Professionalization in a Course Involving Teaching Units at a Scientific Out-of-School Program

Correlations between Professional Competences and Self-Efficacy Beliefs in a Course Involving Teaching Units at a Biology-Specific Scientific Out-of-School Program

Abstract

Prospective teachers need professional teaching competence to successfully create learning opportunities in Biology lessons. However, the transfer of the theoretical professional knowledge, which is the pre-condition for this competence, into teaching performance is a challenge for prospective teachers. Self-efficiacy beliefs are seen as an element of regulation and influence this transfer as they have effects on the teachers’ choice of goals and behaviors. Didactic courses involving teaching-learning laboratories are supposed to initiate professional competence of prospective teachers and have an influence on self-efficiacy beliefs. So far, there are only few studies, which examine the effectiveness of these formats in the field of didactics of Biology. The question whether professional competences and self-efficiacy beliefs show a correlation and which effects the participation in a course involving a teaching-learning laboratory might have on this correlation cannot be answered yet. The present study examines professional competences and self-efficiacy beliefs in a pre-post design for a course involving a teaching-learning laboratory in Biology. The results indicate a positive effect of participation in this course on different facets of professional competence as well as on the self-efficiacy beliefs concerning the performance of conducting experiments with students. Furthermore, after participation in this course, there were more clear correlations between the examined variables.