Online teaching self-efficacy of Chinese university teachers amidst Covid-19: its changes and the moderation of adaptability and administration quality

ABSTRACT

Teacher self-efficacy is among the most valued teacher motivational constructs. However, little is known about university teachers’ self-efficacy and even less about changes to it throughout the Covid-19-related online teaching. This study applied a retrospective pre- and post-design to investigate changes in online teaching self-efficacy (OTSE) during Covid-19. Participants included 160 Chinese university teachers, who reported their OTSE before and after the COVID-19 lockdowns, adaptability and administration quality together with demographic information. The self-efficacy for online instruction failed to increase significantly over this period (β=.21, p = .083), whereas that for online technology applications increased significantly (β=.329, p < .01). Individual adaptability and administration quality significantly moderated the changes in OTSE. The implications and limitations of the study are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher self-efficacy
• higher education
• adaptability
• online teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

https://osf.io/7zuny/?view_only=fdb6fa741104427089885576fecde150

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Jiangsu Provincial funding for educational science (C/2022/01/08), Funding for social sciences in Jiangsu Higher Education (2022SJYB2047).