Teacher efficacy is defined as “teacher’s confidence in their ability to promote student learning.” (Protheroe 1) In other words, what you believe your abilities as a teacher is in direct proportion to you promoting student learning. This makes me think of Henry Ford’s quote, “Whether  you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right” Here a five ways to develop your mindset so that your students can be successful.

1. Work through and challenge your prejudices and stereotype. 

As humans we all have stereotypes and prejudices that we need to examine in order to be our best selves.  Teachers can sometimes unknowingly carry these stereotypes and prejudices into their classroom.

For example, one may believe that because students are “at risk” there is nothing that the teacher can do to help them, when in actuality, if the teacher believes in his or her ability that she can help the “at risk” child, then this might make a difference in that student’s outcome.

For me, it also works the other way around, at one point my career, I had a gifted student in my classroom and I needed to meet her needs but I thought that because she was “gifted” I wouldn’t be able to meet her academic needs. I had to work through my beliefs about

2.  Examine your expectations about the students you teach.

Think about the expectations you have for the students you teach. Do you believe that because they haven’t performed well in previous years, then there is no possible way for them to do well in your class?

Do you think advanced concepts in your subject area are too difficult for your students to understand so you shy away from projects and real world learning? Advanced concepts may need differentiated instruction.

When a student rises above your expectation, how do you respond?

These are just some questions to help you think about your student expectations and how you can adjust them to enhance student learning.

3.  Observe another effective teacher that has similar student demographic

This is sometimes hard for teachers because you may think that observing another teacher means that you’re not as “good” a teacher as they are but again its about seeing what’s possible for the students that you teach.

If you can see that students in your school demographic are learning at high levels from another teacher then that will help you as the teacher to start believing it is possible for your students to achieve at high levels.

4.  Be open to new ways of learning and teaching

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut because what you’ve been doing works for you in your teaching.  Once you experiment with different ways of teaching and learning, you’ll gain more confidence in your teaching abilities, which increases your efficacy.

5.  Use your past successes to build on your current teaching

Think about the successes you’ve had in the past and how those teaching experiences made your students successful. What part of those experiences can you replicate throughout your teaching so you can enhance student learning.

For example, I planned and taught a stem lesson and created a project for students in kindergarten and what went well was that my students who typically weren’t high performers were the students who performed well on the project based learning lesson. So with that, I knew that I had to replicate giving students more stem based projects.

Nurturing your teacher efficacy is a key mindset that will make you learn and grow as a teacher. It is not something that is going to magically make your students achieve but over time with action,   you will notice a difference.

How do you nurture your teacher efficacy?