AN INVESTIGATION OF CLASSROOM TEACHERS' SELF-EFFICACY LEVELS RELATED TO VALUES EDUCATION

Abstract

Aim: This study aims to examine the self-efficacy levels of classroom teachers about values education. Method: This study was conducted with the survey model, one of the quantitative research methods. The population of the study consists of classroom teachers in Mersin province in the 2023-2024 academic year. According to the data announced by Mersin Governorate, 31,080 teachers constituted the population of the study in June 2023. It was stated that it is generalisable if 370 samples can be reached from the whole universe, taking into account the margin of error at a certain level. In this direction, the participants of the study were selected by convenient/accidental sampling technique. This sampling technique provides convenience to researchers in terms of time, material and labour force in large universes. Of the teachers participating in the study, 205 were women and 203 were men. In the study, the Values Education Self-Efficacy Scale of Classroom Teachers developed by Bayat and Yazar (2022) was used to determine the self-efficacy levels of classroom teachers regarding values education. The data collected with the participation of the teachers were transferred to SPSS 24.0 package programme and analysed. Results: According to the findings, no significant difference was found in terms of gender and educational status variables in any sub-dimension of the scale and in total. In addition, significant differences were found in the sub-dimensions of teacher behaviours and cooperation. In the sub-dimension of teacher behaviours, the scores of teachers with a seniority of 10-20 years and teachers with a seniority of 20 years or more differed significantly from those of teachers with a seniority of 0-5 years. Conclusion: According to the findings, the sub-dimensions of the scale and the total score do not show a significant difference according to gender. For this reason, it can be interpreted that gender variable is not effective on classroom teachers' values education self-efficacy. On the other hand, it can be interpreted that the self-efficacy of the classroom teachers participating in the study towards values education is at a high level with a mean score of 137,60.