Exploring the confidence curve: teaching self-efficacy across the careers of award-winning health professions educators

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Abstract
Purpose: Clinicians and scientists often take a different path in developing competence and confidence as educators compared with peers who have received formal pedagogical teaching. This study explores how award-winning health professions educators reflect on the development and fluctuation of their teaching self-efficacy over time. Guided by social cognitive theory, the study investigates how educators notice, make meaning of, and respond to diverse teaching-related experiences across their careers. Method: Between May and August 2023, 31 Mayo Clinic educators in clinical medicine, basic science, and allied health who had been recognized for teaching excellence in the past 10 years were invited to participate in semistructured interviews. Each participant first completed a preinterview survey and created a graph of their teaching confidence over time, which served as an anchor for the interview discussion. Reflexive thematic analysis identified patterns in how participants described sources of fluctuation in teaching self-efficacy. Results: Of the 31 invited educators, 21 (11 women, 10 men) took part in an interview. Educators described varied trajectories of teaching self-efficacy over time shaped by different experiences, interpretations, and instructional experimentation. Four themes were identified: (1) interpreting implicit and explicit feedback, (2) revising beliefs in response to successes and setbacks, (3) adapting to changing contexts, and (4) using social models to gauge effectiveness. Participants reported becoming more responsive to situational demands and learner needs over time. Conclusions: For these award-winning educators, teaching self-efficacy was constructed and reconstructed through an adaptive, socially situated process of interpretation and reflection. The same events may have affected self-efficacy differently, depending on how individuals framed and acted on their experiences. Findings support a model that emphasizes adaptive expertise and offers implications for faculty development.
Funding Information
  • Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science Office of Applied Scholarship and Education Science Endowment for Education Research Award
  • Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science Office of Applied Scholarship and Education Science Endowment for Education Research Award

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