Research on Prospective Foreign Language Teachers’ Self-efficacy Beliefs

Abstract

This study aims at determining prospective foreign language teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and examining the correlations between self-efficacy belief and such variables as gender, age, department, school of graduation, academic achievement and socio-economic level. The study group of the research, which was conducted by employing the survey model, was composed of randomly chosen 270 undergraduate students of foreign languages department of Gazi Faculty of Education of Gazi University who attended the French Language (N=111), English Language (N=79), and German Language (N=80) departments in the 2012-2013 academic year. The self-efficacy scale developed by Schmitz & Schwarzer (2000) was used as the tool of data collection. The Cronbach Alpha value was found to be 0.79 for the scale. The research has demonstrated that no significant differences are available between the prospective teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and the above mentioned variables.