Impact of Reading Behaviour on Teacher Efficacy among Arts and Science College Teachers – A Predictive Model

The objective of the study was to examine the reading interest and reading behaviour among Arts and Science College teachers and to develop a model to predict Teacher Efficacy. Data was collected from a total of 1,305 teachers in Tamil Nadu state. Results showed that male teachers mostly read newspapers and female teachers preferred reading magazines and novel/fictions. English was the preferred language for male and Tamil for female teachers. Attitude towards reading was positively and significantly correlated with time spent for reading. Average time spent for reading by female teachers per day was significantly less (1.1 ± .6885 hrs.) compared to male teachers (1.893 ± 1.1218 hrs.). Stepwise regression revealed a best fitting model with four predictor variables, they were: Attitude towards teaching (44.49%), Teaching experience (14.21%), Time spent for reading (32.83%) and Attitude towards reading (34.93%), which combined together explained about 69.1 per cent of variations of Teacher Efficacy. Gender and age did not make significant contribution in predicting Teacher Efficacy.