Impact of Virtual Training on the Filipino Secondary School Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy in Student Engagement, Instructional Strategies, and Classroom Management

This study examined the impact of virtual training on teachers’ sense of efficacy in key areas focusing on student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management. It is mixed-methods embedded design research where teacher’s sense of efficacy was measured using the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES), and a structured interview exploring the experiences and struggles of fifty-nine (59) Filipino secondary school teachers in virtual training. Using Wilcoxon Signed-rank Test, it was found that there is a 0.000 asymptotic significance at the 0.05 level when self-esteem data during face-to-face training and virtual training were analyzed. Results revealed a low sense of efficacy after a virtual training (μ—3.50) in all three areas compared to self-efficacy after a face-to-face training (μ—4.28). The benefits of virtual training are its convenience, safety, personal technological development, flexibility, accessibility, creativity, and focus. Some of its costs affect learning instruction and assessment of learning. It also created technical concerns, lack of interaction, virtual learning distractions, and psychological and health concerns. This study recommends the implementation of an action plan or program that meets the needs of teachers undergoing virtual training in the Philippines.


Introduction
Sense of efficacy, also known as self-efficacy in psychology, is defined as people's How to cite this paper: Entegro, E. A. E. (2022). Impact of Virtual Training on the Filipino Secondary School Teachers' Sense of Efficacy in Student Engagement, Instructional Strategies, and Classroom Management. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 10, beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives (Bandura, 1994). It provides the foundation for motivation, well-being, and personal accomplishment as it stems from beliefs that determine how people feel, think, and behave. For instance, a person with a strong sense of efficacy has high assurance in the capacity to accomplish difficult tasks by looking at them as challenges to be mastered rather than threats to be avoided. There is a high sense of efficacy also when a person can quickly recover and can heighten or sustain efforts despite failures and setbacks. On the contrary, people with a low sense of efficacy doubt their capabilities, have low aspirations, and weak commitment to goals. When faced with difficulties, these people dwell on personal deficiencies, obstacles to encounter, and adverse outcomes which later result to slacken efforts and giving up. This lack of faith in oneself causes these people to be easily victimized by stress and depression (Bandura, 1994). In schools, teachers' self-efficacy has progressively gained an important role as a result of its implications for teaching effectiveness, instructional practices, and student's academic achievement (Klassen et al., 2009;Klassen and Tze, 2014).
Research has also shown that teachers with high levels of self-efficacy experience higher levels of job satisfaction, lower levels of job-related stress, and face fewer difficulties in dealing with students' misbehaviors (Caprara et al., 2003).
While research proved the significance of teachers' self-efficacy in the operation of schools and learners' achievement, what influences a teacher's self-efficacy needs in-depth exploration. What affects teachers' self-efficacy in general? What factors result in high and low self-esteem levels among teachers? How can the schools' governance and leadership heighten teachers' self-efficacy?
In 2016, the Department of Education-Philippines (2016) released an order that aims the development of teachers' potential aimed towards success in their profession through the school-based Learning Action Cell, commonly known as LAC Sessions. This is a training that primarily functions as a professional learning community for teachers that help improve teacher practice and learner achievement. DepEd Order No. 35, s. 2016, or "The Learning Action Cell (LAC) as a K to 12 Basic Education Program School-Based Continuing Professional Development Strategy for the Improvement of Teaching and Learning", shows that community of practice with collaborative planning, problem-solving, and action implementation leads to improved teachers' content knowledge, pedagogical skills, assessment strategies, and professional ethics consequently improve student learning and holistic development. Nowadays, this LAC training is facilitated online since the pandemic due to the coronavirus disease  began in November 2019. LAC training is conducted via online communication platforms such as Google Meet or Zoom. Professional development among teachers is continuous; however, given the situation where the facilitators and speakers are not allowed to be in the physical presence of the teachers being trained, it is a question whether its implementation reveals similar results in terms of quality of learning and most importantly, the self-esteem of teachers.

Teachers' Self-Efficacy
Teachers' self-efficacy is believing in the ability to effectively handle tasks, obligations, and challenges related to their professional activity, and playing a key role in influencing important academic outcomes such as student achievement and motivation (Barni et al., 2019). It must be clear that having a high self-efficacy as a person, in general, does not ensure high teacher self-efficacy levels. At the same time, a high teacher self-efficacy is not hundred percent equivalent to quality, effective, and excellent work. Although it has proved implications in teaching effectiveness, instructional practices, and student's academic achievement (Klassen et al., 2009;Klassen and Tze, 2014 Astin (1984) understood student engagement as the "amount of physical and psychological energy that the student devotes to the academic experience". Getting engaged in academic activities depends on students' efforts and motivation alone. Kuh, G. later expanded this definition asserting that the energies should be reciprocal between students and educational institutions. Student engagement is "both the time and energy students invest in educationally purposeful activi- The joined efforts of students and teachers in performing educational tasks and expected outcomes boost student engagement.

