extended · article · 2024

Adapting a self-efficacy scale to the task of teaching scientific reasoning: collecting evidence for its psychometric quality using Rasch measurement

Virginia Deborah Elaine Welter; Merryn Dawborn–Gundlach; Leroy Großmann; Moritz Krell; William P. Fisher Jr.

Besides teachers' professional knowledge, their self-efficacy is a crucial aspect in promoting students' scientific reasoning (SR). However, because no measurement instrument has yet been published that specifically refers to self-efficacy beliefs regarding the task of teaching SR, we adapted the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (STEBI) accordingly, resulting in the Teaching Scientific Reasoning Efficacy Beliefs Instrument (TSR-EBI). While the conceptual framework of the TSR-EBI is comparable to that of the STEBI in general terms, it goes beyond it in terms of specificity, acknowledging the fact that teaching SR requires very specific knowledge and skills that are not necessarily needed to the same extent for promoting other competencies in science education. To evaluate the TSR-EBI's psychometric quality, we conducted two rounds of validation. Both samples ( N 1 = 114; N 2 = ...