Professional Development, School Climate, and Teacher Social-Emotional Competence: Factors Contribute to Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy in Serving Students of English Learners

Abstract

Teacher efficacy plays an important role in predicting teacher outcomes and contributing to positive student achievement. As it is necessary to study the factors that contribute to it and how it relates to improving teachers of ELs’ job satisfaction and reducing their stress, the present dissertation includes three independent studies. The results of the investigations provide a number of useful insights. The first study used the public dataset TALIS 2018 for the path analysis. The results showed that PD participation in multicultural education and STEM teachers’ perceptions of school climate had significantly positive effects on job satisfaction and self-efficacy in teaching ELs. Additionally, STEM teacher self-efficacy in teaching mediates the relationship between school climate and teachers’ job satisfaction. The second study took the multilevel analyses with a sample from TALIS 2018 and found no significant differences in STEM in teachers' PD engagement based on the proportion of ELs in the school. However, STEM teachers who work in schools that are more culturally and linguistically diverse may not get enough PD training about how to teach in such schools. Additionally, it found that the proportion of ELs in schools moderates the relationship between teacher PD training and teachers’ efficacy in teaching in that context. The third study used multiple regressions to examine the status of in-service STEM teachers SEC, PD engagement in social-emotional learning (SEL), and their level of teaching efficacy in urban secondary public schools that serve students with a large proportion of ELs. It found that there is still a significant gap between the current TSE levels of urban secondary STEM teachers and their optimal status, and the same for their current SEC during the post-pandemic era. Moreover, this study found a relative lack of PD engagement in SEL among urban STEM teachers during the post-pandemic era, and their PD engagement in SEL was identified as having significant impacts on the promotion of STEM teachers’ TSE via their SEC in this study. Overall, the three studies examined the factors associated with teachers' efficacy and contribute to improving secondary STEM teachers’ outcomes.