Student Engagement
In one survey by Gallup, teachers who are engaged with their work are said to have an easier time helping students feel engaged with school (quoted in Reckmeyer, 2019). This finding speaks a lot about the weight of a teacher's support in student engagement.

Instructional Strategies
Instructional strategies are comprehensive sets of instructional events intentionally designed to promote learning and facilitate the achievement of specified learning objectives (Hirumi, 2013 as cited by Colson, 2017

Classroom Management
Classroom management is the process by which teachers and schools create and maintain appropriate behavior of students in classroom settings. Effective classroom management establishes and sustains an orderly environment in the classroom, increases meaningful academic learning and facilitates social and emotional growth, and decreases negative behaviors, and increases time spent academically engaged (Kratochwill et al., 2010).
Effective classroom management affects students' learning and at the same time, teachers' confidence in facilitating classroom instruction.

Virtual Training
Virtual training also called synchronous online training, virtual classroom training, and virtual, instructor-led training, is a highly interactive, instructor-led training class, with defined learning objectives and participants who come together using a web-based classroom platform. It uses platforms that help learners and the trainer interact and communicate by using chat, whiteboards, breakout rooms, screen sharing, and more (Association for Talent Development, 2021). Learning takes place together with texts, videos, sounds, collaborative sharing, and interactive graphics.
In a study by Dung (2020), learning virtually is an initiative protecting individual health and community safety, saving the travel time of its learners, exposing them to new forms of learning, helping them keep up with their plans, producing extra time for self-study, and enables easy access to online resources.
Some of the downsides of learning virtually are the extensive time staring at digital screens, lack of body movements, lack of conditions for developing social interaction skills, fear of online assessment, suffering from concentration loss, lack of peer interaction in a virtual classroom, audio difficulties, difficulties in acquiring the contents, difficulties in following the study schedule, and lack of self-discipline.

Learning Action Cell (LAC)
In DepEd, virtual training occurs during LAC where groups of teachers engage in collaborative learning sessions to solve shared challenges encountered in the school facilitated by the school head, a designated LAC leader, or an outsourced expert. This policy aims to improve the teaching-learning process that will lead to enhanced learning among teachers. It desires to nurture successful teachers and enable them to support each other and continuously improve their content and pedagogical knowledge, practice, skills, and attitudes.
It fosters a professional collaborative spirit among headteachers, teachers, and the community.
LAC topics are consistent with areas discussing learner diversity and student inclusion, content, and pedagogy of the K to 12 Basic Education Program, assessment, and reporting in the K to 12 Basic Education Program, 21st-century skills, and ICT integration in instruction and assessment, and curriculum contextualization, localization, and indigenization.
It begins with the assessment of needs, prioritization of topics or agenda, formation of the virtual training, identification of appropriate intervention, scheduling of meetings, setting up of resources, assignment of work, the setting of norms, preparation of the line-item budget, and writing of the virtual training plan. Then, priorities set out in the plan are implemented through a variety of activities followed by a collaborative discussion of possible ways forward. Afterward, proposed strategies or activities in the classroom, school, or community are implemented. Facilitators, leaders, and school heads monitor these plans through evaluation and observation to ensure continuity in student learning, and improved outcomes.

Summary
Findings from the literature narrowed down the definition of teacher's self-efficacy and how interpretations vary when a teacher's self-esteem is correlated with other variables. For instance, teachers' self-esteem is high despite financial pressure and weak financial literacy skills and has no significant difference in terms of professional preparation.
Self-esteem can be measured in key areas such as student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management. Student engagement is the energy students and educational institutions devote to educational performance. Instructional strategies are techniques teachers use to promote learning and achieve specified learning objectives, while classroom management is the creation and maintenance of appropriate student behavior in classroom settings.
Sense of efficacy in virtual training can be effective, or not given its pros and cons. In the Philippines, these collaborative, online learning sessions for teachers in the public school setting are called virtual learning action cell. Figure 1 shows the conceptual framework of the study. It examines the impact of virtual training using the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale, a standardized survey that will be computed and statistically analyzed to get the numerical results. TSES is a self-assessment designed to gain a better understanding of the kinds of things that create difficulties for teachers in their school activities. It measures the sense of efficacy which has three key areas: student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management. To further expound on the difficulties teachers are going through, the process follows the conduct of a structured interview with the same participants who answered the survey questionnaire. The textual results reveal the costs and benefits of virtual training among secondary school teachers.

