Spain is one of the developed countries with the highest rates of Early Leaving from Education and Training (ELET); it has low participation rates in vocational education and training and a high dropout rate in these studies (Cerdà-Navarro, 2019; Salvà-Mut et al., 2020).

Dropping out of studies cannot be understood as a specific act, but rather as the result of a long and complex process in which a variety of factors interact (Rumberger, 2011), among which academic performance plays an important role. In this sense, we understand academic performance as the materialisation of teachers' educational practices, bearing in mind that it is a multifactorial indicator that is totally related to didactic teaching-learning methods (Martínez-Otero, 2007).

In this context, it is necessary to collect and demonstrate the importance of teachers and their teaching practices in the prevention of dropout and the academic performance of students (Wentzel, 2009; Taylor and Parsons, 2011).

Based on this conceptual framework, in this study we take as a reference the Self-Determination Theory (SDT), which reflects the influence of teaching practices in the teaching-learning processes, focusing on the types and sources of motivation and its impact on student behaviour (Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2013; Ryan & Deci, 2017). Thus, and according to SDT, it is essential to take into consideration teachers' perceptions of their own professional autonomy, teaching competence and interpersonal skills as determinants not only of beliefs and intentions but also of teaching practice, thus establishing a direct relationship with the bond established with students (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Niemiec & Ryan, 2009; Reyes et al., 2012; Van Uden, Ritzen & Pieters, 2013).

The literature on teacher self-efficacy argues that it involves constant evaluation of teaching abilities in order to achieve adequate performance (Pajares, 2006; Tschannen-Moran & Johnson, 2011). The combination of both aspects implies teaching competence and thus the right mix of knowledge, skills and management capabilities for professional development. The feeling of self-efficacy functions as a cognitive mediating mechanism between knowledge and pedagogical acts (Bandura, 1987). Along the same lines, Tschannen-Moran & Johnson (2011) point out that the perception of teaching ability is closely related to the ability to teach and elicit learning. In fact, Ross & Bruce (2007), conceive the feeling of teaching self-efficacy as an expectation that promotes learning in students; while Dellinger et al. (2008) relate it directly to teaching success and Pas, Bradshaw & Hershfeldt (2012) to the teacher's ability to create an appropriate environment for learning.

From this theoretical framework, the study set out to analyse the self-efficacy perception of Basic vocational education and training (BVET) and Intermediate vocational education and training (IVET) teachers and their relationship with academic performance. To this end, data on teachers' feelings of self-efficacy and students' academic results were collected and statistically analysed. Teachers' feelings of self-efficacy were collected from the Teachers Self Efficacy Scale (TSES) of Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk (2001), in its long version. It consists of 24 items distributed in 3 subscales: Effectiveness in fostering student engagement, Effectiveness of applied teaching strategies and Effectiveness in classroom management. To determine the results of the subscales, we calculated the unweighted means of the items that make up each factor. The response scale is Likert-type and ranges from 1 (Not at all) to 9 (Very much). The procedure used for the translation from English to Spanish was back translation. The students' academic results were collected from the data provided by the participating teachers. The latter reported the number of students enrolled, the median mark obtained in the student's grade and the total frequency of students according to the different grading possibilities (fail, pass, excellent, excellent and not presented). The fieldwork was carried out online and via email to all the centres and carried out during the first semester of 2021, resulting in a total of 287 valid surveys, of which 106 correspond to BVET and 179 to IVET, which has allowed us to reach a representative sample for the region with a confidence margin of 90% and a sampling error of 5% for each group. To analyse the effect of self-efficacy on academic performance, a multiple correlational design and a contrast of differences were carried out using as variables the overall scores of the three subscales of the TSES questionnaire and the students' academic results.

A first exploitation of the data shows that there are no statistically significant differences between the scores of the TSES scales and the type of Vocational Education and Training, since the values for each of the subscales are very similar for BVET and for IVET: Effectiveness in fostering student engagement (mean 6. 99 BVET vs. 7.00 IVET), Effectiveness of teaching strategies applied (mean 7.13 BVET vs. 7.19 IVET), Effectiveness in classroom management (mean, 7.03BVET IVET), being in all cases quite high scores. However, from the preliminary analyses we can observe that there are statistically significant differences in academic performance depending on the type of Vocational Training, with the academic performance of IVET (6.28) being higher than that of BVET (5.76). The main analyses reveal that the feeling of self-efficacy in fostering student engagement has a moderate correlation with academic performance (r=.20) and a very low level of correlation for the relationship between academic performance and the effectiveness of the teaching strategies applied (r=.08) and for the relationship between academic performance and effectiveness in classroom management (r=.10). The in-depth analysis of these data, both statistically and from focus groups, will allow us to study in depth the contributions and limitations of the study of the feeling of self-efficacy of vocational education and training teachers and its relationship with students' academic results. This work is part of the R&D project PID2019-108342RB-I00, founded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Government of Spain.

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