and that may have  boosted  their perception, this process may have made an opposite effect in this research and observing peers may have affected their self-efficacy perceptions negatively. It is estimated that special teaching methods class is an interactive process that is not similar to way lectures are given in other classes. Having others join the class, making sure they listen, preparing a good lecture plan, watching, criticizing, being criticized about how lectures are given, getting excited and being inexperienced (Woolfolk  and Spero, 2005) would cause a decrease in pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy scores. Also, as the vocational information of a pre-service teacher increases, the person could realize that their occupation would be more difficult than they used to think of.

A significant difference has been identified at student’s impact sub-scale of self-efficacy scale. At this sub-scale, there are articles which lead pre-service teachers to reach their students and improve their success when they become professional teachers. As pre-service teachers experience lecturing to their own classmates instead of in a real class atmosphere, they may have developed their sense of efficacy due to having gone through the process in a more relaxed manner, as Bümen (2013) suggested, witnessing all stages of lecturing and practicing it, and the classes taken during undergraduate studies contribute to support the teaching job in the first year and consequently, the results may turn to be different at a significant level.

As a result, teachers with high self-efficacy perception are needed for an efficient education. The responsibility of teacher training institutes increase as teachers with high self-efficacy may increase the success of the student in even disadvantaged environments. According to the result of this study, the following may be recommended for the researchers of this field: This study which was applied to the students of Primary School Social Studies Department may also be conducted on pre-service teachers studying other branches and results can be discussed. The effects of other formation lessons on the self-efficacy perception of pre-service teachers may also be studied. For further research, special teaching methods lessons which the third grader undergraduates have, and teaching application lessons which the fourth grader pre-service teachers would take could be discussed and the former results can be compared with the latter ones.

The author has not declared any conflict of interests.