The Classroom Demands and Teacher Self-Efficacy in On-Site and Online Teaching

Abstract

We investigate in this work the relationship between the perceived demands of the teaching profession and the general sense of teachers’ self-efficacy in on-site and online teaching contexts. We present the results of a study with N= 127 Romanian teachers, with ages ranged from 19 to 55, with a mean age of 39,26 years, SD = 9,20 (123 females, 4 males; 73 from urban area, 54 from rural area). Our results show that the self-efficacy of teachers is lower in online professional activities, compared to the self-efficacy of teachers perceived in the on-site professional activities. In the case of the online teaching environment the teachers with high scores on teachers’ self-efficacy tends to consider as being more challenging when dealing with different levels of children's development, working with children with learning disabilities, who have a small number of attendances, who do not follow the received instructions and with children who need more time and energy compared to other children. We discuss implications of our results for policies and strategies to enhance the quality of teaching practices.