Abstract:
In March of 2020, every teacher’s career changed when the impact of COVID-19
prevented students from coming to school in-person. With the entire structure of
education forced to change because of schools moving to online learning, Bandura’s
research on self-efficacy can provide insight to how individual teachers’ self-efficacy
beliefs adapted during COVID. This qualitative study focused on individual teacher’s
experiences involving the four sources that are known to impact self-efficacy, including
mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and physiological state.
Given that research has found educators at the mid-point of their career are typically at
their highest levels of teacher self-efficacy beliefs, seven teachers with at least ten or
more years of experience in a public high school were interviewed for this research. This
study observed that each teacher was impacted to varying degrees in each of the four
sources of self-efficacy over the two years, between March 2020 and June 2022. The most notable self-efficacy impacts among all participants were with mastery experiences,
social persuasion, and personal physiological state, as many teachers struggled with the
loss of student interaction while teaching online. This study’s findings suggest that the
amount of support from schools and leadership played a significant role in teachers
recovering their self-efficacy beliefs during COVID. In addition, results found that
teachers who had an adaptable growth mindset toward teaching were more likely to
easily rebound from self-efficacy loss. Based on these findings, school districts should
evaluate what kinds of support they provide to teachers, both pre- and post-COVID.
Focusing on what teachers need most, considerations should potentially address
emotional adaptability and wellness opportunities to help teachers not only recover from
the lingering effects of COVID, but also the everyday changes they face in the classroom.
