Cognitive Test Anxiety, Self-Efficacy, and Performance on the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators Examination

Abstract

The Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators exam is broadly used as a partial requirement of obtaining teacher licensure. The inferences made based on the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators exam results are of high stakes for teacher candidates, often determining if they are admitted into teacher education programs. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the levels of Cognitive Test Anxiety and Self-Efficacy among the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators exam takers and the correlations with exam performance. The data analyzed in this study were collected through a survey administered on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators exam takers who took the exam between 2014 and 2019 in the United States. The revised version of the Cognitive Test Anxiety Scale (Cassady & Johnson, 2002; Cassady & Johnson, 2014) and the English version of the General Self-Efficacy scale (Jerusalem & Schwarzer, 1981) were used to measure Cognitive Test Anxiety and Self-Efficacy. Results showed a negative correlation which was statistically significant between Cognitive Test Anxiety and the exam performance. Results also indicated a non-significant trend indicating chances of higher scores with higher levels of Self-Efficacy. In addition, it was found that the latent interaction between Cognitive Test Anxiety and Self-Efficacy, indicating positive moderation effect of Self-Efficacy on scores, was not statistically significant. Overall, for this study, it is concluded that the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators exam takers with higher levels of Cognitive Test Anxiety are more likely to receive lower scores.