Teaching self-efficacy and factors associated with the teaching practice of physical education faculty

Abstract

Teaching self-efficacy (SE) refers to the belief that teachers/professors have in their own ability to exert a relevant effect on their students' engagement and learning, which is an important indicative of their pedagogical behavior. This associative, predictive empirical study aimed to investigate teaching self-efficacy profiles and the factors associated with the teaching practice of Physical Education (PE) faculty. The College Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale was applied to 43 professors from a Brazilian public university, and data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, the Chi-Squared test, and Binary Logistic Regression (α=5%) on SPSS 25 software. Results revealed high teaching SE levels, both in the general scope and in the specific dimensions of professional practice (teaching planning, student engagement, in-class interaction promotion, learning assessment and self-assessment), besides evidencing strong associations between teaching SE dimensions. SE for teaching planning explained 34.40% of the variation in the professors' behavior, which indicates a need to carry out new investigations with a more in-depth analysis of the influence exerted by other personal, professional and contextual factors on the perceptions of teaching SE within the PE university context.