Teacher Efficacy Scale

Abstract

The Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES), developed by Sherri Gibson and Myron H. Dembo in 1984, stands as a foundational psychometric instrument in educational psychology, organizational behavior, and teacher education. Rooted theoretically in Albert Bandura‘s Social Cognitive Theory and early locus of control models developed by the RAND Corporation, the TES was designed to assess teachers’ professional beliefs regarding their individual and collective capability to influence student learning, motivation, and behavioral outcomes. The full self-report instrument comprises 30 items evaluated on a 6-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 6 (Strongly Agree). Psychometric investigations consistently reveal a distinct two-factor orthogonal or oblique dimensionality: Personal Teaching Efficacy (PTE), reflecting an educator’s personal belief in their instructional and behavioral skills to bring about positive student achievement, and General Teaching Efficacy (GTE), which evaluates the broader conviction that teaching can overcome systemic student obstacles such as socioeconomic status, adverse home environments, and community limitations.

Across extensive psychometric evaluations, the instrument has demonstrated robust internal consistency, yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .75 to .84 for the PTE subscale, .72 to .79 for the GTE subscale, and approximately .79 for the aggregated instrument. Empirical validation studies using multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) methodology have established sound convergent and discriminant validity, proving that the construct is conceptually discrete from teacher verbal ability and general cognitive or interpersonal flexibility. Furthermore, criterion-related and predictive validity analyses have demonstrated direct observational relationships between high teacher self-efficacy scores and vital classroom pedagogical behaviors, including differentiated instructional grouping, sustained academic focus, emotional resilience when assisting struggling students, and reduced reliance on punitive disciplinary actions. The TES continues to serve as an indispensable measurement paradigm for educational researchers, school psychologists, and academic leadership evaluating instructional effectiveness, teacher attrition, and pedagogical development programs.

Keywords

Teacher Efficacy Scale, Personal Teaching Efficacy, General Teaching Efficacy, Albert Bandura, Social Cognitive Theory, Instructional Behavior, Teacher Attrition, Multitrait-Multimethod Technique, Psychometric Validation, Classroom Management, Student Achievement, Educational Assessment

Authors

The Teacher Efficacy Scale was authored by Sherri Gibson and Myron H. Dembo, whose collaborative empirical research at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California (USC) produced the landmark 1984 validation paper published in the Journal of Educational Psychology. Dr. Myron H. Dembo is an Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at USC, widely recognized for his extensive scholarly contributions to motivation in academic settings, self-regulated learning, educational psychology instruction, and teacher development. His textbooks and empirical studies on student self-regulation and instructional efficacy have trained generations of school psychologists and educators globally.

Dr. Sherri Gibson conducted foundational work on the conceptualization and operationalization of personal responsibility and instructional self-efficacy in primary school environments. Building on early conference proceedings presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting alongside Gene Brown (1982), Gibson designed the pilot iterations of the measure, synthesized the qualitative classroom observations, and executed the factor-analytic validation procedures that resulted in the standardized 30-item instrument. While institutional affiliations during the tool’s inception centered around the University of Southern California and neighboring public school districts in Southern California, researchers inquiring about the scale frequently consult the public domain educational archives and psychometric repositories maintained through standard university library systems.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Teacher Efficacy Scale is to provide a standardized, psychometrically rigorous, and diagnostically sensitive instrument capable of operationalizing and quantifying an educator’s subjective belief system regarding their teaching competence. Within the paradigm of educational psychology, self-efficacy is not an index of actual instructional skill per se, but rather a self-referent cognitive appraisal of what one can accomplish across variable, challenging, or unpredictable pedagogical circumstances. Gibson and Dembo (1984) constructed the measure to resolve pervasive conceptual ambiguities in earlier educational research, which had attempted to quantify teacher confidence via simplistic one- or two-item assessments (such as those employed in the RAND Corporation studies) or through generalized locus of control inventories that failed to capture domain-specific instructional challenges.

