Extensive research supports the claim that teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs influence their teaching behaviour and their students’ motivation and performance (Klassen & Chiu, 2010; Bandura, 1997). Until now, scholars have studied teacher efficacy expectations mainly at an individual level. Additionally, collective teacher self-efficacy expectations were studied, but primarily at the school or faculty level. The present study also examines collective teacher efficacy expectations but focuses on the collaborative language arts teaching of a disciplinary teacher team, thus two subject teachers working together in a single classroom. This kind of teacher collaboration, in the literature also referred as co-teaching or team-teaching, is characterized through the fact that two teachers share responsibilities for teaching, lesson planning and assessments etc. of students within a certain classroom (Friend, Cook & Shamberger, 2010). Hitherto, self-efficacy expectations in disciplinary teacher teams have been sparsely investigated. Nevertheless, it seems a very important issue due to an increasing necessity of collaboration in heterogeneous and diverse classrooms. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate personal, contextual, and team related factors that may influence the collective self-efficacy expectations of teachers working in disciplinary teacher teams. In particular the following research hypotheses are important:

It is investigated which effect personality predictors such as gender, teaching experience and actual co-teaching practice have on the self-efficacy expectations of teachers. The first three hypotheses focus on the teaching experience of co-teachers and gender:

(i.)                It is assumed that teachers with more co-teaching experience (i.e. co-teaching experience in years and number of teams in which the participant works) show a higher level of self-efficacy expectations than persons with less co-teaching experience.

(ii.)              It is assumed that teachers with more general teaching experience show higher levels of self-efficacy expectations than their counterparts with less general teaching experience.

(iii.)             Furthermore it is assumed that female teachers show lower levels of general self-efficacy expectations than their male colleagues.

Moreover, the influence of the kind of team composition (I.e.: voluntarily or by the school administration composed teams) on the self-efficacy expectations of the co-teaching team was investigated: (iv.) It is assumed that persons in voluntarily composed teams show higher levels of collective self-efficacy expectations than teachers in co-teaching teams that were composed by the school administration. Regarding the school context it was investigated whether class predictors like classroom size or migration background of the students have any influence on the general self-efficacy expectations. (v.) Co-teaching teams who teach in classrooms with fewer students will show higher levels of general self-efficacy expectations than their counterparts in classrooms with a larger number of students. (vi.) Co-teaching teams who co-teach in homogeneous classrooms with a low migration background of the student population show higher levels of self-efficacy expectations than their colleagues co-teaching in classrooms with a high migration background of the student population. Finally, it was examined whether team related skills and actions have an impact on the self-efficacy expectations of the concerned teacher teams. (vii.) Teachers who work in co-teaching teams with high levels of shared responsibility show higher ratings of collective self-efficacy expectations than their colleagues working in co-teaching teams with lower levels of shared responsibility. (viii.) Teachers who work in co-teaching teams with proficient knowledge about specific co-teaching skills and who can freely communicate their needs to the school administration show higher levels of collective self-efficacy expectations than their counterparts who work in co-teaching teams which do not have these characteristics. (ix.) Teachers who work in teams with higher ratings of pleasure with the co-teaching process show higher levels of collective self-efficacy expectations than their counterparts who do not experience pleasure with the co-teaching process.

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