Self-Efficacy of Physical and Health Education Student Teachers in the Quebec Context

Abstract

Pre-service training is a critical period for establishing the beliefs of future teachers in their ability to successfully assume their responsibilities as teachers. One of the goals of teacher education programs would therefore be to cultivate a high sense of competence among students. For this purpose, a scale to measure the perception of self-efficacy (PSE) among Quebec physical and health education trainees during teaching has been developed and empirically validated. Teacher trainees (n = 232) enrolled in 3 rd and 4 th year in the Bachelor of Education in Physical and Health Education (PHE) in four different university programs in Quebec participated in the study. Subsequent exploratory and quasi-confirmatory factor analyses led to the development of an instrument with 19 items divided into three factors, explaining 66.10 % of the total variance. The convergent and divergent measures of validity are satisfactory, as are those of the reliability of the three scales (upper lower limit: .78 to .93). Finally, the RMSR, CFI, RMSEA and NNFI indices show an excellent goodness of fit of the model obtained.