Teachers' Guidance Self-Efficacy Scale (TGSES): A Proposal for Measuring a Relevant Concept and an Overview of Its Predictors

In Italy, students’ upper secondary education choices significantly impact their academic success and can perpetuate social inequalities, as access to various tracks often depends on students’ backgrounds. This choice at the end of lower secondary education is relevant for their future education success, hence for the system’s effectiveness. Guidance advice provided by 8th-grade teachers’ plays a critical role and previous research has mainly examined its biases, with limited focus on teachers as key actors on this process and their self-efficacy in providing school guidance. We move a first step in analyzing the effectiveness of school guidance, validating the Teachers’ Guidance Self-Efficacy Scale (TGSES) and examining how TGSES scores are influenced by teachers’ characteristics. Based on a survey of 2.348 Italian lower secondary teachers, the study uses factor analyses to validate the TGSES and regression models to explore factors associated with guidance self-efficacy. The TGSES displayed robust psychometric properties, with a clear single-factor structure and high reliability (α = 0.928). Teacher age, subject taught, previous training, and active guidance roles are associated with higher self-efficacy, highlighting the value of targeted teacher training in guidance. Findings underscore the need for educational policies supporting teacher training in guidance reinforcing their effectiveness. The TGSES offers a valuable tool for understanding and supporting teachers’ roles in educational guidance.