Teacher efficacy for online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic

The purpose of this study was to examine secondary teachers’ efficacy for teaching in a fully online teaching environment during the sudden transition to online teaching that happened due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study was aimed at understanding how specific variables, teaching experience, professional development (PD) experience, and teaching supports might correlate with self-efficacy perceptions of teachers transitioning to online teaching during a pandemic in the domains of student engagement, instructional strategies, classroom management and computer skills. The instrument used to measure teacher efficacy for online teaching was a web based 32-item survey that was given to Ontario secondary teachers in a greater Toronto district school board. We argued that prior experience with online learning such as Additional Qualification (AQ) courses or online professional development would build greater self-efficacy amongst teachers as they transition to online learning. The results indicated that higher online teaching efficacy scores correlated with having taken online Additional Qualification (AQ) courses1 and online professional development sessions. The highest online teaching efficacy scores correlated with having previously used the board provided learning management system (LMS) and using virtual technology supports. These indicators are correlated with higher scores of online teaching efficacy but require further investigation as to how they can better provide support for teachers in online learning environments.