Research Questions
Teacher's self-efficacy has a positive contribution to student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management. In fact, teachers with a stronger sense of academic efficacy are more inclined to engage in pedagogy that is characterized by positive, proactive, and solution-focused orientations (Stephens, 2015), influence their affective orientation towards students (Van Uden et al., 2013), and exhibit higher persistence and effort (Sarfo et al., 2015), resulting in increased student engagement. This study examines the impact of virtual training on the Filipino secondary school teachers' sense of efficacy in student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management. Thus, it answers the following research questions: 1) What is the impact of virtual training on the Filipino secondary school teachers' sense of efficacy in the following key areas: Figure 1. Impact of virtual training on the Filipino secondary school teachers' sense of efficacy in student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management.

Design
This study is mixed-methods embedded design research. It involves collecting, analyzing, and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data in studies that examine a similar phenomenon (Leech and Onwuegbuzie, 2008). The textual data set from the structured interview provides a supportive, secondary role in the study based primarily on the TSES survey results.

Sampling
Fifty-nine (59) secondary school teachers participated in the data collection of the study. The sample size represents thirty percent (30%) of the overall population of teachers in a secondary school located at Rosario, Cavite, Philippines.
The participants were identified using purposive sampling. All of them are secondary school teachers working in the Department of Education-Philippines and have attended virtual training or learning action cell sessions consistently. Virtual training attended can be self-paced (asynchronous) or live web-conferencing (synchronous) online teaching (Racheva, 2017). The length of teaching experience and subject matter taught were not considered as criteria for participant selection.
Fifty (50) female secondary school teachers and nine (9) male secondary school teachers agreed to voluntarily participate in the study. The ages of the participants range from twenty-three (23) to forty-eight (48) years old with 1 to 28 years length of teaching service.

Data Collection and Instruments
This study used a survey questionnaire and conducted a structured interview in gathering the numerical and textual data needed. A structured interview, with standard questions validated by professionals and experts, followed the administration of TSES. The researcher collected information in a one-to-one conversation with the participants. Health preventive measures were observed in the conduct of the interview.

Data Analysis
The numerical data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, a non-parametric t-test (Glen, 2020). It uses ranked or ordinal data. The values were interpreted using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 25.
The textual data obtained from the structured interview were analyzed thematically. Codes and themes involving the costs and benefits of virtual training emerged from the concepts gathered. The analysis was validated by presenting the themes to secondary school teachers with the same experience but was not included in the data collection of the study.

Ethical Considerations
The study was conducted in accordance with the Psychological Association of Voluntary participation. The participants were not forced to join the study. It is clear that they can withdraw their participation in the study anytime, and that there will be no harm whether they decide to voluntarily participate or not.
Informed consent. The description, goals, nature, purpose, process, duration, and expected outcomes of the study were discussed with the participants.
Confidentiality. The identity of the participants was kept protected and confidential. Records collected were secured until the analysis of data is done. The participants understood that the Google Forms responses were deleted while the interview notes were destructed after the completion of the study.
Potential for harm. There was no possible physical, psychological, social, emotional, or work-related risks among participating in the study.

Results and Discussion
Teachers' sense of efficacy was measured using the TSES that assesses the extent to which teachers believe they can demonstrate their capabilities in three key areas: student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management.
The data collected were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 25. To compare two sets of scores that come from the same participants, Wilcoxon signed-rank test was performed. Table 1 presents the data for the student engagement key area which has a total of 239 responses. The mean score in student engagement during face-to-face training is 4.58 which is higher compared to the mean score of 3.57 in student engagement during the virtual training. The minimum score in face-to-face training is 3, while 1 is the minimum score in virtual training. Both modes of training have reached the maximum score of 5.

