The Relationship of Georgia's Rural Foreign Language Teachers' Sense of Efficacy to Teacher Attrition

Foreign language teachers are in critical need in many parts of rural America. Using Bandura's conceptual framework of self-efficacy teaching languages as a theoretical lens, the researchers created a scale to measure foreign language teacher efficacy and administered alongside a well-known efficacy survey to in-service rural teachers (N = 167) in Georgia. Data analysis indicates that the new instrument is psychometrically sound and there are two dimensions to language teacher efficacy: Content Knowledge and Facilitating Instruction. Positive correlations between the two surveys suggest that teaching languages requires more than just strength of content knowledge and FL teachers may need assistance engaging students. Aditionally, it appears female novice Spanish teachers are more prone to attrition than teachers of other languages. The research holds implications for professional development opportunities as well as teacher preparation programs.