Identifying Pre-service English Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Towards Teaching English During Teaching Practicum Program

Abstract

Bandura (1997) stated that self-efficacy is the belief system of capabilities to construct and execute the course in action that required producing given attainments. Also, the role of self-efficacy is representing people's belief about their abilities to generate performance levels. The personal belief is the belief possess by each individual pre-service English teacher concerning his or her ability for example in their feelings about becoming a newcomer in the real classroom, thoughts about the materials, in motivating students, in behaving during the teaching and learning process. In this research, the self-efficacy aimed at pre-service teachers about their effort and their persistence to complete the task demand in teaching with their ability performance. The specific context of self-efficacy means the level of perceived ability of an individual can change following a certain situation and task (Swackhamer, et.al., 2009; Tschannen-Moran, et al., 1998). Especially, in teaching and learning the English language for the pre-service teacher. The success in the teaching and learning process for pre-service teachers is certainly a memorable experience. The research was conducted during the teaching practicum program done by the pre-service English teachers of English Language Education of one public university in East Java. The purpose of KKPLP program is applying of teaching and learning practicum to the students in certain junior or high school environments. This research investigated the pre-service English teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching English to senior high school students. To obtain a more in-depth and comprehensive description of the pre-service English teachers' self-efficacy levels in senior high school, this study applied the case study design. This research is a qualitative research. As a result, the researcher collected data using the self-report approach.To get the data of this research, as the researcher , I used the semi structured interview by providing open-ended questions to ask the interviewee according to the research context of the research. The contents of the interview guidelines included the questions about how the pre-service English teachers’ performance, feel, believe, and think during teaching practicum program at senior high school level. The criteria in choosing the participants are they pre-service teacher as a student-teacher who are studying in the faculty of teacher training and education for at least 3 years. He or she has been taking the KKPLP program in 2020 as part of their study to become a competent teacher in the future. Data analysis method, the researcher used model from Creswell (2018). There are six steps to analyze the data in qualitative research. Those are organizing and preparing the data for analysis, reading through all the data, coding the data, use the coding data to generate a description and themes for analysis, interrelating the themes or description, and interpreting the meaning of description or themes. The research result of this research, after analyzing the self-efficacy of pre-service English teachers during the teaching practicum program, it was found that pre-service English teachers felt a sense of anxiety, worry, fear, and nervousness when they were about to start teaching. However, it will show that pre-service English teachers have low self-efficacy if they cannot overcome the feeling. Meanwhile, the feelings of pre-service English teachers when teaching were different from before; they felt happy, calm, and confident. The pre-service English teachers thought that they have mastered the material and are ready to teach high school students, while there is one pre-service English teacher who is not very ready to teach. One pre-service English teacher do not believe in her ability, but four pre-service English teachers believe with their abilities. All five pre-service English teachers feel more comfortable with elementary and high school students. The things that motivate pre-service English teachers are support from the family and school environment, the existence of teaching experiences that create and continue to convince themselves of their abilities. Furthermore, the actions taken by English teachers during the teaching practice program were to prepare materials, learning media, and lesson plans. The result of this research is expected to give meaningful contribution especially for the pre-service English teacher and other researchers. Pre-service English teachers should believe in their abilities. Thus, they can increase their motivation and do their best when teaching and do not need to feel worried and afraid because that will make them distrustful and easily give up on the task at hand. For other researchers that want to conduct the same research, it will be better to observe the self-efficacy of pre-service English teachers in the teaching and learning process in an offline system and ensure that the participants have similar teaching experiences to make it easier for the researcher to observe differences. In order to observe their performance in teaching the students in the classroom directly.