Student Engagement
The Wilcoxon signed-rank test results show that in 152 cases, student engagement is higher in face-to-face training than in virtual training. Student engagement in virtual training is only higher in 8 cases compared to face-to-face training. There are 79 cases recorded that show no difference between these two groups. The computed z-score is −10.528 with a 0.000 asymptotic significance. There is a statistically significant difference between the face-to-face and virtual training at the 0.05 level of significance. Face-to-face training appears more effective than virtual training in developing teachers' sense of efficacy in the student engagement key area.
The teachers' sense of efficacy mean score (μ = 3.57) in virtual training has some influence. Teachers believe that they can motivate students who show low interest in school work, get the students to believe that they can do well, help the students value learning, and assist families in helping their children do well in school. This finding can reshape teachers' thinking about their influence on students' interest in school and in learning. In a study by DeVito (2016) Table 2 shows the data for the instructional strategies key area which has a total of 239 responses. The mean score in instructional strategy during face-to-face training is 4.56 which is higher compared to the mean score of 3.50 in instructional strategy during the virtual training. The minimum score in face-to-face training is 3, while 1 is the minimum score in virtual training. Both modes of training have reached the maximum score of 5. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test results show that in 147 cases, instructional strategy is higher in face-to-face training than in virtual training. Instructional strategy in virtual training is only higher in 2 cases compared to face-to-face training. There are 90 cases recorded that show no difference between these two groups.

Instructional Strategies
The computed z-score is −10.668 with a 0.000 asymptotic significance. There is a statistically significant difference between the face-to-face and virtual training at the 0.05 level of significance. Face-to-face training appears more effective than virtual training in developing teachers' sense of efficacy in the instructional strategies key area.
The teachers' sense of efficacy mean score (μ = 3.50) in virtual training has some influence. Teachers believe that they can craft good questions for their students, use a variety of assessment strategies, provide an alternative explanation, or example when students are confused, and implement alternative strategies in the classroom.   Table 3 presents the data for the classroom management key area which has a total of 240 responses. The mean score in classroom management during faceto-face training is 4.60 which is higher compared to the mean score of 3.44 in classroom management during virtual training. The minimum score in face-toface training is 3, while 1 is the minimum score in virtual training. Both modes of training have reached the maximum score of 5.

Classroom Management
The Wilcoxon signed-rank test results show that in 156 cases, classroom management is higher in face-to-face training than in virtual training. Classroom management in virtual training is only higher in 4 cases compared to face-to-face training. There are 79 cases recorded that show no difference between these two groups.
The computed z-score is −10.956 with a 0.000 asymptotic significance. There is a statistically significant difference between the face-to-face and virtual training at the 0.05 level of significance. Face-to-face training appears more effective than virtual training in developing teachers' sense of efficacy in the classroom management key area.
The teachers' sense of efficacy mean score (μ = 3.44) in virtual training has some influence. Teachers believe that they can control disruptive behavior in the classroom, get students to follow classroom rules, calm a disruptive student, and establish a classroom management system with each group of students.  focused on topics involving learner diversity and student inclusion, content, and pedagogy, assessment, and reporting, 21st-century skills, and ICT integration in instruction and assessment, and curriculum contextualization, localization, and indigenization (DepEd, 2016), with minimum classroom management skills input.
In the three areas of teachers' sense of efficacy: student engagement, instructional strategy, and classroom management, face-to-face training recorded a higher mean compared to virtual training. The study did not reveal if there is a relationship between the three areas measured. It did not explore whether a failure in one of these areas affects self-efficacy in general. But, it claims that the teachers' positive belief in their teaching capacities has a direct influence on student engagement, instructional strategy, and classroom management. Both modes of training delivery, whether in person or virtually, reveal good results in keeping the teachers' sense of efficacy high.
There are pros and cons in virtual training as it was newly adapted and forcefully implemented due to the pandemic situation where educational institutions were obliged to technologically upgrade school management and teacher training. Upon interviewing the teachers, here are some identified costs and benefits of virtual training.

Benefits of Virtual Training
Teachers found virtual training advantageous in terms of convenience, safety,

Convenience
Virtual training can be done remotely and within the comfort areas of the participants, usually at home. Teachers do not need to travel anymore and can also save time and effort in getting to the training venue. Training can be done wherever the teachers are. The recorded sessions can be replayed and watched repeatedly. It is usually uploaded on user-friendly platforms and is easy to browse.
Teachers reported longer and flexible time in accomplishing activities in virtual training. There is no pressure in finishing the tasks given, and thus, teachers can come up with planned and better outputs.

Safety
Training conducted at home reduces the chance of transmitting viruses among the participants. Virtual training does not require physical contact. In this time of the pandemic, it offers isolation and safety from coronavirus disease-19.

Personal Technological Development
This sudden shift from face-to-face to virtual training resulted in the exposure of teachers to technological advancements in education. Various online and offline platforms were introduced and are now being utilized in the delivery of instruction. Virtual training allows new strategies and technical skills to be honed. Information has also become immediately available when teachers are confused about a certain concept that can be browsed on the internet. It is an opportunity that teachers view as a refresher course.

