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respectful nature of the students. However, there seemed to be another more important aspect of the teachers that could strengthen the engagement of the
students. This aspect concerned with the teachers ability to design and then present activities that were able to actively involve the students. The idea was
supported by the interview data where the participants referred to student engagement as ‗active participation‘ and ‗active involvement‘. While they
identified classroom management as controlling the students, they identified engaging the students as involving the students in active participation.
Based on the perception of the participants, being obedient did not always mean being actively involved. If the teachers viewed engagement as involving a high
degree of active involvement, being too obedient would raise problems. And this seemed to be the case. The nature of being obedient among the students
might be viewed as passive involvement. This was why teachers rated themselves higher in their efficacy for classroom management, but lower in
their efficacy for students‘ engagement. For the participants, managing, or in their sense controlling the class was easier than engaging the students in the
classroom activities.
6.3.5 Teachers’ efficacy for curriculum implementation
Among the five subscales in the teachers‘ efficacy survey, the efficacy for curriculum implementation ranked fourth with the overall mean score of 4.52
and standard deviation of 1.47. This indicated that the teachers in the sample were at 65 confidence in implementing the curriculum. This was surprising
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considering that the participants had attended the CBIT not long before the data were collected, in which curriculum implementation in the classroom was the
main training materials. Besides, there were also intensive follow up activities conducted in the teacher forums in all districts serving to strengthen the
participants‘ ability to implement the curriculum in the classroom. Such follow up activities were in the form of workshops in designing syllabus and lesson
plan, developing teaching materials, and there were even also clinical teaching initiated by the teacher forum in every district.
Although the findings from the repeated measures MANOVA revealed that there was a significant increase in the level of
teachers‘ confidence before and after the CBIT, such an increase did not seem to help the teachers step out from
their doubt in her ability to implement the new curriculum in the classroom.
There were some possible explanations why the CBIT and its follow-up activities
failed to elevate the level of teachers‘ efficacy for implementing the curriculum. Firstly, teachers in the sample were not quite ready for the
curriculum change, particularly in relation to the wider mandated changes introduced by the new curriculum. Based on its implementation guidelines, the
new curriculum offered wider mandates to teachers in the development of the syllabus, materials and the assessment system. The reason for extending this
responsibility was because teachers were considered to better understand the materials best suited to the capabilities of their students. However, this did not
mean that the teachers had to do everything themselves. In fact, teachers were
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encouraged to work with their colleagues in the teacher forums in the district to develop curriculum materials and learning experiences collaboratively.
However, there was an indication that such wider mandates, to some extent, gave a rise to problems because they were related to the changing of teaching
habits and culture among teachers. In the era of Curriculum 1994, teachers had been accustomed to bringing into the classroom whatever materials had been
devised by the central government. Teachers had no right to determine the kinds of materials best fitted to the characteristics of the students. However, such
practices were discontinued in the implementation of the new curriculum, where teachers were required to develop the most appropriate materials themselves.
They were also had to design the assessment they would use to evaluate the students‘ achievement. This constituted a significant change in the nature of
teachers‘ work practices and presented them with significant new challenges which potentially impacted significantly on their levels of efficacy for particular
teaching related tasks.
Secondly, the new curriculum also introduced a different paradigm in the teaching of English. Based on the previous curriculum, Curriculum 1994,
teaching of English was mainly governed within the framework of communicative approach. In the new curriculum, however, the teaching of
English was conducted based on the genre-based approach. The shift in the paradigm stimulated changes in other aspects ranging from the formulation of
teaching objectives, the teaching techniques used in the classroom and the
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assessment criteria. The effects of the change in the teaching paradigm brought about different teaching practices from those the teachers had used in the old
curriculum. This possibly diminished the sense of efficacy among the participants.
6.4 The effects of demographic factors on the teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs
