PETER FERGUSON (KINDAI UNIVERSITY)

EXPLORING JAPANESE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’ EFL SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS : ELT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Elementary school teachers, unlike junior and senior high school teachers, are not specialists in a particular field and are required to teach several subjects across a range of levels. In 2020, Japan’s Ministry of Education lowered the starting age of foreign language activities to Grade 3 and made English an academic subject from Grade 5. This policy change doubled the number of teachers required to teach English, which they have not been specifically trained to do. How efficacious these elementary school teachers feel when teaching English remains unknown. Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) directly investigates how efficacious teachers feel doing specific classroom activities for student learning, thus providing a better understanding of pedagogical practices. This paper reports on a mixed-method study that designed and validated a questionnaire of English teaching self-efficacy administered to 138 practicing elementary school teachers in Japan. Rasch analysis was applied to validate the questionnaire, regression analysis was used to examine potential predictors of self-efficacy, along with teacher interviews. The regression analysis showed that experience teaching English was a significant predictor of English teaching self-efficacy. Analysis of the interview data revealed that teachers had concerns about the contents of their lessons, being an effective role model, and held certain views towards engaging with the subject, which highlighted the complications of having specialist English teachers in elementary schools. The findings are presented and possible implications for teacher training, the role of specialist English teachers, and other contextual issues will be discussed.

Peter Ferguson has a PhD in Applied Linguistics. His main research interests are educational linguistics, language policies in schools, and early English education.