This study investigated factors that contributed to novice teacher self-efficacy, including mentoring opportunities provided by a large suburban school district’s novice teacher support team mentoring program and novice teachers’ professional characteristics. The purpose of the research was to determine if there was a relationship between novice teacher perceptions of the support team mentoring program and novice teacher self-efficacy. Data were collected through a survey of novice teachers in their first one to three years of teaching in the large suburban school district. The survey consisted of three parts: the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001), perceptions of mentoring opportunities, and perceptions of the value of mentoring opportunities.
Data analysis included one-way ANOVAs to determine differences in perceptions of self-efficacy and novice teacher professional characteristics. To analyze the relationship between participant’s value of mentoring experiences and teacher self-efficacy, Pearson r Correlations were completed. Results of the study indicated that novice teachers who had an education degree held higher perceptions of self-efficacy than those whose degree was not in education. Additionally, a weak relationship was found between novice teachers’ perception of self-efficacy and their valuation of meeting with a mentor as a mentoring experience.
Implications for educational leaders and recommendations for future practices were made based on the results of this research to better support novice teachers. Recommendations include purposeful structures to mentoring programs, including time for informal conversations, lesson planning, meeting with the mentor, engaging, and differentiating novice teacher support team mentoring programs based on type of undergraduate degree, education or non-education related.
Dr. William Gordon II and Dr. Marjorie Ceballos, Committee Chairs.
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