Interaction effects of gender and age on teachers’ efficacy beliefs

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4.3.2.1 Interaction effects of gender and age on teachers’ efficacy beliefs

The F-test in the Multivariate analyses of Repeated Measures MANOVA revealed that there was a significant two-way interaction effect of gender and age groups on the teachers‘ efficacy beliefs, F 78,98 = 1.56, p 0.05. However, the results of the tests of between-subjects effects indicated that there were only two items of all 39 items in the five subscales that showed significant differences at the 95 level of confidence p = 0.05. This meant that although the data indicated that a significant combined effect of gender and age of the participating teachers was present, not many items in the scale were sensitive to the interaction effect of gender and age differences. Significant differences at the 95 degree of confidence were only found in two items, with one item respectively in the teachers‘ efficacy for instructional strategies and teachers‘ efficacy for student engagement subscales. The first two significant items were items related to teachers‘ efficacy for responding to defiant students, F 2,86 = 4.21, p 0.05 and teachers‘ efficacy for improving the understanding of students who are failing, F 2,86 = 4.21, p 0.05. Interestingly, the combined gender by age effects brought about different patterns of changes in the level of teachers‘ efficacy where rapid increases in the efficacy happened earlier in the teaching career of male teachers with the highest mean appearing at the age of 30 to 40, while for female the highest was 115 later at 40 to 50 years of age see Figure 4.1. Another interesting finding was that although the group of young male teachers, younger than 30 years of age, reported lower efficacy than the young female teachers at the same age group, the older male teachers, age between thirty and forty, reported higher level of efficacy than the female at the same age group. An assumption of the causes of this trend, which is suspected to be related to different ways of coping shock in early teaching career between male and female, is further discussed in the chapter about discussion and interpretation. Figure 4.1 Gender and age differences in teache rs’ efficacy beliefs 116

4.3.2.2 Interaction effects of teaching experience and school on teachers’ efficacy beliefs