Development of the Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale for STEM Practices: A Validity and Reliability Study

The purpose of this study is to develop A Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale for STEM Practices. For this aim, a question pool consisted of 55-item was prepared for the study. The preliminary form was applied to 219 prospective teachers studying in the faculty of education at a public university which is located in the western region of Turkey. Validity and reliability studies have been done and Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated as .97. The scale is one-dimensional and reveals 68.2% of the total variance. As a result of these analyzes, the Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale for STEM Practices was reduced from 55 to 18 items. According to the confirmatory factor analysis results, the fit index of the one-factor scale is quite satisfactory (RMSEA = .05, NFI = .99, CFI = 1.00, IFI = 1.00, RFI = .98, GFI = .90 and SRMR = .025). At the last phase of the study, Scale self-efficacy scores of the prospective teacher who are having and not having STEM knowledge already were compared as well. As a result, significant differences were found in favor of students who are already having STEM knowledge