Teacher’ Self-Efficacy and Student Learning

“Efficacy” refers to teachers’ beliefs about their knowledge and skills in their subject areas. A teachers’ sense of “efficacy” is a critical underpinning of high-quality teaching (effectiveness), and has been associated in other studies with teacher effectiveness. Teachers with a higher sense of efficacy exhibit greater enthusiasm for teaching, 1efficacy is also related to a positive school atmosphere.
Although teachers’ strong efficacy would significantly influence students’ academic achievement, other factors such as socio-economic background, family support, the intellectual aptitude of the student, the personality of student, self-confidence, and precious instructional quality have been found and also influence students to score.
The use of student achievement scores as indicators of teachers’ competence, performance or effectiveness, students’ academic scores are not the only predictors of teachers’ effectiveness. Students, administrators, colleagues, and teachers’ self-evaluation have been used to evaluate teachers’ effectiveness. Students’ competence in the evaluation of the effectiveness of their teachers 1are a valuable indicator.

Professional development activities can be conducted by many different organizations, in schools and out of schools, on the job or on sabbatical leave. On these occasions, practicing teachers update their content knowledge and teaching skills to adjust to the introduction of new curricula, new research findings on teaching and learning, changes in the needs of students, population etc. Studies by Wenglinsky (2000) found a positive effect of professional development on students’ achievement.
There are three major components of teaching Effectiveness first component,

‘Any manner’ identifies that teaching is a multi-faceted activity that requires a broad range of competencies and does not occur in a single manner (Cashin, 1989).
The second component, information or skills’ identifies that teaching involves the imparting of two types of information i.e., knowledge and skill
Third attitude is often thought to change as a result of learning and that it represents the outcome from the gain of knowledge and skill.

The balance between these two items and attitude is an important aspect of teaching within geography (Abler, 1994). The component, ‘so that others may learn’, identifies the ultimate goal of teaching, which is to facilitate learning in other people. Ultimately, teaching is an activity that manipulates a student’s environment in order to facilitate learning or behavioral change.
There are three aspects of learning i.e knowledge gain, understanding 1and skill acquisition. As mentioned earlier, knowledge gain and skill acquisition bring changes in their attitude. They can often be measured as a change in the understanding of a topic and are an integral part of teaching and learning within geography. This also identifies that knowledge gain and skill development occur through study and practice which requires the engagement of the learner.