Examining EFL University Teachers’ Perceptions of Self-efficacy in the Algerian Context

Abstract

The study at hand examined Algerian EFL university teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy, in four aspects: teaching, research, supervision and learning, for the ultimate objective of finding out how university teachers’ training programs in Algeria influence their self-efficacy beliefs. To reach this aim, a questionnaire was designed and administered to fourteen EFL university teachers at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University in Jijel. Findings revealed that although the majority of teachers seemed to possess positive and strong self-efficacy beliefs in the investigated areas, a significant percentage of them showed negative perceptions of selfefficacy for accomplishing four tasks in teaching, two tasks in research and two other tasks in supervision. Findings of the fourth section relative to teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs for learning revealed that a third of teachers perceived their training programs to be poor in such important sources of strong self-efficacy beliefs as mastery and vicarious learning experiences, and almost half of them considered the criticism they received from their training environment to be detrimental to their self-efficacy beliefs. Besides, findings of the study showed that almost all teachers seemed to be suffering from feelings of inferiority pertinent to their status as non-native speaker teachers. This allowed us to draw the conclusion that the aforementioned negative self-efficacy perceptions reported by a number of teachers might be formed during their training period, that EFL teacher training programs in Algeria are contributing, at least partially, to implanting negative and weak self-efficacy beliefs among a relatively important proportion of EFL university teachers and that these programs do not help prospective teachers in facing such threats to their self-efficacy beliefs as the native speaker fallacy.