The Impact of Professional Development Grounded in Social Learning on Community College Faculty Efficacy

Community college faculty have experienced a shift in focus from access to access and student success. Given this shift in responsibility for student learning, community college faculty should be sufficiently prepared to teach a diverse student body and subsequently uphold beliefs regarding their ability to bring about desired outcomes of student engagement and learning. Given preparedness is a measure of self-efficacy, professional development for community college faculty is a critical investment in the support and development of teacher efficacy and faculty skill. Social learning theory specifically speaks to a means of increasing self-efficacy. As a professional development practice, social learning allows for participants to share problems, ideas, viewpoints, and collaboration towards solutions. Faculty development grounded in social learning theory may serve as a viable option for community college faculty to learn best practices in teaching and learning via social influence and social reinforcement. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effect, if any, of professional development modeled upon social learning theory on community college teacher efficacy. Administrators and faculty developers may find the results of this study useful as they make decisions about program design and resource allocation. A pre-experimental, one-group pre- and post-test research design using the Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy Scale was used to measure the effectiveness of a faculty development treatment on teacher efficacy beliefs in the constructs of classroom management, student engagement, and instructional strategies. This method enabled a comparison of efficacy levels prior to and after participation in faculty professional development as a means to determine any potential influence. Data were analyzed by employing dependent and independent sample t-tests to determine differences in teacher efficacy mean scores over time. Findings indicated no significant differences in pre- and post-test scores for ...