Flexibility, Accessibility, and Creativity
The use of websites, videos, interactive games, online quizzes, and many more are utilized in virtual training sessions to make the sessions engaging and interactive. The materials used are more creative yet remain complementary to the traditional ones. It is friendly for both visual and auditory style learners. Virtual training learning resources and materials are also available anytime and on different online platforms. Teachers believe that virtual training offers a great deal of comfort and flexibility.

Focus
A smooth flow of discussion can also be observed during virtual training. Participants can focus on the screen presentation unlike in face-to-face training where social distraction occurs. Proactive participation in interacting and responding through teachers sending reactions and comments is high.

Costs of Virtual Training
The data gathered identified learning instruction limitations, difficulty in the assessment of learning, technical issues, lack of interaction, virtual learning dis-

Learning Instruction Limitations
It poses limitations in the teaching-learning process. Some teachers agreed that learning does not take place well through virtual training. There are possible misunderstandings or misinterpretations of concepts that are not anymore raised or addressed properly. There is little to no assurance that learning takes place for some topics that cannot be practically applied after the training.

Difficulty in the Assessment of Learning
One of the disadvantages of virtual activities is that it is too difficult to closely monitor learning. The physical distance between the host and the participant limits interaction, thus making it hard for the host to measure the level of understanding and interest of the participants. Teachers reported limited or worse, lack of immediate feedback during a virtual training session.

Technical Issues
The most common dilemma present in any virtual activity is technical issues.
Poor internet connection, security and accessibility issues, audio problems, and video problems are some of the technical issues that hinder the flow of virtual training, no matter how well-planned it is. Plus, the fact that not all teacher participants own gadgets needed in entering the platform used. Some teachers who do not have a wired internet connection at home and use internet data struggle with signal problems and find virtual training very costly.

Lack of Interaction
Minimal social interaction and engagement are obvious in virtual training. For those who prefer working alone, this is an advantage. However, there are teacher participants who are motivated in working in groups and collaborating.

Virtual Learning Distractions
While social distractions are present in face-to-face training, virtual learning distractions impede virtual learning. Like students, teachers face difficulties concentrating on the training attended due to social media sites. Some of the sites mentioned are Facebook, YouTube, and Google.

Psychological and Health Concerns
Seasoned teachers, those who have been in the service for many years, confessed that virtual training sessions are a burden. The pressure of learning a new platform or using an application immediately leads to stress and frustration. Seasoned teachers wanted to perform at a pace similar to the young ones.
Working remotely makes it hard for teachers to achieve a work-life balance.
There is the tendency to feel like always working beyond class hours. When the line between work and family time is indistinguishable, it may lead to burnout.
Responses report that teachers are prioritize checking, recording outputs, and submitting reports on time. Attending training is already strenuous for them. Teachers also complain about health issues triggered by attending virtual training such as zoom fatigue, eye stress, and radiation exposure.
Having a high self-efficacy as a person, in general, does not mean high teacher's self-efficacy level. This study showed that virtual training, despite its identified costs, has some influence in the self-esteem of Filipino teachers in the student engagement, instructional strategies, and classroom management key areas.
The participants believe in their ability to effectively handle tasks, obligations, and challenges related to their professional activity, and playing a key role in influencing important academic outcomes (Barni et al., 2019).
The downsides of virtual training in terms of health are extensive time staring at digital screens and lack of body movements (Dung, 2020). Another significant finding of this study are the lack of work-life balance and pressure in learning and utilizing virtual training platforms which results to stress and frustration and described by teachers as "psychological concerns" that they have been experiencing given the transition.

Conclusion
Analysis of the survey data showed that there is a statistically significant difference of 0.000 between the face-to-face and virtual training at the 0.05 level of significance. The comparison of means revealed that in all three key areas, the computed sense of efficacy in virtual training is lower (μ = 3.50) than the computed sense of efficacy in face-to-face training (μ = 4.58).
Teachers found virtual training advantageous in terms of convenience, safety, personal technological development, time management, flexibility, accessibility, creativity, focus, and cost-saving. Some of its disadvantages affect learning instruction and assessment of learning. It also created technical concerns, lack of interaction, virtual learning distractions, and psychological and health concerns.
An inquiry-based approach in virtual training is suggested to build a professional learning environment where teachers can assertively speak, share, and question. Raise interest by letting teachers facilitate the training instead of asking them to merely listen and digest. These are possible if teachers are provided with relevant resources and materials they need for learning. Similar to students, teachers differ in learning preferences and therefore, must be provided with differentiated instruction. Thus, this study recommends the implementation of an action plan that meets the needs and addresses the concerns of teachers undergoing virtual training.