In research contexts, the TES was engineered to serve multiple distinct functions:

• Explaining Differential Classroom Instruction: The scale enables investigators to examine why teachers with equivalent academic credentials, curricula, and instructional resources achieve drastically divergent outcomes in student engagement, reading achievement, and cognitive mastery.
• Evaluating Teacher Preparation Programs: By administering the TES longitudinally to preservice teachers across practicum coursework and clinical student-teaching rotations, university teacher education departments can evaluate the efficacy of their pedagogical training modules in fostering professional resilience.
• Predicting Teacher Well-Being and Retention: Educational administrators utilize the tool to identify early cognitive markers of professional burnout, instructional helplessness, emotional exhaustion, and career attrition, as low self-efficacy is heavily implicated in premature departures from the teaching profession.
• Assessing School Reform and Professional Development: The TES serves as an evaluative pre- and post-intervention outcome metric to determine whether school district initiatives—such as novel curricular rollouts, behavioral intervention frameworks, or administrative mentorship structures—positively shift educators’ instructional confidence.

From an applied and diagnostic standpoint, the scale allows school psychologists, instructional coaches, and mentors to design tailored supervisory interventions. For example, a teacher scoring high on Personal Teaching Efficacy but low on General Teaching Efficacy may harbor deep cynicism regarding structural socioeconomic barriers, leading to targeted coaching on community-integrated learning and culturally responsive instruction. Conversely, a teacher with high General Teaching Efficacy but low Personal Teaching Efficacy recognizes that children can learn under optimal instructional conditions, but doubts their individual technical competency, signaling a clinical need for targeted skills-based modeling, co-teaching, and mastery-experience feedback.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the TES is teacher self-efficacy, conceptualized as a multi-layered cognitive appraisal of capability within the dynamic ecology of the classroom. Historically, educational researchers struggled to distinguish between generalized personality traits (e.g., optimism, internal vs. external locus of control) and context-specific self-efficacy beliefs. Gibson and Dembo clarified this construct by framing it across two interdependent, yet structurally distinct, theoretical dimensions:

1. Personal Teaching Efficacy (PTE)

Personal Teaching Efficacy constitutes an internal, self-referent judgment regarding one’s individual repertoire of instructional pedagogical skills, behavioral management strategies, and capacity to evoke academic and social-emotional growth in students, even those deemed unmotivated or challenging. PTE directly mirrors Bandura’s concept of efficacy expectations—the personal conviction that one can successfully execute the precise behaviors required to produce desired instructional outcomes.

A teacher possessing elevated PTE attributes student progress directly to their pedagogical decisions, persistence, and innovative scaffolding. For example, when confronted with a student exhibiting reading comprehension deficits, a high-PTE educator operates under the assumption: “If I adjust my pedagogical strategy, break down the linguistic components, and persist with differentiated feedback, this child will master the standard.” When instructional failures occur, high-PTE teachers view them as dynamic problems requiring instructional modification rather than fixed student inadequacies.

2. General Teaching Efficacy (GTE)

General Teaching Efficacy reflects an external, systemic belief regarding the overall power of the teaching profession to counteract pervasive societal, biological, familial, and environmental impediments. GTE maps onto Bandura’s concept of outcome expectations within a sociological framework—evaluating whether education, as an enterprise, possesses the potency to transcend the debilitating influences of poverty, unstable domestic environments, lack of community resources, and parental neglect.

A teacher scoring low on GTE maintains fatalistic perspectives regarding the limitations of formal schooling, frequently endorsing statements indicating that family background and genetic predispositions overwhelmingly dictate academic success, rendering classroom interventions largely futile for disadvantaged youth. Conversely, high GTE reflects an optimistic perspective on the transformative agency of schooling, asserting that exemplary teaching can fundamentally rewrite a child’s developmental trajectory regardless of their socioeconomic origin.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the Teacher Efficacy Scale is grounded primarily within Albert Bandura‘s Social Cognitive Theory (1977, 1986, 1997), integrated with foundational insights from Julian Rotter‘s (1966) social learning theory and the pioneering educational policy evaluations conducted by the RAND Corporation (Armor et al., 1976; Berman et al., 1977).

Bandura’s Efficacy Expectations versus Outcome Expectations

Bandura (1977) delineated a vital theoretical distinction between two types of cognitive expectations that govern human agency, choice, and persistence:

1. Efficacy Expectations: The conviction that one possesses the internal capabilities to successfully execute the targeted actions required to achieve a particular performance level (operationalized in the TES as Personal Teaching Efficacy).
2. Outcome Expectations: The cognitive estimation that a given behavior, if successfully executed, will actually result in specific environmental, physical, or social outcomes (operationalized in the TES as General Teaching Efficacy).

