Teacher efficacy has been defined as teachers' "beliefs in their ability to have a positive effect on student learning" (Ashton, 1985; p. 142). Teachers with higher teaching efficacy find teaching meaningful and rewarding, expect students to be successful, assess themselves when students fail, set goals and establish strategies for achieving those goals, have positive attitudes about themselves and students, have a feeling of being in control, and share their goals with students (Ashton, 1985). Gibson & Dembo (1984) mentioned that teachers with high efficacy devote more class time to academic activities and focus less on discipline as a prerequisite to student learning. Woolfolk and Hoy (1990) stated that teacher efficacy is considered as one of the few teacher characteristics that consistently relates to teaching and learning. Studies on teacher efficacy suggested that pre-service teachers in different countries have varying degrees of beliefs about themselves to be effective in teaching (Campbell, 1996; Gorrell & Hwang, 1995; Yeung & Watkins, 2000; Cakiroglu, 2003). Lin & Gorrell (2000) stated that the concept of teacher efficacy might be culturally oriented and must be carefully examined when applied to teachers in different countries. In a research study, Cakiroglu (2003) found out that Turkish pre-service teachers had significantly higher mathematics teaching outcome expectancy beliefs than that of American pre-service-teachers and he noted that gender was not a factor explaining the difference in efficacy beliefs of pre-service teachers in both countries.

Teachers' sense of efficacy affects the effort they put into teaching, the goals they set and their level of inspiration . Swars (2005) mentioned that the number of research studies in the area of mathematics teaching efficacy of pre-service elementary teachers is limited. Given the importance of teacher