A study on correlation between self-efficacy and academic motivation of prospective teachers

With the highlight of Bandura's social cognitive theory, the purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between selfefficacy and academic motivation of the teacher candidates. The method of the study was designed as relational survey method and the participants were seniors at the Faculty of Education in Adnan Menderes and Pamukkale Universities, Turkey. There were 251 prospective teachers from two universities in total. In the study, the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale developed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001) and adapted into Turkish by Çapa, Çakıroğlu and Sarıkaya (2005) and Academic Motivational Scale developed by Bozanoğlu (2004) were used to collect the data. Prospective teachers’ self-efficacy and academic motivation levels were observed according to university, gender, course times and grade point average. Results of the study indicated that prospective teachers’ levels of sense of efficacy and academic motivation are moderately correlated and there was low but positive relation observed between total academic motivation scores and GPA.