Bandura posited that individuals can believe a specific course of action will produce a desirable outcome (high outcome expectation), yet simultaneously doubt their personal ability to perform that behavior (low efficacy expectation). In educational settings, a teacher might recognize that intensive phonemic awareness instruction accelerates reading literacy (positive outcome expectation), yet believe that they personally lack the diagnostic diagnostic competence to deliver such specialized intervention to dyslexic students (low personal efficacy). Gibson and Dembo sought to operationalize this theoretical dichotomy, asserting that both dimensions must be assessed independently to accurately predict instructional behavior.

The RAND Corporation Precursors

Prior to Gibson and Dembo’s psychometric contribution, teacher efficacy was measured almost exclusively through two 5-point Likert items embedded within broader policy surveys conducted by the RAND Corporation under Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Armor et al., 1976):

• RAND Item 1: “When it comes right down to it, a teacher can’t do much because most of a student’s motivation and performance depends on his or her home environment.” (Conceived as measuring whether teaching could overcome external factors—GTE precursor).
• RAND Item 2: “If I really try hard, I can get through to even the most difficult or unmotivated students.” (Conceived as measuring personal capacity—PTE precursor).

Although these two questions exhibited staggering predictive power—demonstrating significant positive associations with student reading gains, teacher implementation of innovative curricula, and project continuation—a two-item scale suffered severe psychometric vulnerabilities, including unknown multidimensionality, narrow variance, and limited internal consistency. Gibson and Dembo integrated Bandura’s triadic reciprocal determinism with the conceptual underpinnings of the RAND questions, formulating an expanded 30-item scale that captured the complex, ecologically valid reality of daily schooling.

Validity

The validation of the Teacher Efficacy Scale represents one of the most comprehensive empirical validation protocols published in early educational measurement literature. Gibson and Dembo (1984) established construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity through a multi-stage empirical research design involving 208 elementary school teachers across 13 schools within two unified public school districts in California.

Construct and Convergent/Discriminant Validity: The MTMM Matrix

To establish that teacher efficacy was a distinct psychological entity rather than a reflection of general cognitive capacity or interpersonal flexibility, Gibson and Dembo utilized a Multitrait-Multimethod (MTMM) Matrix design (Campbell & Fiske, 1959). The study crossed three distinct traits:

• Teacher Efficacy
• Verbal Ability
• Flexibility

These traits were measured using two completely independent assessment methods: self-report survey questionnaires and standardized supervisory ratings. The analysis yielded the following critical validity evidence:

• Convergent Validity: Convergent correlations between independent assessment methods measuring the same trait (the validity diagonals) were statistically significant, showing that an educator’s self-reported efficacy correlated positively with independent observations of their professional competence.
• Discriminant Validity: The correlations between teacher efficacy and verbal ability, as well as between teacher efficacy and interpersonal flexibility, were substantially lower than the convergent validities. This provided empirical proof that teacher self-efficacy is not merely an artifact of an individual’s verbal eloquence, intelligence, or general adaptive flexibility, but a unique, domain-specific motivational belief system.

Criterion-Related and Behavioral Validity

To demonstrate that scores on the TES manifested in actual observable teaching performance, Gibson and Dembo conducted systematic, blinded classroom observations of teachers scoring in the top and bottom quartiles of the efficacy distribution. Observers recorded exact time allotments, instructional structures, and verbal feedback behaviors across multiple full-day classroom observations. The behavioral differences between high- and low-efficacy educators were striking:

• Classroom Organization: High-efficacy teachers devoted significantly more time to small-group academic instruction (providing individualized feedback and scaffolding), whereas low-efficacy teachers spent significantly more time engaged in large, whole-class didactic lecture where individual student needs were marginalized.
• Academic Focus and Time on Task: Classrooms led by high-efficacy teachers maintained significantly higher levels of active student engagement and sustained academic focus, with fewer disciplinary interruptions and smooth instructional transitions.
• Persistence During Learning Breakdowns: When students gave incorrect answers or struggled with new concepts, low-efficacy teachers quickly terminated the dialogue, gave the correct answer themselves, or called on a different student. In contrast, high-efficacy teachers persisted with struggling students—offering tailored prompts, rephrasing questions, checking for prerequisite knowledge, and guiding the student toward mastery.
• Corrective Feedback: Low-efficacy teachers exhibited significantly higher rates of verbal criticism and negative affect toward students during failure situations, whereas high-efficacy teachers maintained a supportive, mastery-oriented feedback climate.

