The Relationship of Teacher Adaptability, Self-efficacy and Autonomy to Their Adaptive Practices

Abstract

Adaptability is an important disposition for teachers as response to change, novelty and uncertainty is central to their daily work. Teacher adaptability is an emerging construct in research on teacher classroom behaviours with evidence of correlation to improved outcomes for both teachers and students. Teacher adaptive practices were conceptualised in this study as the classroom behavioural expression of teacher adaptability. The data from 278 classroom observations of 71 teachers were analysed for its relationship to the teacher self-report constructs of teacher adaptability, teacher self-efficacy and perceived autonomy support. The study found that only teacher adaptability could predict a sub-scale of adaptive practices that potentially promote student critical and creative thinking. This finding signals an important relationship between teacher adaptability and adaptive teaching given that student critical and creative thinking is a valued outcome of schooling.

Appendix 1: Teacher Adaptive Practices Coding Guide

	Indicator	Low	High
1	The teacher modifies learning goals in response to formative assessment	Teacher did not undertake any formative assessment	Teacher checks for student understanding and makes changes to the lesson in response
2	The teacher modifies their instructions during the lesson to increase learning opportunities	Instructions given once and in one modality to the whole class	The teacher did an impromptu demonstration to a small group using the classroom globe in response to student questions about international time zones
3	The teacher uses formative assessment to differentiate their responses to individual students	The teacher asks students to move to the true or false side of the room but does not follow up with why questions	Teacher sets Do Now task at the beginning of the lesson, helps students with the task and asks questions about the task when all students have attempted it
4	The teacher negotiates learning activities with students, ensuring these are aligned with learning goals	All students completed the same activity at the same time	The teacher used students’ misconceptions as a guide to the learning activity that was chosen
5	The teacher prompted students to discover key concepts through responsive open-ended questions	Teacher used shallow questions that did not require deep conceptual responses from the students	“Why is it expensive to make things in Australia?” “How has technology changed religion?” “In which direction does the water flow into the drain in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere?”
6	The teacher prompted students to express their thinking and used this as a springboard for learning activities	The teacher used “guess what is in my head” questions; “It starts with…?”	The teacher asked the students to annotate their notes with an “E” if they required more evidence
7	The teacher uses a thinking routine to prompt deeper exploration of concepts or skills	“The steps I would like you to take are decode, position, read the poem, write your response”	Teacher used a “See, Think, Wonder” to prompt students to think metaphorically on a concept
8	The teacher prompted students to demonstrate open-mindedness and tolerance of uncertainty	Teacher answered big science questions directly instead of asking them why	The teacher explored the different definitions of a concept evident across different sources to demonstrate the contested and uncertain nature of it
9	The teacher provided a synthesis of class generated ideas	Teacher uses initiate, response, evaluate to individual student answers	“I feel if we joined these last three responses, we should have a good answer on identity”
10	The teacher links, when appropriate, lesson concepts to larger disciplinary ideas	Teacher talk focused on the execution of the learning activity rather than the underlying big idea	The teacher linked the preservation of vegetables by bottling to the chemical processes
11	The teacher provided analogies and metaphors to increase learning opportunities	Teacher does not use analogy and metaphor when the opportunity arises	The teacher used an image of a waterfall to assist student understanding of the life cycle of a business The teacher roleplayed a character in the text to expand understanding
12	The teacher demonstrated flexible pacing of lesson in response to student learning needs	Teacher adheres to their script without checking-in with students to see if they understood the concept	The duration of each learning activity is contingent on student understanding
13	The teacher demonstrated responsive use of literacy/numeracy interventions	No dynamic literacy/numeracy interventions evident	Teacher identified the word “essential” as expressing high modality Teacher used a think-aloud process to identity story retelling in literary analysis as a practice to be avoided
14	The teacher creates groups of students based on formative assessment	Students not grouped or are in previously assigned table groups	Students moved into groups based on a self-rating of their knowledge