| dc.description.abstract | The aim of this study was firstly, to explore teachers’ hope and sense of self-efficacy with regard to the teaching context, secondly, after training teachers to use the Six Bricks and supplying blocks to enable them to apply the teaching aid in their classrooms, to study the effect of training in and application of the Six Bricks as a teaching aid, on the teachers’ hope and sense of self-efficacy, by means of both quantitative and qualitative methods.
The teaching occupation appears to be exposed to various external and internal forces that influence a teacher’s emotional well-being. The emotional state of a teacher plays a vital role in creating the classroom environment, where learning will either be enhanced or hindered, depending on positive or negative perceptions of well-being in individual teachers (Hargreaves, 2000; Sutton, 2005; Titsworth, McKenna, Mazer, & Quinlan, 2013).
Schools in South Africa’s poor communities deal with many obstacles on a daily basis, often leaving teachers hopeless, frustrated and immobilised to make a difference in their learners’ lives (Cappy, 2016). Many teachers try to use different strategies to help them manage negative emotions in the classroom, which lead to the assumption that the introduction of positive classroom interventions could have a positive effect on the classroom environment. For the purpose of this study, Six Bricks, as a teaching aid in the classroom, was introduced to participant teachers. This study focused on two concepts within the cognitive - emotional framework of teachers, namely hope/hopefulness and a sense of self-efficacy with regard to their teaching context. A research question thus proposed for this study was: Can the initial training in and application of the Six Bricks as a teaching aid in the classroom, increase the hopefulness and sense of self-efficacy of teachers? Teachers’ hope and sense of self-efficacy with regard to the teaching context, was explored through participants’ answers to qualitative questions and scores on the State Hope Scale (SHS) and the Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES) before and four weeks after the introduction to Six Bricks. The researcher trained the participants in the use of ten exercises through a Six Bricks training workshop and every participating teacher as well as every child in each participating teacher’s class received their own Six Bricks set to work with. The teachers were asked to use the Six Bricks teaching aid in their classrooms every day for 10 to 20 minutes, for a period of four weeks. A prompt was sent to the participating teachers, once a week during the four weeks of applying the Six Bricks exercises in their classrooms to measure their experience of the teaching aid. After the four weeks of implementing the teaching aid, the hope and sense of self-efficacy of participants were measured again. Qualitative narratives were analysed through thematic analysis and the quantitative database was analysed by using a computerised program, the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test which is a non-parametric t-test for two related samples, that explores any variation in scores from one point in time to another.
The results obtained from quantitative analysis indicated no significant differences in participants' levels of hope and sense of self-efficacy, however, qualitative results gave another perspective into the multi-dimensional processes effecting hope and sense of self-efficacy in the teachers. Qualitative thematic analysis identified themes of circumstances, learner attributes, equipment and materials, parent involvement, external support, normal teaching responsibilities, extra teaching effort and emotional disposition to influence teachers’ hope and sense of self-efficacy. These themes were viewed through external and internal control frameworks.
Feedback from teachers during the initial four weeks of application of the Six Bricks exercises, indicated that the training and application of Six Bricks created positive classroom experiences. The salutary influence of positive emotions can increase problem solving, innovative thoughts and actions and an ability to adapt to changes (Fredrickson, 2001), therefore encouraging pathway thinking and enthusiastic beliefs that goals are achievable. Unfortunately, for some participants, it seemed as if the myriad of problems at school outdid the positive emotions created by the Six Bricks exercises. Positive experiences thus need to be more than negative experiences before a person will benefit (Fredrickson, 2013; Fredrickson & Losada, 2005). The main finding of the study was that the training and application of Six Bricks resulted in positive classroom experiences which have the potential to influence both hope and self-efficacy in teachers, provided that they continue to use the Six Bricks on a regular basis. The research question whether the Six Bricks intervention could increase the hope and sense of self-efficacy of teachers, could therefore be answered twofold: quantitatively no significant differences could be found in pre- and post-Six Bricks intervention measurements of the constructs, indicating that the intervention did not have a direct effect on the hope and sense of self-efficacy of teachers but qualitatively it would seem that indirectly, through positive emotions experienced during the intervention, teachers displayed more positive views and attitudes towards their teaching context, leading to hope and self-efficacy to be perceived more positively. * The references in this summary are listed in the reference list of Chapter 1 | en_US |