Reliability

The Teacher Efficacy Scale has been evaluated extensively across diverse pedagogical contexts, yielding robust estimates of internal consistency and temporal stability. In the original psychometric investigation by Gibson and Dembo (1984), reliability indices were established across a representative normative cohort of 208 elementary educators:

• Personal Teaching Efficacy (PTE) Factor: Demonstrates high internal consistency, with an initial Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .78 across the primary 9 loading items, and values ranging between .75 and .84 in subsequent replications across varied educational jurisdictions.
• General Teaching Efficacy (GTE) Factor: Yielded an initial Cronbach’s alpha of .75 across its primary 7 loading items, with published alpha values across secondary literature stabilizing between .72 and .79.
• Total Scale Internal Consistency: Across the broader pool of analyzed items, total scale reliability coefficients have consistently hovered around .79 to .82, demonstrating adequate homogeneity among items reflecting personal agency and external barriers.

Subsequent psychometric investigations have affirmed the scale’s stability. Test-retest reliability across intervals of 4 to 8 weeks in non-intervention control cohorts has demonstrated stability coefficients between r = .74 and r = .81, indicating that while teacher efficacy beliefs are enduring cognitive traits, they maintain the requisite sensitivity to capture shifts resulting from sustained mastery experiences or structured professional mentoring.

Factor Analysis

The factorial validity of the TES represents one of the most thoroughly analyzed and debated structural models in educational measurement. Gibson and Dembo (1984) initially subjected all 30 survey items to a principal axis factoring procedure followed by both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique rotations. The extraction criteria—relying on eigenvalues greater than 1.0 (Kaiser criterion) and Cattell’s scree test—identified a prominent two-factor solution accounting for 28.8% of the total variance.

Original Factor Structure and Item Loadings

The two factors emerged with clear structural separation. Gibson and Dembo selected items that had factor loadings greater than or equal to +/- .35 on one factor and clean, minimal cross-loadings (less than +/- .30) on the opposing factor. This resulted in a classic 16-item subset often utilized in subsequent research:

• Factor 1: Personal Teaching Efficacy (PTE) (representing 18.2% of the variance): Comprised items describing the teacher’s personal sense of instructional responsibility, diagnostic ability, and mastery persistence (e.g., Item 1: “When a student does better than usual, many times it is because I exerted a little extra effort” [loading .46]; Item 12: “When a student is having difficulty with an assignment, I am usually able to adjust it to his/her level” [loading .59]; Item 14: “When a student gets a better grade than he usually gets, it is usually because I found better ways of teaching that student” [loading .49]; Item 15: “When I really try, I can get through to most difficult students” [loading .58]).
• Factor 2: General Teaching Efficacy (GTE) (representing 10.6% of the variance): Comprised items describing external limitations, systemic constraints, and student domestic backgrounds (e.g., Item 2: “The hours in my class have little influence on students compared to the influence of their home environment” [loading -.47]; Item 4: “The amount that a student can learn is primarily related to family background” [loading -.45]; Item 6: “If students aren’t disciplined at home, they aren’t likely to accept any discipline” [loading -.48]; Item 16: “A teacher is very limited in what he/she can achieve because a student’s home environment is a large influence on his/her achievement” [loading -.64]).

Subsequent Re-evaluations and Methodological Debates

Following Gibson and Dembo’s original work, researchers conducted rigorous Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) to evaluate the structural integrity of the TES across diverse populations:

• The Locus of Control Artifact Debate: Guskey and Passaro (1994) raised an influential methodological critique, noting that nearly all items loading onto Factor 1 (PTE) were phrased positively (internal agency, using “I” or “me”), whereas items loading onto Factor 2 (GTE) were phrased negatively and externally (using “teachers” or systemic constraints). When they altered the grammatical framing of the items, they found that the two factors reflected an internal versus external locus of control orientation rather than Bandura’s pure distinction between efficacy and outcome expectations.
• Refined Subscale Models: Hoy and Woolfolk (1993) examined the scale among preservice and inservice teachers, extracting a validated 10-item shortened version that demonstrated superior model fit indices (RMSEA < .05, CFI > .94). Similarly, Soodak and Podell (1996) expanded the factor model to a three-factor solution incorporating Personal Efficacy, Outcome Efficacy, and Environmental Resistance.

