Exploring the validity of a teachers' self-efficacy scale in five countries

Abstract

The purpose of this article was twofold. The first purpose was to test the validity of the Teachers' Sense of Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES) in five settings-Canada, Cyprus, Korea, Singapore, and the United States. The second purpose was, by extension, to establish the importance of the teacher self-efficacy construct across diverse teaching conditions. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to better understand the measurement invariance of the scale across countries, after which the relationship between the TSES, its three factors, and job satisfaction was explored. The TSES showed convincing evidence of reliability and measurement invariance across the five countries, and the relationship between the TSES and job satisfaction was similar across settings. The study provides general evidence that teachers' self-efficacy is a valid construct across culturally diverse settings and specific evidence that teachers' self-efficacy showed a similar relationship with teachers' job satisfaction in five contrasting settings. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.