Do teachers’ perceived teaching competence and self-efficacy affect students’ academic outcomes? A closer look at student-reported classroom processes and outcomes

Abstract

Teachers’ teaching-related competence beliefs such as perceived teaching ability and self-efficacy have been linked to their occupational well-being and external evaluations of instructional quality. However, researchers have struggled to establish a reliable empirical link between teachers’ competence beliefs and students’ academic outcomes. To clarify these puzzling results, this research synthesis reviews different conceptualizations of teachers’ competence beliefs and their hypothesized effects on students, and focuses in particular on student-reported classroom processes and outcomes in authentic K–12 classrooms. This review revealed considerable ambiguity concerning the conceptualization and assessment of teachers’ competence beliefs in empirical research. Furthermore, there is a paucity of empirical evidence testing central assumptions about the associations between different types of beliefs about teaching competence, mediating processes such as instructional quality, and student outcomes in authentic K–12 settings. This research synthesis identifies important gaps in existing research that warrant attention and outlines directions for future research.

Notes

1 For comparison, an item from Rose and Medway’s Locus of Control Scale is: “If the students in your class perform better than they usually do on a test, would this happen (a) because the students studied a lot for the test, or (b) because you did a good job of teaching the subject area?” The second answer option reflects teachers’ internal locus of control.

2 Links to student achievement are also reported in Online Supplement-III, but note that this outcome was included only if the study also reported student-rated outcomes (e.g., students’ perceptions of their teacher’s characteristics and instruction, the quality of the teacher-student relationship, or self-reported motivational beliefs, affect, and learning strategies; for more comprehensive analyses of student achievement, see meta-analyses by Kim & Seo, 2018, and Klassen & Tze, 2014). Similarly, if the reviewed studies examined links to teacher- and observer-rated teaching quality, in addition to student-reported teaching quality or other student-reported outcomes, their associations with teachers’ competence beliefs are reported in Supplement-III.