Despite these subsequent structural refinements, the original 30-item Gibson and Dembo taxonomy remains the historical benchmark that laid the operational foundation for modern instruments such as Tschannen-Moran and Hoy’s (2001) Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale (OSTES/TSES).

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Teacher Efficacy Scale is structured as an objective, self-report psychometric survey designed for direct group or individual administration. The operational characteristics of the measurement tool are summarized below:

• Target Population: Certified primary, elementary, and secondary school educators, student-teachers, and preservice education candidates.
• Instrument Format: Paper-and-pencil inventory or self-administered computerized questionnaire.
• Item Count: 30 items in the comprehensive full-scale form; frequently researched in a validated 16-item core subset (consisting of the 9 high-loading PTE items and 7 high-loading GTE items).
• Response Format: A 6-point, forced-choice Likert scale without an equivocal neutral midpoint:
• 1 = Strongly Disagree
• 2 = Moderately Disagree
• 3 = Slightly Disagree
• 4 = Slightly Agree
• 5 = Moderately Agree
• 6 = Strongly Agree
• Administration Duration: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes for the full 30-item scale.
• Scoring Procedures:
• The instrument contains both positively phrased items (reflecting strong personal efficacy) and negatively phrased items (reflecting external limitations or professional helplessness).
• Items reflecting fatalistic or external orientations (e.g., Items 2, 4, 6, 13, 16, 17, 23, 26, 30) are traditionally reverse-scored (6 = 1, 5 = 2, 4 = 3, 3 = 4, 2 = 5, 1 = 6) when computing composite General Teaching Efficacy scores or aggregate efficacy indices, ensuring higher overall scores uniformly indicate higher levels of perceived instructional power.
• Subscale scores are calculated by deriving the arithmetic mean or summation across the verified items corresponding to the Personal Teaching Efficacy and General Teaching Efficacy dimensions.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Teacher Efficacy Scale was published in 1984 in the Journal of Educational Psychology, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The foundational 30 items were published openly in the original 1984 validation paper for scholarly inspection and scientific replication.

For non-commercial, academic, and clinical research purposes—such as university dissertations, independent educational studies, and school district instructional evaluations—the scale is widely considered accessible under scholarly fair-use conventions, provided that proper bibliographic citation is given to Gibson and Dembo (1984). Researchers seeking to incorporate the instrument into commercial software platforms, for-profit assessment suites, or published training manuals must obtain explicit copyright clearance from the American Psychological Association (APA Rights & Permissions Department).

References

Armor, D., Conry-Oseguera, P., Cox, M., King, N., McDonnell, L., Pascal, A., Pauly, E., & Zellman, G. (1976). Analysis of the school preferred reading program in selected Los Angeles minority schools (Report No. R-2007-LAUSD). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R2007.html

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.

Berman, P., McLaughlin, M., Bass, G., Pauly, E., & Zellman, G. (1977). Federal programs supporting educational change: Vol. VII. Factors affecting implementation and continuation (Report No. R-1589/7-HEW). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R1589-7.html

Campbell, D. T., & Fiske, D. W. (1959). Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitrait-multimethod matrix. Psychological Bulletin, 56(2), 81–105. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0046016

Gibson, S., & Brown, G. (1982). The development of a teacher’s personal responsibility/self-efficacy scale. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY.

Gibson, S., & Dembo, M. H. (1984). Teacher efficacy: A construct validation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76(4), 569–582. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.76.4.569

Guskey, T. R., & Passaro, P. D. (1994). Teacher efficacy: A study of construct dimensions. American Educational Research Journal, 31(3), 627–643. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312031003627

Hoy, W. K., & Woolfolk, A. E. (1993). Teachers’ sense of efficacy and the organizational health of schools. The Elementary School Journal, 93(4), 355–372. https://doi.org/10.1086/461729

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0092976

Soodak, L. C., & Podell, D. M. (1996). Teacher efficacy: Toward the understanding of a multifaceted construct. Teaching and Teacher Education, 12(4), 401–411. https://doi.org/10.1016/0742-051X(95)00047-N

Tschannen-Moran, M., & Hoy, A. W. (2001). Teacher efficacy: Capturing an elusive construct. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(7), 783–805. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0742-051X(01)00036-1

Items of the Scale