Research has shown that high-quality teacher-child interactions are associated with children's learning outcomes, both in terms of language development and social skills (Reyhing & Perren, 2023). High-quality interactions consist of complex teacher behaviours: providing language input, providing opportunities for language production, and providing feedback (Peleman et al., 2020; Verhallen & Walst, 2011). Rich language input can be provided by setting high expectations for children and using complex syntax and extensive vocabulary (Grifenhagen & Dickinson, 2023). Preschool teachers can create opportunities for language production by being linguistically responsive to children's interests and language output (Justice et al., 2018). Language stimulating feedback can be defined as responding positively to children's utterances and recasting or expanding them (Bradley & Reinking, 2011; Justice et al., 2018; Peleman et al., 2020).  The quality of interactions has been shown to be of paramount importance, but often doesn't have a high quality (Peleman et al., 2020; Wolstein et al., 2021). To realize qualitative interactions, complex language stimulating competences are necessary.

Teacher competence goes beyond the behaviours mentioned above. Blömeke (2015) defines competence as a continuum, contextualised in the real world, in which complex intellectual characteristics, together with affect-motivational dispositions, lead to and underpin the observable behaviour. Therefore, this study aims to explore one of the affective-motivational dispositions that influences ECE student teachers' language stimulation competencies, namely self-efficacy (Wolstein et al., 2021).

Self-efficacy is an important characteristic of teachers (Holzberger et al., 2013). It acts as cognitive filter that shapes thoughts and classroom behaviour (Keppens et al., 2021). It is defined as an individual's belief in the "ability to organise and execute the courses of action required to produce given performances" (Bandura, 1977, p.3). The most used theoretical framework to describe self-efficacy is Bandura's (1977) socio-cognitive theory (De Coninck et al., 2020). Bandura (1977) argued that cognitive processes mediate change and behaviour. To complete a task or perform a behaviour in the classroom, a teacher needs knowledge, skills, and a sense of confidence (Park et al., 2016). A substantial body of research supports that teachers' self-efficacy beliefs are related to several important teacher behaviours, such as more effective teaching practices, as well as student outcomes, such as student achievement and motivation (De Coninck et al., 2020).

Previous research has shown a relationship between teachers' self-efficacy beliefs and the quality of their classroom learning interactions (Guo et al., 2012; Son & Sung, 2014; Wolstein et al., 2021). For example, teachers with higher levels of self-efficacy are more likely to interact in a sensitive and supportive manner (Guo et al., 2012). However, other studies in the early childhood context do not show a clear relationship between self-efficacy and interaction quality (Guo et al., 2010; Reyhing & Perren, 2023; Spear et al., 2018). It is noteworthy that these studies measured self-efficacy beliefs as a broad construct. For example, Reyhing & Perren (2023) defined it as the extent to which early childhood educators feel able to engage in educational practice, whereas Bandura (2005) wrote: "There is no universal measure of perceived self-efficacy (Bandura, 2005, p. 307). A “one size fits all” approach will not explain or predict performance in the context of language development because a universal test will not be as relevant as a contextualised instrument (Bandura, 2005). To fill this research gap and to gain a clearer understanding of the relationship between self-efficacy and interaction quality, there is a need for an instrument in the context of language interaction in early childhood education (ECE). This paper describes the exploration of self-efficacy and the development of a self-report survey measure of student teachers' self-efficacy beliefs about their language stimulating competences.

Based on a literature review on language stimulating teacher competences, 20 items were developed (Bandura, 2005; Justice et al., 2018; Peleman et al., 2020), organised into three categories: providing language input, providing opportunities for language production, and providing feedback. A survey was conducted at two University Colleges in Flanders. 213 students participated as part of a compulsory course in their teacher education programme through the online platform Qualtrics. These participants were a mix of first year (2%), second year (60%) and third year (38%) students. 95% of them were female, which corresponds with the actual population of ECE teacher educations in Flanders. Cases with missing data were identified and excluded from the analysis. This resulted in a total sample size of 192 participants. The data from the 192 participants were used to conduct an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to examine the factor structure. To obtain preliminary results, these participants were also used to calculate Cronbach's alpha to determine the internal consistency of the factors (Decuyper et al., 2023) and to report descriptive results. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin coefficient of sampling adequacy (Kaiser, 1974) and Bartlett's test of sphericity (Bartlett, 1951) were used to assess the suitability of the data for factor analysis (KMO=0.9 and X2=1349.508, df=190, p<0.001). Both exceeded the required cut-off value. Several statistical criteria were used to determine the number of factors to be retained (O'Connor, 2000): Kaiser's criterion (Kaiser, 1960), Catell's scree test (Cattell, 1966), Horn's parallel analysis (Horn, 1965) and Velicer’s minimum average partial technique (Velicer, 1976). An EFA was then performed in R-studio. Weighted least squares was used with direct oblimin rotation, which allows factors to be correlated and provides estimates of correlations between factors (De Coninck et al., 2020). Factor loadings of the items were examined. Following the recommendations of Stevens (1992), all items with loadings of .40 and less were excluded from further analysis. Factors with strong cross-loadings on other factors (>.25) were also removed.

The four statistical criteria did not agree on the number of factors to be considered: Kaiser's criterion (2 factors, eigenvalues of 6.67 and 1.15), screeplot (2 or 3 factors), Horn's parallel analysis (3 factors), and Velicer’s MAP technique (1 factor). As parallel analysis is the most accurate procedure for factor extraction (Henson & Robertson, 2006), an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the 20 items, extracting three factors. The EFA revealed that only two items loaded on the third factor, whereas a stable latent variable requires at least three items (Raubenheimer, 2004). A second EFA was conducted using weighted least squares factoring with direct oblimin rotation, which required two factors, with sum of squared loadings (SS) of 5.37 (factor 1) and 1.92 (factor 2). Of the twenty items, two items had a factor loading of less than 0.40 and two items had cross loading of more than 0.25 with the other factor. This resulted in a two-factor structure with 12 items loading on Factor 1 (Cronbach’s alpha= 0.86) and four items loading on Factor 2 (Cronbach’s alpha= 0.67). The data contradict our hypothesized structure of three factors. The first factor consists of 12 items distributed across the three hypothesised theoretical concepts, thus capturing general self-efficacy in the context of language stimulating interactions. The second factor consists of four items such as 'I feel capable of fairly distributing speaking turns in my class' or 'I have at least one-to-one interaction with each preschool child during the school day', which focus on the teacher's self-efficacy in fairly distributing language stimulating opportunities. Preliminary results show that student teachers score quite high on general self-efficacy in language stimulating interactions (mean=5.08, SD=0.62), which is in line with previous research (Guo et al., 2010), and lower on self-efficacy in fairly distributing language stimulating opportunities (mean=4.51, SD=0.71).

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