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Investigating the Use of Vicarious and Mastery Experiences in Influencing Early Childhood Education Majors’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs

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Journal of Science Teacher Education

Abstract

This study investigated the effectiveness of an Early Childhood Education science methods course that focused exclusively on providing various mastery (i.e., enactive, cognitive content, and cognitive pedagogical) and vicarious experiences (i.e., cognitive self-modeling, symbolic modeling, and simulated modeling) in increasing preservice elementary teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. Forty-four preservice elementary teachers participated in the study. Analysis of the quantitative (STEBI-b) and qualitative (informal surveys) data revealed that personal science teaching efficacy and science teaching outcome expectancy beliefs increased significantly over the semester. Enactive mastery, cognitive pedagogical mastery, symbolic modeling, and cognitive self-modeling were the major sources of self-efficacy. This list was followed by cognitive content mastery and simulated modeling. This study has implications for science teacher educators.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. William Boone for conducting the RASCH analysis of the data and the members of the Qualitative Writing Group at Miami University for their feedback on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Teacher Education, Miami University, 401 McGuffey Hall, Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    Nazan Uludag Bautista

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  1. Nazan Uludag Bautista
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Correspondence to Nazan Uludag Bautista.

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Bautista, N.U. Investigating the Use of Vicarious and Mastery Experiences in Influencing Early Childhood Education Majors’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs. J Sci Teacher Educ 22, 333–349 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10972-011-9232-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10972-011-9232-5

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