earticle

영어

In educational settings, teacher-student relationships are considered significant for their influences on students’ learning and academic lives. Interpersonal skills, social persuasion, and stroking behavior, the recognition, attention or responsiveness that one person gives another (McKenna, 1974), can promote such a relationship and affect teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. This study attempted to investigate the relationship and interaction between the frequency of strokes and the perceived selfefficacy of EFL teachers, considering their gender and level of experience. In order to collect data, 180 EFL teachers, both male and female with different years of experience, completed a booklet questionnaire consisting of demographic information, the Teacher Self-efficacy scale (Bandura, 2006; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2007; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001), and the Stroking Profile (McKenna, 1974). The results of the analysis, using a Spearman rho correlation, indicated a significantly strong positive correlation between the frequency of receiving and accepting positive strokes and the participants’ self-efficacy. There was also a strong negative correlation between frequency of receiving and accepting negative strokes and self-efficacy. However, the frequency of requesting strokes and self-efficacy was weak but significant for positive strokes but non-significant for negative ones. Overall, no difference was found for teachers’ self-efficacy with regard to stroke frequency across gender and years of experience. Further, the results of a factorial ANOVA demonstrated that no interaction existed among frequency of strokes, self-efficacy, gender, and EFL teachers’ experience levels. Hence, the more EFL teachers were provided with positive strokes, the higher their sense of self-efficacy would be. The findings imply that strokes, particularly positive strokes as a source of self-efficacy for EFL teachers, should be seriously taken into account.